The Coalition for Collaborative Development (CCD) is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization founded in Colorado in 2011. Their mission is to grow leaders focused on building sustainable communities around the world and integrate traditional wisdom with modern technology that creates grassroots change in communities around the globe while making altruistic action and community problem solving fun and engaging.
Global Peace Train (GPT): Global Peace Train is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 2009. They empower grassroots leaders and deliver the needed resources for them to pursuit personal, community and global transformation. They integrate altruistic action with storytelling, compelling high tech media, epic art and experiential live events that produce global and social change in collaboration with the Presentville Game.
In addition to Tribal Traditions a project supporting the Lakota women of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to share their traditional arts and wisdom with the world while building an economy, GPT has implemented Miracles with Microloans a microfinance pilot program in the slums of Kenya which birthed PACHO a Kenyan based nonprofit focused on women's empowerment.
Global Peace Train has been working with the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota since 2010 and the Coalition for Collaborative Development will focus the pilot program on this community. Pine Ridge is the eighth-largest reservation in the United States and it is the poorest. The population of Pine Ridge suffer health conditions, including high mortality rates, depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, malnutrition, and diabetes, among others. Reservation access to health care is limited compared to urban areas, and it is not sufficient for the number of residents using services. Unemployment on the reservation hovers between 80 and 85 percent, and 49 percent of the population live below the federal poverty level. Many families have no electricity, telephone, running water, or sewage systems and many use wood stoves to heat their homes, depleting limited wood resources. The population on Pine Ridge has among the shortest life expectancies of any group in the Western Hemisphere: approximately 47 years for males and 52 years for females. The infant mortality rate is five times the United States national average, and the adolescent suicide rate is four times the United States national average.
Issues being addressed:
The CCD has engaged with Global Peace Train, Animate Inc., Pratique LLC and Bitland LLC and will focus our efforts with community members of the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota, and our network of international Presentville Players of the Presentville game. Our goal is to outline possible solutions to address the current problems of the Reservation, including unemployment, welfare dependency, teen suicide, fading traditions, health and wellbeing, and test the initial Presentville smartphone application designed for individual and community empowerment.
The larger goal will be to leverage the technology and gamification to allow individuals who participate in the game to contribute to delivering needed resources to the Pine Ridge Reservation so the Lakota people can empower themselves in a grassroots effort. In the process, the reward system will utilize the traditions that exist within the Lakota culture in presenting handmade quilts (considered the greatest honor to receive) to game players that have made an impact on the Reservation. The back-end will track all the transactions that take place within the game with a blockchain to show where the resources are being donated all the way to the final destination of the resources. As the process becomes a fair trade of activity and contribution for rewards, the exchange of resources and rewards becomes a sustainable economic ecosystem rather than a one way charity.
Goals and objectives
The CCD’s primary goal is to empower oppressed communities through leadership and altruistic game play. The program will create opportunities for:
Self-sufficiency. Profits from the sale of local goods will be paid directly to the individuals who make them though the application. These profits create a revenue source that 1) helps build the local economy and 2) presents alternatives to dependency on government aid.
Education and training. Players gain exposure to basic business skills and the use of electronic tools and our gaming technology in order to have greater impact on the communities they already support
Preservation of culture. Project activities reinforce the inherent value of culture and traditions as well as the passing of such traditions from generation to generation while merging with modern technology.
Productivity as conducive to increasing self-worth. Project activities help mitigate boredom and opportunities associated with self-destructive behaviors such as alcoholism, drug-use, and even suicide.
Trust and community building: players develop and deepen ties with 1) each other, 2) local community leaders, and 3) outside liaisons.
Activities
With some overlap, the Lakota Project activities fall into one of three categories: 1) business or 2) leadership-building 3) cultural preservation. The first includes production of goods, relaunching and managing the e-commerce platform, sale and shipment of goods, promotion, and profit administration. The latter implies involvement of the Lakota community in various phases of the decision-making: participant recruitment, role appointment, artistry license, cultural documentation and education.
Rationale for project
GPT is built on the belief that empowerment is a sustainable vehicle for addressing extreme disadvantage. The organization believes that “it takes passion” to “overcome poverty, suffering and other life challenges” but it must come from within. Readied with this framework, GPT initiated the effort by making direct inquiries within the Pine Ridge Reservation regarding the community’s poverty and its complexities. The Lakota Happiness Project resulted from these dialogues and represents a bridge between local community input and outside strategy. Therefore, direction stems from a group of community members who offer their own approach to fighting poverty and the other challenges at the reservation.
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