m-LOGICALLY-VALUED
LOCAL EXCHANGE TRADING SYSTEMS

LOCAL SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FACILITATOR
Discussion Minutes, Part 1

Photo by Nguyen Huu Anh Tuan

A TEAM-TEACHING, PROBLEM-BASED, FIELD-FOCUSED
PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH TO TRAINING THE HOMEGROWN
“LOCAL SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FACILITATOR”

ASSOCIATE OF SCIENCE IN LOCAL SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FACILITATION

FIRST YEAR
12 credits of intensive English training:
Course Title:

24 hours of general education courses.
Course Titles:

SECOND YEAR
36 hours of team-taught courses in the LSDF major (taught on an elementary introductory level with project-oriented problem-based course designs).
Course Titles:

CERTIFICATE IN APPLIED LOCAL SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FACILITATION

THIRD YEAR
36 hours of team-taught field-focused coursework.
Course Titles:

Content of this body of field-focused coursework will be developed by the faculty during the first two years of the project in relation to the four semesters of Guided Field Studies required for the AS degree in Local Sustainable Development Facilitation (LSDF). This coursework will minimally involve: (a) research and data basing on current village organizations, cooperatives, and voluntary associations, as well as intervillage, district, and provincial offices with local administrative responsibilities; (b) identifying present and potential actors (stakeholders) in local development activities; (c) developing and implementing strategies and applications designed to increase local organizational capacity; (d) developing internet applications to facilitate communications and cooperation between villages and dialogue between village organizations and appropriate governmental and non-governmental institutions; (e) research potential NGO sponsors of present and projected projects; (f) conduct literature searches on economic, sustainable development, and administrative performance indicators, and develop appropriate local versions thereof.

Minutes, June 15, 2003

The updated version of the curriculum, including Intensive English and additional classes for the Certificate in LSDF, was discussed. The term “total immersion” is to be used to describe the Intensive English program. Additional faculty members with English “total immersion” teaching experience must be added to the list of required faculty.

A six-months-long full-time paid preparation period for the faculty and administrators must be factored into the proposal and cost estimate. This period will be used to work out details of, and consensus about, the team-taught, project-oriented, problem-based course offerings in the major and to sketch out those of the Certificate program. Also during this period the faculty and administrators will do field research in the villages, inter-villages, and districts of the province to identify specific fieldwork projects and obtain cooperation of the critical individuals so as to plan course work in relation to these. This will require translators and these costs must be factored into the budget.

Our current effort at developing this proposal is to work out a proposal content template which later can be modified to meet the requirements of any specific prospective grantor at whatever geographical location might be chosen. We need to know about grant offering particulars approximately one year in advance. A couple of months will be required to modify the proposal content template and then as much as nine months could be required to get commitments from the local and national government offices that would be involved to cooperate with and support the project were the grant to be forthcoming.

The biggest problem with this proposal idea is that it is all software, whereas the local government offices, other officials, and any involved grant-service educational institutions generally want to know what they are going to get out of it, and what they generally get is hardware: buildings, equipment, infrastructure, vehicles, libraries, and so on. It is unlikely that engaged cooperation will be forthcoming without finding some resolution to this problem. The program offered by this proposal, were it to be implemented, likely would step on the toes of some existing agencies and personnel: e.g., existing local government officials may view the LSDF graduates as threats to their career. It also could be viewed as being intimately related to other programs and, therefore, that it should be under their purview: e.g., land reform programs that may be being brought up and possibly incorporate some of Hernando de Soto’s ideas. In order to develop the proposal content template properly, stakeholder analysis and threats-and-opportunities analysis needs to be done. This would require quite a bit of knowledge of on-the-ground realities in the various echelons of the prevailing bureaucracy. Categories of possible inducements, however, suggest themselves: (1) overseas university affiliation and provision of resources; (2) building investment incorporated into the proposal; (3) using an existing large educational institution for grant service; (4) attach the proposed program to an existing government program, such as land reform; (5) obtain the early interest of a multilateral institution in the concept of the proposed program and this multilateral approaches the national government to obtain its cooperation to run a pilot project in-country before undertaking similar projects in other countries.

Minutes, 06/22/03

Close study of the EU “Decentralized Cooperation” grant application guidelines reveal that a local LDC institution cannot be a competitive applicant for the following reasons: (1) the grant may not exceed 80% of total eligible project costs, the remainder being provided by the grantee. Earlier, it was suggested that the local LDC institution could make up the 20% by contributions in kind. However, contributions in kind are explicitly listed in the guidelines as ineligible. Overheads, such as buildings and so on, up to 7 % of direct costs, are eligible, so the local LDC institution would have to demonstrate cash of 13% of direct costs contributed to the project budget. For the type of grant being discussed, this could represent as much as 130,000 euros; (2) The EU evaluation-of-grantee and evaluation-of-grantee-application criteria include a section on management capacity and expertise. If the applicant has no similar prior project management experience, there will be a large loss of points. The local LDC institution also is not likely to receive points in the areas of technical expertise and management capacity relative to the project being proposed, as the local LDC institution has no program in existence similar to the one being proposed and little in the way of cash flow history on the order of magnitude of the project proposal amount; (3) Under the methodology evaluation section, it is noted that if the grant applicant has no partners, a substantial number of evaluation points will be lost; (4) Under the sustainability evaluation section, the application is assessed as to how, financially, the project will survive after EU funding ceases. The local LDC institution cannot demonstrate the financial capacity required to sustain the project.

It was discussed that in various ways it appears this EU grant facility, though explicitly including NGOs located in developing country settings as potential successful applicants along with those located in EU countries, has established terms of reference which strongly favor NGOs located in EU countries having operations in developing countries.

The judgment was reached that the local LDC institution cannot be a successful direct applicant, but it could be a partner of such an applicant. A large established in-country institution could be the applicant, with the local institution being the venue partner. The project cannot be gotten underway without the permission and active support of the government at all echelons, especially that of the intervillage offices of the province. The Office of Inter-Village Affairs (or whatever the correct name is) of the province should be a partner of the large established applicant institution: local government entities are approved applicants. There may be as many as one-hundred inter-villages in the province, so the closest one can get to partnership with an inter-village office is the provincial office which oversees the inter-village offices. Moreover, in order to solve the problem of the missing 13 % matching funds and the issue of financial sustainability subsequent to cessation of EU funding at the end of three years, an international NGO partner must be found who will provide the 13% up front and endow the program for the period after EU funding ends. Since the project is (a) generalizable to countries throughout the Third World, (b) could become an international hub for education of NGO grassroots staff, (c) is highly relevant to a Hernando de Soto-type land titling, property law, and land reform effort, in that the presence of Local Sustainable Development Facilitators would act to minimize the likelihood of public-lands alienation falling to the predominant benefit of wealthy developers, (d) is highly relevant to facilitating on-the-ground management of rural micro-lending, an international NGO with focus on grassroots activities, land reform, and micro-lending would be the most likely candidate.

Research should be done to ascertain whether or not there is an international association of NGOs. Such an association may be interested in the international-hub-for-training-NGO-grassroots-staff aspect of the project.

A course entitled “Women in Development” should be added to the second year curriculum. It should be stated that female student enrollment will be 50% and that female faculty members will constitute 50% of the faculty (plus or minus 5%).

The sustainability category of the EU's project evaluation criteria assesses potential multiplier effects of the project. One of the added-value elements of the project (added value being an evaluation criteria in the relevance category) is that local sustainable development facilitators are recruited locally and trained locally with heavy doses of problem-focused fieldwork as part of the educational experience. So, it would appear problematic, or that there would at least be considerable loss of quality in training, if, in the post EU-funded period, students were brought from afar to attend this program. Graduates of the program will be obligated to work in the province in a relevant employment category for two years following graduation. It will be the job of the project's placement office to find appropriate positions for graduates. Following this two-year period of work, these graduates will have the training and experience required to form the core cadre for replicating the program in other provinces of the country. So there will be a continuing need for the program in the initiator province to replace those who have moved on to replicate the program elsewhere. Moreover, in the post EU-funded period, the program could take on a second tier aspect, wherein it becomes a clearing house for processing accumulated experience in the involved areas, a staff development workshop venue, and an on-the-job training locus for preparation of seeding staff sent from other countries to replicate the program in those countries as a part of the bioregion sustainable development effort.

Minutes, 06/30/03

K stated she went to the EU website looking for a copy of the Excel document “Logical Framework for the Project” and found that the EU's Local Cooperation Facility is no longer posted. We discussed how fostering sustainable development with an unsustained facility is tacitly an oxymoron. Also discussed was how thematically circumscribed facilities (whether they change on a yearly basis or not) imply a prescriptive top-down approach which is inherently contradictory to the requirements of sustainable development -- those requirements being the prerequisites to successful initiation of a self-organizing process. These observations were seen to be relevant to the current attempt to produce a proposal template that can be adapted to specific thematically circumscribed facilities because they are relevant to issues in strategy of proposal writing. In the current attempt, we are adopting a veiling strategy, as the full power of the basic concept of a Local Sustainable Development Facilitator cannot be seen independent of a discussion of the requirements for implementing m-logically-valued local monetary units. This notion will not be broached because it cannot possibly be understood in the context of such a proposal (given that some familiarity with quantum physics, m-valued logic, chaos theory, number theory, and so on is required): this omission is the veil. The project stands alone and is a strong expression of the requirements of the Local Cooperation Facility, but still is much less powerful than it otherwise would be.

We also discussed that necessity of the veil is not only due to lack of the requisite familiarity with the above-mentioned disciplines, but also because the prevailing development paradigm is based on a resurgence of commitment to 17th and 18th century political economy, a commitment which is simultaneously a rejection of the post-Newtonian perspectives on self-organizing processes which have emerged in the past several decades within the physical sciences by exploration of the implications of quantum and relativity physics. These implications are not to be generalized into the social sciences. This rejection can be seen in the fundamentalisms increasingly dominating all the world's religions, the “clinging behaviors” associated with these fundamentalisms, the top-down approach taken by the multilaterals, and the global monoculture orientation adopted by the Bush administration. That being the case, there are many “trigger points” (politically incorrect notions: e.g., anything evocative of processes involving holographically distributed identity and information) for knee-jerk rejection and mental shutdown that must scrupulously be avoided in any proposal. The basic notions behind m-logically-valued monetary units tap on many such “trigger points” and therefore cannot be broached.

The thought emerged in this discussion that another veil strategy with regard to the m-logically-valued monetary unit idea would involve a project proposal based on an application of the classical Brunner-Brewer computer simulation model to evaluate consequences of implementation of the Tobin Tax concept (tax on all foreign exchange transactions, globally). This would be a clear-cut simulation project, involving all classical concepts, yet, were it accomplished, the resultant simulation model would be what is required as the initial step in creating a simulation model for m-logically-valued monetary units. This is the case because the Tobin Tax would introduce focused viscosity in currency flows (concentrated upon movement of short-term hot-money) and a fully-elaborated system of m-logically-valued monetary units would introduce distributed viscosity. In both cases, the simulation model would be used to study effects of monetary viscosity. It was concluded that this idea should be given consideration in the future.

L was to further develop the text for the Excel document entitled “Logical Framework for the Project”, while K would write the first draft of the “Summary and Objectives” sections of the proposal.

Minutes, July 7, 2003

We discussed K's initial ideas for the proposal's Overall Objectives and Project Purpose. It was decided that the Overall Objectives section should focus upon the contribution the proposed educational initiative would make to the sustainable development paradigm in its international context and the role Local Sustainable Development Facilitators (LSDFs) acting at the grass-roots level would play relative to NGOs, co-financing multilaterals, and echelons of the host government. The Project Purpose section should focus not only upon the task of putting in place a program in the initiator province to educate LSDFs , but upon explaining the innovative aspects of the program that will make it a paradigm demonstration project. This would involve properties of the curriculum, its means of evolution relative to problems encountered in the field, and the methods employed to administer the program.

It appears that the EU grant facility was, indeed, a poverty eradication grant facility, whereas the title on the grant description packet “Decentralized Cooperation” is a reference to the EU's activity in creating the facility -- not the type of grant being offered. The EU's EuropeAid Cooperation Office, engaging in “horizontal operations and innovative cofinancing” is decentralized cooperation on part of the EU. Nonetheless, the term “decentralized cooperation”, when shifted to the context of the host government and the local population, should be used in describing the program to educate and deploy LSDFs, as this term captures well the intent of the proposal we have in mind.

As the large established in-country institution would have extensive experience at teaching the subject matter of the proposed curriculum, that institution should develop course content skeletons which would later be fleshed out in the three-month period of faculty-staff preparation prior to the first day of classes. Course content would then evolve on an ongoing pragmatic basis throughout the first three years of the program (the first group of students through). It was noted that the established institution likely would only have experience teaching this sort of curriculum to graduate students, whereas the program being proposed will be taught to high school graduates from rural schools that provide only a sub-par education. It is felt, however, that the inter-villages are likely to select their best students for the program, and experience with such local students indicates that there are many smart students coming out of these sub-par schools; it is only that there have been so few real educational opportunities come their way. Course content as taught at the large established institution would have to be profoundly reworked to form the basis of this program, not only because the level of the courses would have to be shifted downward to the undergraduate level, but also because the large institution teaches courses in the normal collegiate format, whereas this program will use a “team-teaching”, “problem-based”, “field-focused” approach. Problem-based, for instance, means that the course content is not marshaled in logical or historical march; a contemporary problem is presented as the theme of the course and it is shown that in order to develop possible solutions one must study the history of many factors back into the past, that one must study this and that and another discipline in order to reach a comprehensive appreciation of the nature of the problem. All the course material is marshaled in relation to the problem and only in relation to the problem.

L described that two of the experiential bases giving rise to his ideas concerning this curriculum were: (1) attending the School of International Service, AU, in the early 60s when first set up as an experimental program to prepare undergraduates to take the Foreign Service exam; for several years, this school employed team teaching and a problem-based curriculum; (2) Special Forces Medic training, where high school graduates were put through an intense 2-year program and made into the functional equivalent of general practitioners capable of functioning as MDs in the field with the limited facilities available in that setting. On the basis of this experience there is no doubt in L's mind that high school graduates can be adequately prepared as LSDFs in a properly designed and implemented 3-year program. The initial English language qualification exam, for instance, must be made a filter by strictly adhering to the standards set. The total immersion intensive English training must push the students hard so they feel themselves challenged in testing their limits. The sense of accomplishment at making it through the exam will give them the psychological push required to carry them with strong motivation into the rest of the curriculum.

These thoughts led to the idea that the first two years of the proposed curriculum should be totally re-worked: the courses are too standard for this program. The third year courses look okay; they are focused into the application areas required. After the English intensive, when confidence and motivation is high, the students need some experiences that can help to build assertiveness. This requires a certain amount of personal and cultural introspection. These experiences should take place within the context of courses like Group Dynamics and Social Psychology -- which are presently in the second year. The Intro courses in the first year should all be done away with. The first two years should involve only broadly-conceived interdisciplinary seminars. Not Psychology, Sociology, Social Psychology, Group Dynamics, but Human Behavior. Also, perhaps: Decision Science; Autopoiesis; Informatics. Broadly-conceived multi-semester courses. L is to work on this in the coming week.

The initial workup of the proposal was costed at low-end local academic salaries (Master's degree level) for the faculty and administrative staff. Perhaps the costing should be at international rates (Ph.D. level) so that a top-level faculty could be recruited for the initial 3-year period when the basics of the program are to be worked out. All the real action in sustainable development is at the inter-village level, globally. This is not where the least knowledgeable and least experienced people should be, even if having a “big guy” at the bottom does not conform to prevailing administrative philosophies.

It was discussed that A. S. Karpenko, Head, the Department of Logic at Moscow State University, has recently published a book in Russian (with English introduction) on multi-valued logics and prime numbers which contains much research (conducted by members of the Department over a 20 year period) highly relevant to the theoretical mathematical issues that would need to be resolved if m-logically-valued monetary units are to be implemented. This is a very considerable development.

Minutes, August 17, 2003

Several Sundays were missed due to the pressure of other concerns. On 14 July, K's daughter, T, who is visiting, participated in the discussion and later provided a graphic which summarized the content of what was said. T is an undergraduate studying economic development in an innovative tutored self-study program at a college in Europe. She read the earlier minutes and listened to our discussion. She felt the most difficult part would involve the relationship between the Local Sustainable Development Facilitator (LSDF) and the Inter-village Office (IVO). In order truly to be a facilitator, the LSDF has to be associated with the IVO, the village councils, and the voluntary associations of the inter-villages' villages, yet not in any way be subordinate to the IVO, certainly not be one of its employee. Otherwise, the LSDF will have no possibility of being truly innovative. What should be the primary role of the LSDF after graduation from the program? How will the LSDF be paid? L pointed out that the LSDF will be trained to assess the local economic equation and identify the spectrum of business opportunities. This would be done in many ways, not the least of which would be conferring with local entrepreneurs, village council members, and other knowledgeable local stakeholders. T felt that the primary project the LSDF should be prepared to initiate is creation of a Local Development Fund (LDF) to provide low-interest loans (“meso-lending” was the term T used) to locally-formed corporations so they can undertake entrepreneurial activities related to the spectrum of business opportunities identified and embodied in the local sustainable development plan the LSDF would facilitate codification of in relation to the IVO, the village councils, and the village voluntary associations. The LSDF should be an employee of the LDF and receive salary therefrom. T felt that the planning effort should be coordinated through a Local Development Council (LoDeC) that the LSDF would facilitate creation of. Membership of the LoDeC would be drawn from local entrepreneurs, NGOs, the IVO, village councils, village voluntary associations. Each LDF would engage in meso-lending through multiple cooperating LoDeCs, or with their advise and consent.

L pointed out that the economic area apropos of the “spectrum of business opportunities” was not likely to geographically match the boundaries of the inter-village in question. There would be many variables (economic, natural resource, transportation, watershed, et cetera) that would not conform to governmental bureaucratic boundaries, and that these would change over time and as a result of activities taken at instigation of the LSDF and the LDF, so it would not be wise to formulate a local development plan for a bureaucratically circumscribed area or form a LDF relative to the IVO's geographical area of responsibility. LDFs might geographically overlap and have their purviews defined, say, in terms of types of lending engaged in. He was quite excited by T's idea and described how closely it paralleled what was undertaken by the planner functioning as a facilitator of local development in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic -- where, following a period of strategic planning activity and public meetings, a local development fund was created by selling off part of the buildings owned by the town after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. when the political and economic environment changed. The LDF created by Cesky was a joint stock fund that was to have an initial public offering on the Czech stock market when it opened.

T felt that in the case of the project being discussed relative to educating LSDFs, the LDF should not be a joint stock fund, but be financed by a one-time grant by one or more NGOs -- otherwise, there is likelihood that the local activities will be taken over and determined by outside forces. L observed that overcoming such liabilities was one of the purposes of a local currency, but that this idea was not to be built into the present program proposal.

This discussion was taken up again on August 17th. The issue was raised as to whether or not the host government would view such a program as essentially an NGO trying to create a new echelon of government between the IVO and the village councils or something like local cooperative banks. This could be considered out of line, even threatening. Joint stock funds, rather than NGO-created cooperative lending institutions, would likely be less of a problem politically. It was felt that this project could not be undertaken without the endorsement of the government at the center as well as province and below. The idea likely would have to be sold at the center and become part of a ministerial initiative in order to get off the ground at all. You couldn't just, say, apply for an EU grant to do something like this. There would have to be floating of the finished idea to multilateral, NGO, and central government -- and a consensus worked out that this is something that ought to be done. Then a grant application made after it has, essentially, already been agreed to. The proposed program should be tied to an existing (say, land reform, de Soto-type property law initiative, et cetera) or a newly created government initiative.

K raised the issue of student recruitment. T felt there were a number of options: (1) the IVOs choose; (2) the LoDeCs choose; (3) the IVOs receive applications, do a pre-selection, and the program faculty makes the final choice; (4) the LoDeCs receive applications, do a pre-selection, and the program faculty makes the final choice; (5) the program advertises and interested students apply directly to the program, the faculty making the choice. (1) and (3) were ruled out as they give the IVOs too much control over program outcome. (2) and (4) were rejected because it was felt too many factors not related to qualifications would determine the students chosen, and because the LoDeCs would come into being only after the LSDF program had run for approximately six months to one year.

Questions were raised as to whether local students were really capable of successfully completing a program such as the one we are designing. Examples pro and con were marshaled. No firm conclusions were reached. Many variables are clearly involved, not the least of which is how well the program is planned, funded, and administered, the quality of the faculty, how well student recruitment is conducted, whether or not effective deprogramming is undertaken in social psychology and group dynamics classes and field work such that the students overcome cultural obstacles to individual initiative and effectively taking on leadership roles, and so on. More needs to be known about student motivation in rural areas. K raised the issue of how does the program get the student that has the authority and loyalty of the village, who will be met with respect and be able to communicate with village elders and IVO authorities. Perhaps the program should try to work with groups of students, or pairs of students, from the same village or inter-village in order to take advantage of local cooperative culture. K felt that, perhaps, this proposal should be more explicitly formulated as a pilot project by designing in several different approaches to these issues, working out the implementation steps involved for each approach, and designing evaluation methods to compare outcomes of the various approaches tested.

Photo by Nguyen Huu Anh Tuan

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