V2-4.02| THE WIDER BARRIO| Sep 05|

V2-4.02| THE WIDER BARRIO| Sep 05|

01| Beyond the residents who take on a role stands everybody else. Some of them are the pool the Maveriqs are recruited from. Some of them stand in the way. Some of them open the door in the first place. And one group never appears in any transaction at all, although that group is the reason the whole arrangement exists. The wider circle is not organised, does not register, and cannot be managed. The wider circle still decides whether the work in a barrio succeeds, which is why the wider circle belongs in the catalogue of players.

THE MOBANDISI

Who opens the door?

02| A barrio cannot be entered from the outside. Somebody who lives there has to open the door. The Mobandisi are the residents who do exactly that: they hear about IkoCiti, they decide the idea is worth a try, and they make contact themselves. Nobody appoints the Mobandisi and nobody recruits the Mobandisi. The Mobandisi step forward on their own, which is the only way a first contact can ever happen. IkoCiti does not walk into a neighbourhood and announce a programme. IkoCiti waits for the knock on the door and then answers the knock.

03| What follows the first contact is the pre-deal phase — the months before any agreement exists, before any money moves, and before IkoCiti has an organisation in the barrio at all. In the pre-deal phase the Mobandisi do the unpaid work. The Mobandisi explain the idea to neighbours who have heard promises before, gather the people who need to be in the room, answer the question of what is in it for whom, and carry the doubt of the street back to us so that the doubt can be dealt with honestly. There is no salary in the pre-deal phase and no guarantee that a deal comes out of the pre-deal phase.

04| The Mobandisi therefore spend something before anybody has promised them anything: their own standing among neighbours. A resident who brings an outsider into the barrio and then watches the outsider fail pays for the failure for years afterwards. Some Mobandisi go on to lead the local IkoCiti organisation once the deal is signed. Some Mobandisi hand the work to somebody better suited and step back. Both outcomes are good outcomes. The door was opened either way.

THE AMBITIOUS PEOPLE

Who is this built for, and who wants to help?

05| The Ambitious Poor are the poor people who want to change their own life themselves, rather than wait as passive receivers of somebody else's programme. The Ambitious Poor are not an organisation, not a membership, and not a club anybody joins. The Ambitious Poor are a universe — a latent one, spread across every barrio, mostly invisible until an opportunity arrives that is worth the effort. IkoCiti is built for that universe. Some residents will never take the opportunity, some will take the opportunity and drop out, and some will come back three times. The doors stay open, and the model does not need everybody.

06| The supporting universe of The Ambitious Poor are The Ambitious Rich — people and organisations with money who want to fund the Ambitious Poor to succeed. The Ambitious Rich are not charitable in the old sense, because charity asks nothing of the receiver and expects nothing back. The Ambitious Rich have patient money, but the Ambitious Rich demand tangible progress. They embrace the concept of IkoCiti but they know the difference very well between talking the talk and walking the walk. Both universes are the pools from which we recruit, so that they (as Buyers) fill the demand side of the Peoples' Impact Markets and (as producers) they populate the supply side. The goal is simple: do as many transactions as possible.

THE SKEPTICS & THE BLAH PEOPLE

Who loses when a barrio improves?

07| Not everybody in a barrio wants the barrio to change. Some people earn from the way things are. Some people hold a position that a working neighbourhood would make pointless. Some people have watched outsiders arrive with promises before and have decided, with reason, that the next arrival deserves obstruction. The Skeptics are the people who have been disappointed and now expect nothing. The Blah People are the people who talk, criticise every step, spoil a meeting with a remark, and resent a neighbour who steps forward — and who never put anything of their own on the table.

08| IkoCiti does not treat the Skeptics and the Blah People as an accident or as a failure of communication. Opposition is the normal condition of any work that shifts money, attention and standing inside a neighbourhood. A Maveriq will be undermined, a project will be blocked, a meeting will be spoiled, and the platform plans for the trouble rather than being surprised by the trouble. The defence is not confrontation. The defence is a track record that everybody can see, a circle of friends who vouch for the Maveriq, and results in the street that are hard to argue with.

THE GANGSTERS & THE HUSTLERS

Who already runs the street?

09| Every poor neighbourhood already has an economy and already has an authority, and neither of them is written down anywhere. The Gangsters hold territory and settle disputes by force. The Hustlers make a living in the gaps — the small trade, the loan at a hard rate, the service the formal world does not deliver. Both groups know the barrio better than any visitor ever will. Both groups notice immediately when money, attention and standing start to move through a channel they do not control.

10| IkoCiti does not fight the Gangsters and does not recruit the Gangsters. The platform is open about what the platform does, keeps the money visible, and gives no role to anybody who takes a share by threat. The Hustlers are a different matter. A Hustler is a businessperson working without a licence, without capital and without protection, and a Hustler who can move into legitimate trade will usually take the offer. Some of the best Maveriqs come from the Hustlers.

THE SUITS

Who puts something in, and who only takes something out?

11| The Suits are the business people: the companies, the owners, the investors and the professionals who look at a barrio and see a market, a cost, or a risk. Self-interest drives all of them, and self-interest is not a complaint. Self-interest is simply the thing that decides which way a Suit turns. One test separates the Suits into two groups, and the test is not attitude. The test is whether the Suit puts something in.

12| One group of Suits rejects IkoCiti outright. A barrio that organises itself makes their execution harder. Wages get negotiated instead of set, land gets contested instead of taken, and deals that used to be arranged with one person now have to be explained to a room. A second and larger group is the free riders. The free riders are happy to see the barrio improve, because a safer street lifts the value of the building, the shop sells more, and the utility loses less. The free riders contribute nothing to the improvement and expect to bank the gain anyway. The free riders are the harder problem of the two, because free riders make no noise.

13| The other group of Suits does the opposite. The other group looks at a barrio with a functioning organisation and sees a partner: a workforce that can be trained, a supplier that can be built, a joint venture that starts small and local. IkoCiti works with the second group and asks the same question of every one of them — what do you put in? Money, contracts, training, equipment, or a market for what the barrio produces. Everything else is a conversation, not a deal.

THE NEXT-GEN

Who is all of this ultimately for?

14| The last group in the wider circle never registers, never holds a role, and never appears in a single transaction. The Next-Gen are the children growing up in the barrio while the barrio is being rebuilt. The Next-Gen are also the unborn, coming into the world in a few days or a few years. What the Next-Gen receive is a childhood in a place that improved instead of decaying, and adults around them who were visibly building something rather than waiting for something.

15| Every other player in this catalogue is instrumental to that one group. Breaking a cycle of poverty takes longer than one working life, so the honest measure of the platform is not the number of projects finished this year. The honest measure is whether the children of the barrio start from a better place than their parents started from. In other words, we aim to level the playing field as much as possible. A level playing field is about the starting line (fair for everybody); it is not about guaranteeing wins. The Olympic Final 100 Meters has one winner and eight losers.

16| It might not even be legally formulated, but IkoCiti feels a fiduciary duty to the unborn and the newly born, which becomes tangible through our permanent infrastructure. They have no voice but we hear them. The ultimate reference point in our decision-making is (and we believe should be) whether the result of that decision is favourable for our permanence — that is to say, for the future beneficiaries and users of the platform who have no voice in the matter today.

THE END