01 one voice

This is one person.

They live in Balaji Layout, Bengaluru. On VoiceReport they go by Quiet Firefly.

VoiceReport asks an open question, and anyone can answer by speaking, in any language, for sixty seconds. Quiet Firefly used theirs to say:

“Synergy between organizations is an effective way to respond to El Niño.”

One resident, one minute, one workable idea about a very large problem. Keep an eye on this dot.

Scroll to step back

02 one question

Here are 263 more.

Each dot is a voice. These 263 all answered a single question, opened by Atmashakti Trust: What is being lost? They spoke about food, forest and farming life.

Every answer is transcribed, translated and gathered into what a community collectively thinks. Quiet Firefly is still here, in the middle, wearing a thin ring.

03 rooms

Now add the rooms.

Green dots are people who turned up in person. About 5,000 of them, over five-plus years and tens of events: citizen juries, multispecies hackathons, participatory exhibitions, wicked sprints.

In a citizen jury, ordinary people sit in judgement of policies made for them. Experts present; citizens question, weigh the evidence and decide. As Socratus puts it, “an expert brings something important into the room, but expertise doesn’t confer ownership of the decision.”

04 everyone so far

18,481

Now add every voice.

• 5,000people in rooms, roughly
• 13,481voices on VoiceReport
• =18,481people and voices reached

A few people may be in both colours, so read this as people and voices reached, which is a slightly humbler thing than a headcount.

Not drawn here: Wystem, a knowledge commons of the social sector, with 472 organisations across 10 sectors and 233 signals.

Socratus began in 2019. This is the picture so far.

05 pull back

India is 1.4 billion people.

From here, six years of work is one dot again.

18,481 people and voices (about 5,000 in rooms, 13,481 on VoiceReport) out of 1.4 billion is about one in 75,000. You may need to lean in to find it.

The empty space is the campaign.

06 the ask

This one is you.

An empty ring, right beside the dot. Until now Socratus has been funded by grants. This is its first public campaign, and you are the public.

Nobody on this page is waiting to be rescued. People and their communities already have the wisdom to address most of the problems they face. What they need is the tools and the spaces, and that is the part a gift can help with.

Where Socratus wants to take this

• Millions of people with agency, through VoiceReport, LOKA and Wystem.
• Thousands of villages where people become public problem solvers.
• Tens of thousands of young people solving human-nature coexistence.

That is a great deal of empty space. It fills in one ring at a time.