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A history of P-CED

posted on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 08:51 AM

People-Centered was an expression coined by David Korten in his efforts to raise awareness of what happens "When Corporations Rule The World" and P-CED came about as a practical approach for an alternative economic order.

Realising that we were on the threshold of the Information Age it advocated for a change of thinking in traditional approaches to both charity and business made feasible by a world of information sharing and accessibility. The concept was first pitched at President Clinton in 1996 and distributed freely as a whitepaper in the spirit of opensource.

It came after decades of effort invested in macroeconomic approaches to development, advocating a targeted microeconomic approach built around information accessibility.

A decade later we see these ideas reflected in the aims of WSIS, the creation of community interest companies and networks such as this.

By 1998 the opportunity for a pilot project arose. US government had invested large sums in what was know as the Defense Enterprise Fund, intended to promote arms reduction in the former Soviet Union. It was to be the greatest investment in organised crime ever made, under the management of Harvard university.

The Tomsk Initiative began in 2000 as a targeted approach to poverty reduction, investing 10 million dollars to distribute 14,000 small business loans and spin off around 35 social projects. More than 80 % of those who benefited were women, typically single mothers , those at greatest disadvantage in post-Soviet society. All investment was repaid by 2005 and the microfinance bank established on a moral collateral lending model continued to flourish.

Work then began in Crimea, with a proposal for the repatriated Islamic Tatar community under rising ethnic tensions. It proposed the same approach in deploying $40m arguing that this returnable investment might be compared against the equivalent investment of 40 non-returnable Tomahawk Cruise missiles. Peace we said was cheaper, and considerably more enjoyable.

From 2003 onward we've been developing a strategy plan for the whole of Ukraine. This time the target is childcare reform. and as before a plan which will return all investment. We argue that by leaving children in institutional care, 90% who have families which can't afford to keep them is short sighted, in that empowering the families would cost much less than the state cost of maintaining the status quo without even considering the implications of those that find their way into exploitation, despair and drug addiction with consequent effects in the rate of HIV infection.

We propose then the greatest people-centered objective of all, the value of a family.

Latest news:

The P-CED 'Marshall Plan' for Ukraine

en.for-ua.com/analytics/2007/08/06/121201.html

Comments

Tommy Hutchinson

Tuesday, June 19, 2007 10:31 AM

Really interesting resume. Thanks!