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| Humans cannot perform miracles but we can create the circumstance within which they can happen. |
•... A safe and secure 'home place' is understood as a fundamental human right; and
•... The need to acquire a 'home place' needs to be within the reach of every human wherever they are welcomed within a community and no matter their social circumstances; and
•... The need is to better understand a homes 'purposefulness' currently is so pressing; and
•... The need make places where people are secure and welcomed and overtly celebrated is likewise so pressing; and
all that makes more sense than perhaps ever in humanity's histories played out as they are in a diversity of cultural landscapes – and especially in those places where dystopian conflicts rage. There is much to be said on all this and the opportunities to say them in our own voices is much needed.
Winifred West, founder of an extraordinary network of schools established in less than auspicious circumstance initially, often said to anyone with an ear to listen ... "humans cannot perform miracles but we can create the circumstance within which they can happen."
Also, she also now famously said when speculating on one of her initiative's social enterprises 'STURT' located in Mittagong and its future as war raged inn Europe “… I do not know what it will turn into. That will depend upon the people who come and on changing conditions. I can foresee many possible developments. It might become a training school for teachers of arts and crafts. It might become an industrial concern. It might become a colony of artists and craftsmen, potters and printers… or of course, it may just go phut!” ... Winifred West, 1941
It is not beyond the realms of our imagination to say that IF say a 'bank' , speculatively marketable as say thePURPLEbank – a Community Social Enterprise Bank – were to be formed anywhere in Austtalian right now, the likes of Winifred West wherever they are might well utter such words. It is imaginable that people sharing Winifred West's MINDset would not be failing to act. They would be testing the idea among their network of supporters and themselves investing in it no matter how small that investment might be.
The very notion of a house as 'an investment' can now be understood as a historical cum political construct. It is often used in exclusionary hierarchy ways that privileges the so called HOMEowners – intellectual, relatively wealthy, often male-dominated, gainfully employed– over HOUSErenters – workers, of limited financial means, women, cultural subsets, etc. This distinction is increasingly challengeable given the sexist, rankist, racist, and the colonial cultural cargo this MINDset' carries – and rightly so.
There are strong arguments that suggest that the so called 'Investmement housing market' that emerged in the POST WW2 was fuelled by FIRSTworld cultural imperialism – neocolonialism of a kind in the wake of catastrophic conflict.
That movement and investment market for a time in Australia saw social privilege, the rise of counterculture practices, and especially so with the emergence of increased numbers of people engaging in university education. Interrogating all this is an idea that might yet launch a PhD or two and quite possibly a PURPLEbank may have a role to play in that possibility.
In an effort to overturn the possibly of a impending dystopia, aspiring HOMEmakers have a role to play. A PURPLEbank may well provide the circumstances for a utopian like miracle in the 21st C.
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| Prof. Muhammad Yunus |
PURPOSE: Founded on the principle that loans are more effective than grants and charity, purposefully enable people suffering housing stress to focus on developing more fullfilling lifestyles.
TARGET AUDIENCE: Under served aspiring HOMEmakers surviving on social security, the untrained, the underemployed, and people seeking a safe an secure place to live and experience a better lifestyle while securing a safe place to live.
NO COLLATERAL: A Community Social Enterprise [A PURPLRbank] does not require traditional collateral in order lend to makers as has been the case with the Grameen Bank. Such enterprises are underwritten by trust and respect.
MODEL: Community Social Enterprises use a group-based lending system with weekly repayments to maintain a lending reserve.
FINANCING: As is the case with the Grameen Bank, a proportion of loans should be funded by community members' deposits and interest income rather than external funding.
IMPACT: Empowering those suffering housing stress and communities' with suffers inn residece to initiate similar institutions in many places as has been the case with the Grameen Bank.
ACTION: Appoint a Steering Committee to formalise a Community Social Enterprise to be known in Launceston Tasmania as the PURPLEbank 7250, – or by some other marketable name. The appointed Steering Committee will be authorised to receive 'deposits' to be held in trust until such time a 'the bank' is appropriately incoroprated in order that it might then begin to put in place a management structure that enables a marketable deposit and loans structure to be put in place.
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