A lot of us have powerful things to teach and share. What if we created in our local communities systems where we teach other the knowledge we each have - sustainablity, somatics, spirituality, community, facilitation, local currencies etc. These systems would in effect be a kind of grassroots localised university.
One can then set down some guidelines about what these universities follow, and other communities can replicate these universities. This self-replication is similar to how the transition town movement spreads. There a number of guidelines that if you fit you can then also become a transition town. What you do in your town is then posted to a website and other towns can learn from your town.
So a grassroots open university could have something like these guidelines
1. must have a minimum of 7 people leading different courses
2. have a minimum of 20 hours a month of courses offered
3. course content must be things that are good for the planet, good for people, good for community
4. courses are participatory(not just listening to lectures) and have an action-learning component.
There can be a grassroots university website which then posts what each community is teaching. So each local university learns from all the other universities in the network things they could do to work better, teach better, spread word about itself better etc.
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These grassroots universities would be synergestic with the town transition movement. The universities could teach a lot of the paradigms, know-how, sustainability knowledge that is need to help towns make the transition.