The West Indian and The Caribbean Experiences Network (WICEN): An Overview

Overview

The West Indian and Caribbean Experiences Network (WICEN) Project is a place-based Research to Practice Partnership (RPP) with home-office in Bloomfield Connecticut.  The aim of the WICEN partnerships is to advance exploration, understanding, articulation of, shared equity, and benefits from, the West Indian and Caribbean experiences (of place, of language, of quality-of-life situations, of mindsets, and of other manifestations) through education, technical training, management, research, and socioeconomic development in what Steve Case, former chairman of AOL Time Warner, called the “internet century.”  The initial partnership was established in 2021 between The Writery Inc, LLC, The Carna Resources Group, and The Education for Development and Support Network (EDSN) Foundation).

The aim of the WICEN partnerships is to advance exploration, understanding, articulation of, shared equity, and benefits from, the West Indian and Caribbean experiences (of place, of language, of quality-of-life situations, of mindsets, and of other manifestations) through education, technical training, management, research, and socioeconomic development in what Steve Case, former chairman of AOL Time Warner, called the “internet century.”

West Indies and Caribbean Have Long History with International Politics

The names West Indies and Caribbean are deeply rooted in the making of international politics and represent rich pedigrees in socioeconomic dramas that shape world history.  For example, the name West Indies is a monument to a geographical fallacy attributed to Christopher Columbus (among others) that this region was a strategic westward route from Spain to India.  The name Caribbean was an attempt to correct this international geography mistake.  For better or worse, consequential manifestations of this fallacy currently persist and are compounded by ensuing political serendipity.  WICEN presumes that the West Indian and the Caribbean experiences over the centuries are overlapping in many respects but are also distinct phenomena with different history, mental legacy, cultural meanings, challenges, and opportunities for the peoples whose lives and ambitions are influenced and shaped by this region.

WICEN Embraces Multiple Identities the Caribbean Region Inspires

The WICEN affirms and embraces the full range of overlapping complexities and distinct experiences that emanate from the region.  The WICEN leverages multiple identities and wide-ranging experiences this region inspires to manage challenges and explore opportunities.  When appropriate, Caribbean will be used to represent both the Caribbean and the West Indies as a single geographical region.  In keeping with this multiple identity embrace, potential participants in, and beneficiaries of, the WICEN are dispersed throughout neighborhood communities worldwide.  We hope you will find WICEN useful as a trusted space for engaging your local community in deep dialogues and trade-offs for living sustainably in a finite planet.

Repurpose Legacies of Mental Slavery into Trusted Community Engagements

While the WICEN aims to improve our understanding and manifestations of the Caribbean region’s history, WICEN’s focus is on the use of 21st century affordances to shape the region’s future in ways that empower, and inspire, small neighborhood groups of individuals to participate in place-based socioeconomic development that value participatory equity for the less powerful.  The vision of WICEN is to serve as a common agency for stimulation, transformation, and guidance to local neighborhood groups.  In this vision, where our technological ability to transcend distance affords unprecedented opportunities for deep dialogues, our aim is to leverage this ability to repurpose legacies of mental slavery into trusted shared interest communities of purposeful engagements.  Our hope is that these trusted and purposeful engagements will promote Research to Practice Partnerships (RPP), and visions of transformations that are not just incremental but revolutionary.

PlexLearning Removes Barriers to Quality-of-Life Developments

The WICEN project uses PlexLearning technology infrastructure to promote life-long continuous learning.  PlexLearning is a social construct for communication in digital societies.  It helps remove barriers, fill gaps, and create bridges, between formal education, informal learning, career management, professional interests, property stewardship (intellectual and physical), content creation, food security, and entrepreneurship while protecting the planet for equitable academic, workforce, economic, and quality of life developments.

Micro-Businesses Success Rate Increase with Research to Practice Partnerships

The WICEN platform makes Research to Practice Partnerships (RPP) accessible to local small Shared Interest Community (SIC) groups.  SIC micro-businesses success rate with RPPs are higher than if they were working separately.  The WICEN platform enables SIC groups, in partnerships with private, academic, and government sectors, to engage with their local communities around, among others, neighborhood journalism, place-based career incubators, and capacity building services that nurtures and showcase cultural experiences, entrepreneurial, professional, and technological competencies of local neighborhood communities of motivated individuals.

Thriving-In-Place is as Important as Having Success at Scale.

As members of the WICEN, local SIC groups and micro-businesses have voices and the means to formally engage in shared governance and local neighborhood community participation through different media formats (print, blogs portals, radio, video, publications) and coalesce around maters they view as important.  SIC micro-businesses groups are self-motivated by goals and issues that they view as important for them to thrive in-place (urban neighborhoods and rural communities).  WICEN brings capacity to achieving development goals, resolve issues that are unique to each SIC local situations, and helps to make thriving in-place at least as important as having success at scale.  WICEN presumes micro-businesses to be more than miniature corporations with unique functions, measurement of success, and infrastructure for sustainability.

Following Are Some of Products and Services the WICEN Platform Supports

• Comprehensive archival network that will compile and codify Caribbean and West Indian culture, traditions, experiences, and history, with focus inclusion of generally overlooked areas by records services including databases, journals, and magazines for academic, scholastic, government, and business applications.
• Coordinate engagement of Shared Interest Community (SIC) groups who epitomize and empathize with complexities of the West Indian and Caribbean experiences, be they native or non-native, to affirm, legitimize the wealth of historical knowledge, and preserve the large swath of wisdom that are maintained and transferred through oral tradition and are increasingly at risk of being lost across in the gaps between generations, emigrations, and social assimilations.
• WICEN directories: specialized supplements to local government vital records service (birth, deaths, marriages, etc.), updated profile of local civic groups and cultural organizations to help resolve issues where many have spent a lifetime of service to their local communities without a trace of their documented service, accumulated experience, dreams, ambitions, obituaries, biographies, or autobiographies.
• WICEN PlexLearning libraries: supplemental library services (original research and references) for SIC groups and micro-businesses to engage each other in trusted spaces with educational tools and economic opportunities afforded by the internet century that, in time, will “free their minds” to repurpose the legacies of mental slavery and support infrastructure over resisting changes to transform the familiar. Some of these tools and activities include experiential artifacts, academic networking, knowledge exchange, peer reviews, content, wealth, and career management tools, entrepreneurial philanthropy, and quality of life development opportunities.

Summary

In the internet century when distance is no longer a barrier to social engagement, rich continuous social dialogue, and sharing of ideas to make the world a better place, we believe everyone has stories worth sharing and ambitions of participating in shaping a brighter future.  The WICEN are here help.  Please contact us by completing this simple form.