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Since I devoted myself to starting Creative Equals as an organization, not a day goes by where I’m not mulling over the best way to execute our mission for the greatest impact. As with starting any charitable organization, it is really important that those involved seriously take a look at their motives. As I stated in my first post, my idea for this organization started as a means to scratch my own itch: I’ve always wanted a place to advance my own projects while collaborating with interesting people, and I’ve always wanted to start my own business. I felt comforted in my motives originally because it seemed that many coworking projects started out of the same self-satisfaction. It wasn’t until recently that I began to question whether or not such self-servicing was really okay. I’ve always believed that the “me too” attitude driving the exponential development of social networking sites and web 2.0 toys is completely flooding the market (“dot com” crash 2.0?) so the last thing I wanted to be was another person starting a coworking project only because I think its a cool thing to do. Thus, I was on the hunt for ways to make Creative Equals bigger than just me, and everyone knows that “bigger” in this day and age really means “global”. While riding this train of thought, I arrived one interesting question: Is there a need for coworking in the global emerging middle-class?

When I started thinking about how I could extend my coworking efforts globally, naturally I started to brainstorm about how I could place coworking facilities in the poorest regions of Africa, India, and South America.

Again, I was being self-serving.

Firstly, the last thing an impoverished region of any developing country/continent needs is a coworking facility. Sorry, but with things like clean water, basic education, and nutritional food standing as a luxury, a coworking project would be nothing more than a peculiar and unnecessary indulgence to those people. Though I don’t mean to condemn the efforts the western world has taken in recent times to provide aide to the poorest corners of the world, I think it’s important to say that “Save Africa!” has gotten a little trendy; many individuals are jumping on the bandwagon simply because its popular and it makes them feel good.

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In fact, I’d dare to say that there are too many efforts trying to provide resources to the impoverished world. I think a lot of vanity organizations (*gasp*) have gotten into the mix, and with the economy lessening the amount of grants and gifts available to any non-profit, these “feel good” efforts are draining resources from established organizations who are actually doing real work.

So the question is, where is work not being done on the global scene, and where can Creative Equals help? In my humble research, it seems that the emerging middle-class has become the redheaded step-child to the gravely poor. This is not to say that gravely poor communities don’t deserve the global concern and attention that they’ve garnered over the last few years–they most certainly do. What I am saying, is that if our goal is to elevate the world’s poor to more humane living conditions also known as “the middle-class”, the who is there to ensure that the new middle-class doesn’t slip back into poverty? If the recent American recession is any indication, losing your financial footing is all too easy. All it takes is one round of layoffs, one foreclosure, and one repossession to send average, everyday Americans out of their homes an literally on to the street. The same holds true for the rest of the world; perhaps that recipe for homelessness is even easier. This is where I think coworking and Creative Equals in particular, can help. My whole mission with this organization revolves around individual sustainability and creativity so logically, I think Creative Equals can find work with global artisan groups, the fair trade community, small businesses, and entrepreneurs around the world to help them continue the dream that the world spends billions of dollars helping the poorest of the poor attain.

For example, art and craft-making has long since been a viable mode of commerce for nearly every country on this planet. Coworking facilities can be of particular use to global artist not just as a space for them to produce their actual wares, but rather as a means for artisans to manage their own enterprises through things like tracking sales on a computer or setting up retail space online. While I have to admit that the community aspect of coworking may not be so novel in places like Nigeria or Bangledesh since these countries have yet to develope a penchant for isolation in the manner that most Americans have (i.e. they don’t need “online social networks” just to reach out to people), the “together is better” aspect of coworking is undeniably great for promoting entrepreneurship as even competitors can work side by side if it increases their bottom line.

The best part of helping the emerging middle-class, is it enables communities to help their poor themselves. Though foreign aid is absolutely helping people in places like Malawi and Uganda, the best gift anyone can give someone is independence over their own lives. A trend of successful, sustainable entrepreneurship can do just that for any country.

As stated in the about page, I started this blog to serve as a vehicle to promote my proposed non-profit. I wanted a clearly defined place to track my progress as I try my hand at this, while learning more about other peripheral nonprofits and movements. As for the proposed non-profit in question, all I knew was that I wanted to (1) rent out a lofty space, (2) fill it with a bunch of really creative, artsy people, and (3) have everyone learn the principles of entrepreneurship so that they can become successful off of the projects that they work on in the space. Because I’m serious about my project, I researched incessantly only to see this term crop up over and over again:

Coworking.

Defined as “cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents,” coworking is apparently a movement that has made strides in the US and abroad over the last couple of years. Coworking executions in LA, Philly, San Fransisco, and even Columbus, OH prove that, above all, the concept of coworking is undeniably cool.

I couldn’t help but notice, however, that much of the information I found on coworking came from “wikis”, twitter, or some other Web 2.0 tool. Furthermore, the actual offline executions of said movement were typically made by quintessentially t-shirted and flip-flopped, young, white males. In other words, coworking as a movement seems to passively be dominated by geek culture.

This may be a little controversial to say, but this unsettles me for a few reasons.

Whether purveyors care to admit or not, geek culture is not at all inclusive. Thanks to Chris Messina, I don’t have to elaborate on this notion, but I wouldn’t anyway because I think anyone who casually follows internet and Web 2.0 trends can understand the growing lack of diversity for themselves. At any rate, the unsettling part is that a homogeneous, subtly exclusive culture stands to be the driving force behind a movement heralded for its use of “community”. And here I am, a 20 year old black girl, attending a historically black university, living in a city known for its predominately black population, trying to start an organization that will be a part of that movement.

Before sitting down and actually evaluating all of this, I was gung-ho to immerse myself as deep into the coworking movement as I could just to make a name for myself and hopefully get some support for my organization. I created twitter profiles, I installed blog widgets, I edited wikis, I linked, I posted, and finally I realized…this is not who I am, nor what I want my organization to be about. I am a smart girl, and I know I can learn anything relatively quickly, but this constant dependency on web tools just to get a message across has never been my personality. I like web 2.0 because it is clever and fun at times, but when it gets down to the nitty gritty, community building is best done in real life. In fact, I find it extremely perplexing that people would rather twitter for hours on end, hoping someone will twitter back with support for their endeavor, instead of just walking up to someone on the street and striking up a conversation. Furthermore, rallying support through web 2.0 mediums like twitter and wikis effectively insures that the only people included in your project are people who (a) know what those things are and (b) are comfortable using them. In other words, think of all the fantastically creative and worthwhile people who are effectively excluded from the coworking movement because they either aren’t tech-savvy or they just prefer real-life interaction.

Many ethinc communities, including African-American and Hispanic cultures, are rooted in real-life interaction. This is not to say that African-Americans (especially young ones) aren’t versed in the ways of the web, but we can’t gloss over how integral offline connection has been to ethnic people. Think of the cultural foundation of African-American churches…how important our music is to us…why Hip-Hop is so pervasive…our culture is based on community building. Therefore, I can’t pretend its not a problem to see a community movement such as coworking feature virtually nothing but white people into tech/geek stuff.

I wanted to sturcture my attempt at coworking as a non-profit because I want to use coworking as a means to an end–not the end itself. Though I know they’ve probably never considered this, one non-profit organization that has executed everything I’m talking about perfectly is Words Beats and Life, Inc. I’ve had a personal relationship with WBL after volunteering and working with them since I came to DC three years ago, and their ability to build a commited, diverse community without too much help from the web is legendary. At best, I’d say WBL routinely relies on email, facebook, and occassionally YouTube. Though their mission most certainly does not revolve around “coworking” the way that other organizations do, WBL indirectly “coworks” by providing incubator space and “teach-in” conferences…all with the intention of getting a creative, diverse group of people to collaborate for the greater good. And best of all, they tangibly impact all types of people…something I wish more coworking projects would make a serious attempt to do.

Last December, my friends and I were approached by Black Entertainment Television last year to do a full-out marketing and promotional plan for a new show they were rolling out called Harlem Heights. Originally, the BET Exec who gave us the shot thought that we were just some college kids and probably weren’t going to develop anything ground-breaking, or at least nothing that they’d be interested in using. Being the bright and creative young people that we are, we proceeded to come up with a marketing plan and proposal that was “better than the stuff we get from some professionals,” according to the BET Exec and his team (your can view our proposal here). From that point on, we thought we had really hit it big. BET called us all throughout the Christmas holiday requesting reference letters, a scope of work, and a proposed budget for implementing our plan over a 12-week period. Needless to say, the job they were asking us to do was worth hundreds of thousands of dollar and we were salivating; as college kids, we had never stood to make that much money at one time. It was like a dream come true…until it became a nightmare. Once we furnished BET with everything they asked for, their team suddenly became hesitant when the time came to sign the dotted line. For a myriad of reasons including “lack of corporate experience” (our experience was with other college and grassroots promotions at that time), the deal was suddenly yanked off the table as BET expressed that they were going to explore other options. As one can imagine, the experience was crushing – not just because we lost our chance at a significant amount of money, but because we lacked so many resources prior to landing the deal, yet struggled to put something together anyway. We had no office to prepare all of our materials; everything we did was a product of my living room and Kinko’s. We had no network of business mentors to help us negotiate a deal; we had naively thought that the strength of our creativity would speak for itself.

One of the first reasons I’m starting CE is because I am my own cause. What my BET anecdote explains is that in the world of entrepreneurship, creativity is crucial but it is not enough. Artists need physical space and resources devoted to exploring the business behind their art if they truly seek to build a successful livelihood from what they do. By “artist”, I mean a creative person, and by “creative person”, I mean a person having a good imagination or original ideas. CE is just as much for a graphic designer as it is for an accountant with a new idea.

The idea of providing low-cost communal space to a group of people is not new; in fact, I draw great inspiration from organizations like:

Citizen Space in San Fransisco

The Hive Coop in Denver

and…

Conjunctured in Austin

While I look to these ventures as a great lead to follow, I felt it important to start a new organization separate from the aforementioned because our missions are fundamentally a little different. The above projects (and many others like them) do what they do because they want to provide a social solution to the isolation and productivity issues incurred by individuals who commonly work from home. It is then worth noting, that many of these individuals are already make a living from their work. Creative Equals is different because we hope to provide a social solution to the individual who is currently not sustained by their work. Many of the individuals we target either moonlight or work second jobs in order to make ends meet while they work on their artistic passions. Creative Equals not only wants to give our community a social space to work on their projects, we want to teach them enough entrepreneurial savvy so that they can make their projects work for them.

For this reason, I felt it imperative to structure CE as a non-profit. Our mission is about helping men and women learn to fish, not reaping all of the fish for ourselves. If you want to fish with us, please, please, please drop us a note at creativeequalsinc@gmail.com or simply leave a comment below. If you really want to help, visit our Fundable page to make a donation.