what is the Alma Project?
The Alma Project is a fund.
Above all, the Alma Project is the project of organizing and growing resources over a vastly extended period of time. In its initial phase, the focus of this growth is financial: the project exists foremost to provide a framework for the sustained investiture of currencies into a cyclically expanding, collaboratively structured fund. Initial growth is seeded from member pledges and public investment; gradually, member-owned branch companies add layered and regularized revenue streams. Property holdings and non-fiat investments diversify and stabilize long-term growth, and public and private donations increase the capacity for specific initiatives. All these holdings, separately and in concert, leveraged through a transparent and regularly updated set of shareholder agreements and managed by a steering committee, provide the means for Project operations and an ever-growing pool of capital. Appropriately scaled and operated, the fund unlocks the capacity for institutional stability and longevity, and serves as the backbone for an autonomous and flexible source of civic power.
the alma project is a database.
If any organization is to take meaningful action in response to the myriad tangle of ecological problems confronting our planet, that organization’s structure and vantage must supercede political and jurisdictional boundaries, and have as its operational basis datasets that are holistic, verified and actionable. The Alma Project will provide a synthesis of informational resources, cross-linked, peer-reviewed and ever-expanding, that endeavors to provide the broadest and most complete understanding possible of our planet’s ecological conditions and the anthropogenic impacts thereupon.
the alma project is A PLATFORM FOR ACTIVISM.
Engineered to grow slowly, organically and eventually, exponentially, the project will have as its constituents a coalition of ordinary citizens, internationally distributed, politically unaffiliated and as otherwise diverse in identity and belief as the world itself, whose power to effect change in their societies will grow in direct proportion to the size of our movement and its accumulation of information and capital. Ultimately, it is a coalition that will wield influence over markets and demand obeisance from political parties; it will hold accountable institutions, corporations and nations. With a hierarchical structure rooted firmly in local communities and partnerships, but linked globally in intent, strategy and ambition, and with widespread resources in physical and digital realms, the project will be able to pursue both local and global strategies in the service of tilting our societies’ actions towards rationality, sustainability, and equity.
The alma project is a symbol.
Participation in the Alma Project is possible in many forms, but all of them require commitment, accountability and a measure of individual sacrifice. In a globalized world of incomprehensible complexity, whose problems are so vast, systemic and interconnected that no one human can alone implement meaningful change in the span of a single life, the necessity for truly global and multi-generational action is paramount. Every member, volunteer and donation supporting the Alma Project is a message, to every other human citizen, that hope is alive, that change is possible, and that solutions are within reach. Each pledge taken in support of the project will be verification that, in spite of the corrupt and inarticulate value systems manifested by the governments that control us and the corporations whose structures ensnare us, there yet exists the possibility for an alternative human ethical framework of reason and respect – and that we are not alone in wishing to see such a system implemented. Each order of magnitude by which we grow will provide not only the proof, but the means.
the alma project is a case study in sustainability.
As the Project grows, its financial resources will be redeployed in the generation of capital, the expansion of its operational base and the execution of strategic civic actions. But additionally, and constantly, the Project will also be engaged in the accumulation of property and the construction of physical resource centers. These nodes, located across the globe and staffed by Alma employees and volunteers, will each be a localized and unique application of sustainable principles in architecture, design, agriculture, ecology, and energy and resource management. Deeded under local legal jurisdictions but managed under a common Alma umbrella, they will constitute a financial investment portfolio of increasing value, an international land conservation trust, and the basis for all the Project’s physical operations. Used in part to generate income by such traditional methods as are locally possible, relevant and sustainably practicable, they will also serve as training and implementation centers for those skills, practices and technologies most essential to a non-exploitative human future. Here, off-grid systems will be developed, designs will be work-shopped, and tools and information will be stored. In concert and coordination, the Alma nodes will form a network of knowledge, resources and human capital, both locally specific and globally organized, that can be deployed in the service of disaster relief, humanitarian aid, environmental support, and ongoing education and collaboration with local communities. As a matter of course, these sites will be decentralized, increasingly off-grid and functionally autonomous, strategically located to withstand the short and long-term effects of climate change, and intrinsically prepared for the various infrastructural failures, health hazards, political upheavals and natural disasters whose scale and frequency are liable to increase over future decades and centuries.