Setting up urban, local or regional communities within easyswap
easyswap offers municipalities the possibility to promote the creation of urban communities, with the goal of
- reinforcing exchanges between persons of various socio-economical backgrounds within a defined territorial area and enhancing the value of unexploited capacities and goods, by creating social connections between often hermetic layers of the population and promoting the empowerment of the users,
- participating in a better circulation of seldom or never used consumer goods and thus to concretely contribute in reducing their ecological footprint,
- positioning the aforementioned municipalities in a framework of active contribution toward a sustainable use of already existing goods, but also, to participate in the urban, local or regional economical activity, by encouraging secondary consumption of already manufactured goods.
Partners' web sites can be equipped with an easyswap pull-down (in the form of a plug-in)
The activation of the plug-in on the partner’s web site, e.g., www.city.ch-fr-be/easyswap, will automatically redirect the user to the tabbed community, here www.easyswap.org/city. The consultation of the pages can thus be carried out from the partner’s web site, in order to reinforce his attractiveness, or directly through easyswap.
The created community is open to every person residing in the defined area. However, each user might on a simple click, activate easyswap to a broader extent.
In such a case, the product is entirely developed by easyswap and delivered ready to use. The source code will be provided to the partner. In the event of specific requirements on the partner’s side, easyswap and the partner’s software department may work in unison in order to craft a plug-in specifically adapted to the partner’s needs.
Services in relation with the implementation of the plug-in, the sensitization of the population as end-user of the service or with the media exposure of this partnership, will be invoiced by easyswap to its partner. The partner is entitled to oversee and criticize all documents in direct connection with the promotion or the communication of the aforementioned partnership.
The partner can modify the visual identity of the community which he makes available to the residents at his leisure by displaying for instance his logo. The easyswap logo must however remain visible at all times.
In the event of a plenary partnership with integrated plug-in on the partner's web site (and/or intranet), any improvements brought to the original source code by the partner, whether of linguistic, functional or communicational nature belongs legitimately to easyswap, which reserves the possibility of implementing these improvements on easyswap in definitive manner.In return for this partnership easyswap agrees
- to entirely moderate the exchanges of the concerned community, e.g., easyswap.org/city, and to efficiently manage the global amount of swaps placed at the disposal of the inhabitants, in order to simplify the exchanges as much as possible;
- to improve the continuity and functionality of the product, which is the object of the partnership;
- to display on its web site the partner's logo with special mention on the page dedicated to partnerships, and under certain conditions on the homepage itself;
- to mediatically promote the partner, through advantageous featuring;
- to regularly inform the partner of the obtained results.
Some doubts left? Short display of current urban problems
Our goal is not an exhaustive list of problems with which public entities might be confronted but to point out collective stakes, experienced at the individual level and for which easyswap intends to provide an answer.
- A relative use of acquired goods. Only a small fraction of the population has the means to purchase to consume, i.e., to own, in order to benefit from the utility and satisfaction brought by multiple consumer goods. On the other hand, most goods become less and less used after a while. Some will collect dust on racks aging at their own rate in drawers or in basement bottoms, others, will find new purchasers through traditional second-hand markets (stores, or classified advertisements - through the press or internet). Furthermore, certain items often used in a sporadic fashion, never become subject to sale because of a punctual but nevertheless recurrent use by their owner.
- The purchase: an inaccessible, sometimes unwanted act. If a significant part of the population can't afford to buy certain needed or desired goods due to an insufficient buying power, a significant portion, expresses the wish to consume differently, which seems to result in an increased willingness to not purchase goods to enjoy their use.
- An important amount of unexploited skills and capacities. Many detain knowledge and skills that seldom gets put into play in professional surroundings.
- Nearly all the population is confronted to restrictions regarding the satisfaction of their needs with various services because of their price. Apart from a few exceptions, the vast majority of the population must evaluate on a monthly basis, whether a service remains affordable.
- Loss of social connection, disaffiliation, exclusion and a growing gap in the strata that compose society. The different socio-economic layers forming the urban landscape tend to be subject to spatial as well as cultural divisions. The rarity or even non-existence of exchanges leads to a compartmentalization between them. Furthermore, a substantial part of the population making up the urban tissue is nowadays unemployed and recipient of some sort of social insurance, be it insurance or welfare. Exclusion from the labor market is source of social downgrading not only because of the lack of a remunerated activity but also the inability to meet social standards, which contribute to the construction of an individual. Social exclusion and disaffiliation are among the noteworthy results.
- The presence of a less well-off population within the urban fabric has undeniable economic consequences, as well for public institutions as for the private sector, (notably due to the fall of after-market consumption of existing products, and more simply to the noticeable decrease in consumer good sales).
- Lastly, many are the urban areas which are confronted with the arrival of new inhabitants (expatriates, employees, applicants, refugees, etc.) who do not speak the dominant language. This aspect as well reinforces existing fractures between social, cultural and economic layers.
Traditional solutions
The state and municipalities
- They try to respond to the cleavage between the socio-economic layers with a global urban policy. This has the goal of avoiding the formation of homogenous communities, whether privileged or precarious.
- Public means to fight unemployment and phenomena like exclusion and disaffiliation are numerous and in constant evolution. They are nevertheless confronted by the considerable growth of the not employed, be they jobless or on state benefits, whose primary emerging factors are found outside the sphere of public authorities. The result is an increase in public expenses and the concern to always do better with sometimes less. For the excluded, distancing from the world of work strongly reduces long-term, professional reintegration while increasing in a noticeable way secondary effects (loss of social ties, etc.).
- Besides the considerable and increasing costs linked to financing measures against social and economic effects of unemployment, public agencies unceasingly work to invent new measures contributing to recovery of personal and financial autonomy of the population. Many are the associations and foundations subsidized by the cantons or cities which work in the areas of social and/or professional reintegration.
- Through subsidized or financed programs, public agencies attempt to respond to the deficit of integration posed by linguistic and cultural obstacles. These actions, even if they are bestowed by third party organizations, notably in the framework of contracts and services, represent a cost for public institutions.
Community-based organizations
- Rare are the associations which try to unify different socio-economic categories in one dynamic community. Associations and foundations define targets in a general way, and put themselves in a quite particular social "market." The advent of service contracts probably has reinforced this sectorial aspect.
- Numerous are the associations or foundations that attempt to support, materially as well as psychologically, those who need it. A noteworthy part of these autonomous structures represent a cost to public agencies, in parallel to private underwriting.
- Social institutions attempt to invigorate the local economic fabric by the creation of wealth. Important and efficient, they also represent a cost for the commonwealth.
- In terms of integration, organizations financed by the state, through unemployment rights, deliver courses and education. In a parallel manner, local social agencies also finance and support a number of associations and private structures in order to alleviate ever growing needs.
easyswap: a novel approach
On easyswap there are no divisions between users: No one is rich or poor, dominant or dominated, assisted, unemployed, or corporate director. Each user is a swapper who is offering or seeking knowledge, skills, and goods. Thus, in putting aside the stereotypes and stigmas which certain populations have, easyswap promotes exchanges between persons of different socio-economic milieus, and therefore positions itself as a network capable of transcending social divisions.
easyswap gives worth to unexploited skills by addressing the individual directly. easyswap does not play the role of an institutional intermediary but encourages each individual to think lucidly about skills of which he is the bearer and gives him the possibility to make them available to others. With this simple system of putting individuals into contact, easyswap promotes the social empowerment of each person, one and all. In fact, to post on easyswap is to be ready to play the game and to take on the knowledge and skills he has claimed, once the moment has arrived.
Finally, as an internet platform, easyswap links social empowerment of users, creation of links between often hermetic strata of the population but offers also to the least experienced internet users a tool capable of being adopted in a fun way and giving worth to a technology increasingly present.
At the economic level, easyswap, by offering the possibility to use or acquire unused goods, engenders an added value to the economic system by encouraging after market consumption of already manufactured goods.
At the environmental level, easyswap, by supporting a better circulation of unused consumer goods contributes to a sustainable use of already manufactured products and thus promotes a reduction of their ecological footprint.
The combination of the economic and environmental aspects position easyswap as an element that will supplement the market economy by combining two apparently contradictory principles: growth and sustainability.
Conclusions and projection
- easyswap is a highly innovative site for which there exists no equivalent. Many internet sites practice the exchange of services in the form of barter, just as much as various platforms practice property exchange with lucrative goals by using a real currency, limiting thus the access to the neediest of such an exchange system.
- The first nine months of activity clearly reveal that easyswap must acknowledge a strong will in participating and using such a network.
- The media in general manner, show great interest regarding easyswap and more specifically, the different considerations leading to its foundation.
- The association easyswap, which now capitalizes a healthy amount of knowledge and experimentation as to the management of a network for the exchange of goods and services, intends to position itself as an effective and reliable interlocutor toward future partners. Consequently easyswap is not only a product put at the disposal of the population, but also a know-how which increases every day, with the aim to not only manage such a network, but above all to make it live.
- Finally, easyswap is a tool which encourages the empowerment of each of its user. Indeed, every swapper becomes a small company, able to place benefits at the disposal of others and to assume responsibility for these benefits. Also source of social links in between often tight layers of the population, easyswap is an authentic, fun and teaching tool, at the disposal of partner cities.
Consequently, the importance of municipalities in general and of urban poles in particular, in an implementation procedure of international level is fundamental.
Indeed such platform can only grow with the help of local networks, while creating them meanwhile, and requests therefore proximity and density of the population.
Whatever the size of your city, the prices will never exceed 1 Euro per major resident.
For further information, please write to us through the Contact form. Thank you.