yunity movement & yunity organisation

Dear fellow lovely yunity people,

“The time has come for yunity” and actually since we gathered in Malo, 8 month ago we are walking together towards it! Since 2013 Martin, Raphael and me are dreaming about yunity, the infinite possibilities, opportunities and necessity of it and most of all, the power for change yunity will bring to the world.

The 1st WuppDays in Italy were the spark for the yunity movement, a wonderful ever growing community of people who share their vision, passion and joy by being the change we wish to see in the world. We had more than 8 official WuppDays taking place so far and achieved a lot together even not being together the whole time. Friendships, couples, amazing ideas, cooperations and unique moments are some of the fruits of this amazing WuppDays spirit which you all made possible! New people are coming and going and everything is evolving, flowing and becoming more solid.

Nevertheless yunity lacks of stability, safety and a professional environment, especially for the core of the project, the yunity platform.

During the money discussions In Kirchheim I shared my insights about my experience of an almost moneyless approach of a project like yunity. It took me years to get to this conclusion. After 5,5 years of my life in which I rejected money, I understood that our current system is still based on money and that on a long run a moneyless life for an individual and even more for a family inside this society is not suitable. My conclusion was, the best way to bring the change into society, to tackle waste should not solely happened on a personal level, but on a large scale. To do this embrace the possibilities we have today to empower people with yunity all over the world to come together, share, save resources, create projects and establish a new era of public domain and common goods where everytime money is less needed because we established connection.

This italic part is about the outcomes of the two SysCons concerning handling money and legal entity, if you are aware of them, you can continue with the text below ;-)

Together with Martin and Philip we created a detailed proposal for the SysCon “How should yunity handle money internally?”. The Idea of the MoneyCrowdFlow was to enable everyone who wants to contribute to yunity either with their financial means, with direct contribution through their skills enabled through a sort of basic income depending on individual needs. With the possibility for individuals to stay completely moneyless. The proposal got high resistance as well as a 6 votes with 0 resistance (see result). The proposal with least resistance was “Process proposal: How can yunity achieve its primary objective most quickly and stably?” which lead to the next SysCon with much less participation and the least resistance for “More Agility, stability and fun!” where money to enable people to fully concentrate on yunity for a stable and future-proof professional worldwide platform where not addressed anymore.

The same accounts for the need for a legal framework for the yunity platform and the project itself. Martin, Philip and me proposed in the SysCon “How should we register the yunity platform?” a very democratic proposal: “Every person from the core team can vote for their 7 favorite and most trusted board members” which again got several high resistances and lead to the next SysCon because “Further Solution” got the least resistance. In the new SysCon the participation dropped to 9 people and the result was “No legal structure for the "organisation" called yunity. individuals choose legal entity when needed”.

After the first results of the two SysCons “How should yunity handle money internally? And “How should we register the yunity platform?” I anticipated the results for the next SysCons, but wanted to wait for them to write to all of you this long text.

The results of the two SysCons show that we have a strong yunity movement which wants to stay moneyless and without a legal framework.

I can understand this perspective, since I was the living moneyless and pushing foodsharing for years without accepting money and creating this spirit of everything is possible even without a legal framework or money. But my experience of the last years helped me to change my perspective and I am glad that it happened now, where we are still in the beginning of this game changing and powerful project yunity.

Even so I tried to keep us all on the same page by sharing my insights, making very creative and open proposals, I had to accept that the majority of the active core members want to keep the adventures, happening character of the WuppDays. It became clear for me that even so the yunity movement wants to stick to a non legal framework without dealing with money, that yunity needs a clarification and differentiation of the movement and an organisation. This will help everyone who wants to contribute and participate in yunity to find his or her place in the environment he or she needs and feels the most comfortable with.

The yunity movement which is living already the unconditional sharing and contribution today will thrive and inspire others by showing with real actions, events like the WuppDays what it means to save food, sharing skills, saving other ressources, spaces, creating synergies with other initiatives, create new projects in the crowdsourcing spirit, take care of the internationalisation of the yunity and foodsaving movement. Maybe even a beta foodsaving/community website like planed in Weimar, a mid-term WuppSpace in Rotterdam and so much more.

The yunity organisation (association) will work in an professional and established way and will take care of the realization, development and maintenance of the yunity software, funding, administration and bureaucratic issues, PR, internships, European voluntary service etc. Furthermore the organisation can help the yunity movement in different situations either with money or a legal framework and in the future can also support individuals who today still do not need/want money to continue to contribute to yunity once their situation changes (and believe me the situation of individuals will change - it is just a question of time and then a question if someone wants to continue to contribute to yunity even being paid or to earn somewhere else the needed money).

By establishing this clarity between the yunity movement and the yunity organisation we will all benefit and it will help the software to be actualize faster and far more important safer and stable for the future in order to have the biggest possible positive impact on our world.

It was not easy to come to this conclusion and it took me very thoughtful days and nights, many long talks with people from the core team as well a huge variety of people from outside with experience. The people helped me with their knowledge and tipps a lot, since I was still so blind for the reality around us just until recently. I truly believe it will make yunity as a whole stronger and even more effective.

I am thankful that you read until the end of this long text and I am sorry that we could not talk about it in a personal way. I felt that transparency what happens in my head and in my heart as well as many other people who believe in the idea of setting up an association and starting to pay people for their contribution to yunity was urgent, since I also shared this different opinions which exist in the core team of yunity and my conclusions which I shared here with people from the foodsharing Orgateam. I still feel connected to the foodsharing community, orgateam and board and that after we all tried our best to move the software forward, we have not succeeded and this means virtually 0 progress from the software perspective for foodsharing.de for already 1,5 years.

Thank you for all the marvelous things you are doing, have done, will do and the amazingness which we created together! We will change the world with yunity - and we have started already! Lets continue and make yunity happen!

Yours truly with love Raphael