Background
In the autumn of 2014 thoughts of an organization, which main focus was on environmental solutions, started to emerge. Henning Jon Grini, longstanding editor and founder of the Norwegian magazine and publisher «Ildsjelen», saw a larger need to promote environmental solutions rather than focusing too much on the environmental problems. It is inevitable that mankind struggles with significant environmental problems. It was and still is, a lot of issues connected to the environmental problems that need to be brought to light through the media. But we feel that good innovations, ideas, and solutions etc. does not get as much attention as they deserve.
The awareness around climate and environmental problems, and the fact that man has a large influence on this are more or less accepted today. We, therefore, mean that the time has come for a change of focus towards solutions. At first, we wanted to include more aspects of human life in addition to the environment, but we felt that it could be too comprehensive since this is not a project we should run ourselves. We wanted this to be state-run or run by someone/company with capacity and resources.
The purpose with what we then called «environmental-circle», was to gather, coordinate and share good solutions in the shape of ideas, projects, visions, research, innovations etc. within the environment, in a web portal everybody could use and contribute to. The «environmental-circle» was shaped as a circle with sectors. The ideas should be placed according to where they belonged in the «environmental-circle». The main circle was divided into sectors with different themes. Then the sectors should be divided into smaller circles corresponding with the themes. Each sector should have a number indicating new ideas, as is common when receiving new mails on the cell phone. This system should be flexible and the possibility to add new themes and circles, as well as change them, should be present.
A prospect was made with logo, many circles with different themes divided into sectors and examples of solutions. An early version of the prospect was sent to the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment in late 2014, without any response. An English version was prepared in the summer of 2015, adjusted and sent to three, large American companies (Apple, Google, and Tesla). They all have sufficient resources to perform the idea in practice. We never heard anything from them. We then evaluated the possibility of starting the «environmental-circle» on our own. A prospect with a request for funding of a couple of million Norwegian kroner was in December 2015, sent to a few chosen investors, funds and foundations in Norway, while the great environmental conference took place in Paris. It was also sent to chosen media.
Environmental Circle
How the IdeaBank for the environment should have worked.
New solutions and ideas to solving environmental problems should be placed in the sector which it belongs to. The main circle had different sectors with different environmental themes. The sectors were then divided into smaller circles corresponding to the themes.
Click on the picture to enlarge.
We didn’t receive enough response on the project, partly because it is not commercial. We then decided to start the organization on our own and to change the whole concept. The advantage of this was that we were given the opportunity to create a base for the organization without risking that is was «diluted» by other participants. This way the organization keeps more of its essence.
We walked away from consistently using circles in the design, something that was both costly and complicated to achieve. We went for a simpler system. We also extended the concept to not only include the environment, but also include all the other aspects of human life, based on Barbara Marx Hubbard’s «The Wheel of Cocreation», which include the following sectors: Environment, Education, Economics, Science, Spirituality, Art, Infrastructure, Relations, Justice, Health, Media, Governance.
At the same time, we meant that it could be an advantage to both find and inform about the real causes of our crises and problems, therefore finding the core causes. Only when we had identified the core causes, could we also understand why they had occurred and then change them.
On the 1st of February 2016, we started to rearrange the project into an organization we called Sirkelen –
What we do today
- Two portals: Our most important focus is to present and inform about innovations, ideas, and solutions in an Innovation portal, where everyone can submit suggestions the whole world can benefit from. Our other portal, the Inspiration portal, will inform about positive news, uplifting stuff, and focus on a new worldview.
- Books: We also inform about the real causes of our crises and problems, as well as what we can do to change them. We see this matter of such importance so that we do not risk repeating our problems without having solved them at their core. That was also why we wrote the book (Towards a brighter future for You, Mankind and Mother Earth). We have published another book in 2021 (Message from the future: WE MADE IT!). This book is an attempt to describe the future how it might become if we take the right decisions today.
- Through our web page, we inform about the earth and what we can learn from nature.
- We shall have different
pictures and text available and ready to be spread on social media. - We arrange lectures about
a world in balance and that we are heading towards a brighter future. - We write articles for the media etc.
Future plans
What we can do in the future depends entirely on the funding and donations.
Eventually, we are considering to publish a video or a series of videos, issue an annual price, create campaigns, etc. Further, we are considering arranging conferences. We also aim to publish articles internationally. We consider publishing more books. We also aim to cooperate with other organizations whenever that is applicable.