# OCF Monthly Community Forum - Jan 2022

## Agenda
**Intro/Check-In**
*[Who are you? Where are you from? What initiative are you with? What brought you to the forum? What do you love about the work you are doing?]*
* Katharina - Fridays for Future - youth climate movement focused on climate protesting; COVID has slowed down outdoor gathering; trying to figure out where they can build movement during this time and headed in the direction of mutual aid. Love working with youth and young people to learn how to use their voice as their voice matters.
* Lasitha - DC Money Pot - resource sharing wealth redistribution movement in DC area; working with OCF for over a year; have been working through recent grantmaking process changes to help manage compliance. Love using their project to talk about money and create more equity in the world.
* Laurie - Open Food Network - website for farmers, farmers market, makers which is freely available, open source, and available for anyone to use. Love people who are drawn to this work and everyone in the room.
* Erika - Sustainable Economies Law Center - working with mutual aid groups and movement more broadly which includes solidarity economy enterprises; came to talk about the upcoming OCF-SELC Legal Clinic crossover. Loves the people she gets to work with and the amazing projects they are working.
* Joe - Sustainable Progress and Equality Collective - focus is on creating paid work experiences where people are learning new skills, building sustainable careers, and giving back to community projects; have been collaborating with other OCF projects. Love what we can do together when we put our minds together.
* Nicole - Watchers Defense Collective - Love that partner is passionate to document oppression. They are a journalist who does anti-police bruality work. Hoping to learn more about Open Collective. Looking for lawyers who are helping to defend houseless populations. Not sure what she loves about the work.
* Nia - Open Collective Foundation - artist who has been brought on to support social media and communications, but they are still learning about OCF. Also works with Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy. Seeking to meet everyone in the OCF ecosystem.
* Caroline - Open Collective Foundation - off into childcare
* Yulia - Emergent Abundance Farming Collective - just started with Open Collective; they are a farming collective. Love people who want to do things outside of the normal economic system, nature, and donating food.
* Sebastian - Proofing Future - Started out as solopreneur, but are moving into a more collective form. Love that someone in OC gave him the title "serendipity provacateur".
* Reshama - Data Umbrella - community for underrepresented persons in data science; joined forum to get updates. Love that she is having an impact with people who are not generally involved in Open Source.
* Hannah - Black Banjo Reclamation Project - Land, music, and cultural identity based project which has developed their own supply chain and ecosystem for people who want to access instruments or work in this field.
* Bobby Joe - Open Collective Foundation - working with OCF as communications organizer. Soaking in amazing projects and learning about the space.
* Nan - Sustainable Progress and Equality Collective - Loves mentoring and has been through a few career changes. Mentoring undergrad and grad students in their career changes.
* Mike - Open Collective Foundation/The Kola Nut Collaborative - Loves talking to all of the different collectives and helping people share time as a currency through timebanking.
* Nina - Ridgewood Community Garden - unusual garden because they are fully collectivized; everyone grows and shares together; garden has public drop-in hours where people can come and work for a bit then take share of harvest. Also, works with different fiscal sponsor which supports artists and interested in solidarity economies. Loves that the garden is politics of the deed and it is a tangible place where we can practice these things.
* Michelle - Judson Memorial Church - Currently supporting a number of mutual aid projects and interested in ways that artists are supported. Also has desire to start a cooperative.
* Ebony - Open Collective Foundation/Cooperative Journal - recently started with OCF as artist in residence to uplift social media platforms; also hosts a podcast where she interviews cooperatives and mutual aid groups worldwide; interested in connecting with others who would want their stories highlighted on the podcast. Loves blowing people's minds about the options to get our needs met in alignment with our values.
* Taylor - Distribute Aid USA - Been at Fort Pickett supporting Afghan Resettlement program. Able to publicize their work more broadly as the resettlement is wrapping up in the near future. Pivoting to regional and national resettlement support services. Seeking coalition partners to coordinate with in different regions. Thinks those partners should be tapped into mutual aid groups locally as part of their own infrastructure. Loves to meet amazing people around the world and move millions of dollars in products.
* Vicky - Build Justly - Decided with co-founder that best way they could contribute to making world better is making technology more equitable. Part that has been overlooked is tech companies and their lack of attention to expanding their pipelines to meet the needs of underrepresented communities. Desired outcome is to unblock the power and money available at this companies. Working with SPEC on creating different tools. Love helping people who believe in this work understand that there are things that can be done through small iterative changes.
* LaTierra - Womanist Working Collective - radical grassroots social action and support collective for Black folks of marginalized gendered experiences; seeking to learn more about legal clinic support to think about building out their worker cooperative; really excited about thinking about succession planning.

**Review of [new updates](https://opencollective.com/foundation/updates) from OCF**
* [Online Legal Cafe](https://www.theselc.org/legalcafe_20220302) being hosted on March 2nd from 12 pm to 1:30 pm PT
* OCF projects will have first opportunity to sign up, but Cafe will be opened to the public two weeks out. Slots at SELC cafes often go quickly.
* Cafes can be an important entry point for people who start or have started projects including worker cooperatives, non-profits, land trusts, and other radical community initiatives
* Fellowship project is to work with mutual aid groups. Interestd in learning more about the legal needs of particular projects and have started building out different resources including a comprehensive general liability and tax compliance guide.
* Hannah - How do you get started working with a project?
* Legal Cafes are a great entry point for groups who are getting started, but are not sure about the way forward. Non-profits sometimes want to move closer to a cooperative decision-making structure. SELC has some existing resources which may help your thinking. More difficult or advanced questions may be refer out to a private consultation.
* Joe - How do we create a legal framework for dealing with contracts between collectives or templates which can be reused?
* Needs more information about the types of projects which might need these types of contractual obligation.
* Taylor - Interested in easier framework for interoperability between collectives as they do a lot of logistics, storage, and shipping.
* Legal Cafes are open to the public, but they do fill up very quickly. Also, they do support worker cooperatives at these cafes.

**Agile Check-Ins (What are your blockers?)**

**Offers and Needs Market**

**Closing**