The Caux Palace

This May I participated at the kick-off workshop of the Care Economy together with very different and very interesting people from all over the world bringing all sorts of knowledge to the table. The workshop took place in a wonderfull setting at the Caux Palace, in the small mountain city Caux, near the Geneva Lake in Schwitzerland. Before going there I was stunned by the magnificent pictures of the Caux Palace. I talked to my mother about my stay, and she was quite skeptical why an alledgly highly humanitarian and alturistic conference would be hosted at such a financial non-inclusive and remote place? Wasen’t that against the whole point of the workshop?

I eventually found out the Caux Palace was runned by the initiative for change foundation, and that this place had served as a very historic location for peace making for almost a century. I also discovered participants from remote places in less fortunate economic situations had their costs covered by the Mustardseed Trust.

Sharing vs Caring

If one might assosciate the actual implementation of the Sharing Economy with big multi-sided platforms such as Facebook, Uber & Airbnb, the Caring Economy in its essence is supposed to represent the opposite.

That is abundance over scarticity. Collaboration over competition.

The below vision statement are the words of Béla Hatvany, who during his long live have made numerous innovations, including the touch-screen, CD-ROM and database building block of the internet. Béla is today with his family supporting the Care Economy financially and intellectually via the Mustardseed Trust and other organisations.

Towards a new social contract

The far vision is that all of humanity work together.

1. We now know we must not till the earth. The soil can become ever more fertile and yield abundantly if we start to use our current agricultural understandings world wide.
2. We now know we must store and use the massive amounts of energy the sun gives us each day. We now know how to do this.
3. We know we must have a money system that is a currency and not a store of value, that flows abundantly to enable us produce and use what is needed to restore our earth.
4. We know that we must change from our current domination culture to a collaborative partnership culture that is true to our fundamental nature. We must find our way out of the domination culture that we have allowed to enslave us all.

These things require a change in heart, from fear of scarcity to caring. They require that the millions of change makers world-wide work together to evolve us from an economy of ‘growth’ to an economy of care. We have set up Mustardseed Trust to do what it can to help to enable these changes to happen.