How sustainable is the Hub network? How will Hub members around the globe start sustainably into the new year?

The Hub Berlin is supporting the sustainability experiment of the Think Tank 30 of the Club of Rome.

Every week of the month in January 2011 will have a sustainability theme where everyone can join the group experiment and can test how to realize a sustainable lifestyle. We will share stories, experiences, tips and frustrations here on this facebook page. Furthermore, you can share pictures, links or videos.

Every person no matter what age, social or family background, or location is invited to participate. The project initiators from Think Tank 30 hope that through this project personal change for a sustainable world will be established in our daily lives.

Ok, so far 140 people in Germany and 60 globally have signed up for this experiment. So what am I going to change in my lifestyle this month in order to become more sustainable?

Now, where do I start? Mobility is the theme for this first week. Browsing through some suggested actions, everything related to a car is irrelevant for me since I don’t have/need one. And I don’t want a bike either – that’s why my main mode of transportation is public transportation.

Aha, the last one on the list: avoid flying. That’s a tough one, because avoiding it completely as a traveling learner is not an option but I don’t fly within Germany and I try to avoid it when traveling Europe. However, how well did that work in 2010?

Here is my action #1 for this week:
Gather my CO2 balance sheet for flights in 2010 and check-out which offsetting schemes I can support.

Which leads me straight to the second action: since I have a good friend and my brother working for airlines and they fly a lot for business and private reasons, I wonder, if C02-offsetting projects are being discussed and practiced in their companies.

Action #2:
Write an email to my friend and brother to start a conversation around CO2-offsetting projects in relation to their companies.

Anni from the experiment group suggests to walk more and I remember that there was a We Are What We Do Action around this.

I pull out my ‘Change the World for a Fiver’ books, still a favorite give-away to friends for birthdays and business partners and find action #88 “Get off one stop early”

And this is my action #3 for the upcoming week:
Every time I take public transport this week, I will get off a few stops earlier (or get on later) and will be walking.

On my first day in Johannesburg in November, I attend a Hub Lunch at The Hub with Adam Habib. Adam Habib is a political analyst and professor of political science at the University of Johannesburg. Habib appears quite frequently on television in South Africa.

The Hub aims to engage with issues of society, thus this Hub Talk was looking at South Africa’s political economy to develop an appropriate entrepreneurial response.

Lesley, co-founder, of The Hub Johannesburg, kicked-off the conversation by quoting Adam from a previous event “Entrepreneurship is the most abused term in South Africa” and Habib added that “there is generally very little entrepreneurship in business.”

In regards to charactersitics, Habib outlined three requisites an entrepreneur needs: passion, innovation, and a response to one’s context.

Furthermore, for an entrepreneur in order to strive s/he needs to develop technical skills, to look for seed money, and to be in an enabling environment.

Since democratization in South Africa in the 1990s, the economic inequality in the country increased. Entrepreneurship, according to Habib, is not dependant on personal genes but rather on an environment that is supporting entrepreneurship.

Thus, the question is “how do we create entrepreneurship-friendly environments in society?”.

The Hub as an enabling space for people with ideas for a radically better world can be a role-model for such entreprneurship-friendly environments in society.

During the talk, another question that has been following me during my work with Future@School at Hub Berlin reemerged: “How can we move from consumption in business and education to creation of sustainable lifestyles?” And how do we shift to sustainability entrepreneurship in the system?

In November 2010, I (Frauke, Hub Host) have been visiting Kufunda learning village in Zimbabwe.

One of the outcomes was a learning partnership around peer2peer fundraising. Daiton, a herbal consultant at Kufunda and I paired up to start a peer2peer fundraising and learning process for ourselves.

Daiton was born and bred in Zimbabwe with his family being from Malawi. He joined Kufunda in 2005 and is holding space in different areas in the village community. He is reaching out to his peers to support him financially and in co-learning to initiate a Kufunda in Malawi.

I have been hosting and organizing the Hub Berlin community for the past 9 months (having been involved with the Hub Berlin team since August 2007) and also the Future@School initiative is still in the start-up phase. Both projects have not given me income in the past few months and in order to continue this work, I would need financial and inspirational support from my peer group.

Daiton already has 6 peers supporting him (the target was to get 10 people who give 50 USD per month for initially 6 months).

Yesterday, we had a skype call to discuss further steps in this learning experience. I am still drafting the invitation to my peers in the next few days.

Questions that we explored:
- After the first visit to Malawi: what were first reflections and emerging questions?

- How do we invite the Learning Council (peers who support Daiton) for a first meeting? What means of communition do we use (skype, facebook group, emails, etc.)? How do we work together as a Learning Council in the next 6 months?

- What are the learning elements of us working together?

And questions Daiton has after visiting Malawi earlier this month:
- How to involve the people that he met in learning practices of Kufunda?

- How to transfer Art of Hosting knowledge to a Kufunda in Malawi?

- How to involve interested people in Malawi into our Learning Council conversations?