Smart Community Manifesto / Charter

The smart community charter outlines the mission of a community and ethos which underpins the smart community council.   The charter is the opening statement on the community management plan and is reviewed (and if required) updated each year.  

The plan and containing charter are published each year for review and all community stakeholders are invited to (virtually) sign the plan to illustrate support for its contents.  

Vision statement 

Through collaboration & effective management, make Clarecastle a better place to live, work and play.

Goals 

• Share: Seek to share ideas, experience with people inside and outside the community.
• Inclusive: All locals, individuals/organisations are invited to contribute.
• Respectful: All user input shall be respectful of ages, groups and individuals. eTownz will assist in curation where required.
• Seeding Ideas & Risk Taking: Being bold and embracing innovation requires a level of  risk taking, the community will aim to support lots of different projects at an early stage to help build new ideas that can be repeated easily. 
• Logical, Repeatable Structure: The initiative aims to provide structure and clarity to community networking.
• Administrative: The initiative aims to provide administrative and cooperative support to existing local development stakeholders. 

The platform is not: 

• Political: no political campaigning but welcome’s politicians
• Tolerate any form of abuse or bullying (Report feature on all interactions and will be reviewed by eTownz curation team)
• Evidence Based Approach: Don’t have the information needed to make a decision? What are we putting in place so we have that information in future?
• Cluster/Network Collaborate: The initiative aims to join the dots in local and regional development and as such, action teams are encouraged to collaborate / share and partner with other action teams in their community and region.
• Worldview, SDG’s: Community Goals will be cognisant and align with Sustainable Development Goals.
• Openness & Communications: Will seek to have clear, open, informative and engaging communication with the community.
• Metrics & Feedback Loops: The initiative aims to develop the capacity to understand the challenges and goals within a community by collecting hard data where possible and also regularly inviting feedback from local stakeholders.
• Multi – Goals Orientated:  Recognise that a community is made up of lots of different people and stakeholders and therefore the community will rarely have just one goal, but instead many goals which represent the diversity within the community, this multi goal approach is embraced to ensure everyone feels welcome to participate.
• Enjoyment: The aim is to reduce the boring unproductive parts of local development, and let those involved enjoy the fun parts of contributing to the community.
• Complimentary Skills & Similar Interests: The initiative understands it is the generous time offered by local volunteers which underpins a smart community. At all times the project will seek to bring together people with similar interests and complimentary skills and empower them to take on projects to develop the country
• Engaged Research: The initiative, where possible will align with the principals of engaged research, linking academics with communities.
• Conflict / Curated: Difference of opinion is welcome, there is no room here for direct conflict, if serious conflict arises it should be moved aside and dealt with outside the structure of the project.
• Independent: The program should try to maintain its independence within the community acting as a means to coordinate local action. It should not replace the role of existing organisations.
• Summation: The initiative will be underpinned at all times by the mission of making the community a better place to live, work and play in a sustainable and inclusive manner 

Commitments 

We the undersigned, which includes local residents, business, clubs and public service providers supportive the vision, aims and commitments outlined above.