The website now features a new design, more publications and presentations as well as a collection of articles, sound bites and TV recordings (in English and German) about the BIG campaign and the BIG pilot project from 2009 to 2011.
It is online at: www.bignam.org
ReCivitas is a nonprofit organization in Brazil that has established a local basic income in the village of Quatinga Velho with funding provided entirely by private donations. The coverage of Recivitas’s basic income expanded by six people in April 2011. A total of 83 people in Quatinga Velho now receive a basic income of R$30,00 (Brazilian Reals) each. The project has been gradually growing since October 2008, when it made the first basic income payment of R$30 Brazil to 27 people.
Four babies have been born since the project began. The organizers say that these are the first four people to receive a BIG “from the first day of life.” The organizers hope soon to cover the entire village and eventually to expand the project to other villages—inside and outside of Brazil. The organizers have a unique model in which they donate their time and money for the overhead of the project so that 100 percent of a private donation goes directly to providing a basic income to someone in Quatinga Velho.
The organizers are in the process of chartering the “Basic Income Guarantee Social Bank,” which will be able to fund the basic income with investments rather than donations. The bank will function as an investment bank, but its profits will fund a basic income instead of being given to shareholders and executives. They have already attracted investments of R$500,000 from person-to-person appeals through their social network, and they are hoping to increase the number of investments by ten fold in the near future. The organizers hope to use some of the first revenue from the BIG Social Bank to support the BIG Pilot project in Otjivero, Namibia (see above), and then to create Basic Income Guarantees in more communities around the world.
If you would like to donate to ReCivitas or if you are interested in learning more about the BIG Social Bank, please contact the organizers at:
ReCivitas <recivitas@gmail.com>
For more information see their website at:
https://www.recivitas.org.br/
CHOI, Gwang-Eun (2011), Basic Income for Everyone: An Aspiring Project Shaking the Earth of the 21st Century, Seoul: Jong-Cheol Park Publishing Co., January 2011, 256 pages, ISBN: 978-89-85022-56-9 94330.
This book is the first introductory work on a basic income in Korea. Guy Standing, honorary co-president of BIEN and Nam-Hoon Kang, president of BIKN wrote their foreword especially for it.
It contains five chapters. The 1st chapter covers diverse experiences concerning a basic income such as the BI Law in Brazil, the BIG pilot project in Namibia, the PFD in Alaska, and the various ongoing disputes in Germany. The 2nd chapter introduces the theoretical and historical backgrounds of a basic income. The 3rd chapter discusses the Korean situation and is trying to find the way to implement a basic income in Korea. The 4th chapter argues that the new Korean disability pension be converted and integrated into a basic income. The 5th chapter consists of the two interviews with Guy Standing and Ozawa Shuji, president of BIJN, and author’s report on the 13th BIEN congress.
Gwang-Eun Choi is a committee member of BIKN and a former representative of the Socialist Party.
The National Union for Namibian Workers (NUNW) announced in early July that it would withdraw from the Basic Income Grant Coalition. The Union’s Secretary General said that NUNW did not see income distribution, as per the BIG model, as a viable way to address poverty in the country. Many editorials followed with renewed support for BIG. For example, the Windhoek Observer, a Namibian Weekly, devoted a recent editorial to the current BIG debate in Namibia. It compares President Pohamba’s remarks that BIG would encourage laziness to the famous apocryphal saying of the French Queen Marie Antoinette, “Let them eat cake.” Evidence from the recent BIG pilot project in Namibia is consistent with the contrary hypothesis that in places with deep poverty, cash grants stimulate people to work more by relieving them from the immediate needs that often keep them from engaging in productive activity.
Links to recent articles about BIG in Namibia are below.
“NUNW withdraws from BIG Coalition,” Richard Swartbooi, Namibian Broadcasting Company:
https://www.nbc.com.na/article.php?id=2404
“Let them Eat Cake,” Editorial, The Windhoek Observer:
https://basisinkomen.nl/wp/buitenlands-nieuws/president-namibia-laat-ze-maar-cake-eten/
“The NUNW and the Basic Income Grant,” Herbert Jauch, the Namibian:
https://www.namibian.com.na/news/full-story/archive/2010/july/article/labour-in-crisis-the-nunw-and-the-basic-income-grant/
“BIG: Time to separate fact from fiction,” by Lucy Edwards, May 28, New Era Online, 2010:
https://www.newera.com.na/article.php?articleid=11177
“Namibia: Social justice and solidarity – think ‘BIG,’” Henning Melber, Pambazuka News, Issue 485, June 10, 2010:
https://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/65081
“Academic justifies BIG,” Irene !Hoaës, New Era Online, June 4, 2010:
https://www.newera.com.na/article.php?articleid=11293
Isobel Frye, the director of studies at the Poverty and Inequality Institute (a nonprofit research institute based in Johannesburg) pointed to the results of the Namibian basic income pilot project as evidence that a BIG could work in South Africa.
In an editorial in the Sowetan, Frye wrote, “An actual experience of how bold thinking can indeed overcome inequities can be found in the two- year-old basic income grant pilot scheme in a village near Windhoek, Namibia. … The results have been incredible. From a desolate settlement of farm workers unfairly evicted after years of work by surrounding farmers, the village has grown into a community. Malnutrition rates as measured by the clinic have fallen from 42percent of children under 5 – to zero cases. Gardens bloom, children go to school and goats multiply.”
Frye wrote that income security is not only a tool for moving people out of poverty, but argued that it should be the central plank to a life of dignity for which so many fought. Frye criticized the government for a lack of action on poverty, and concluded by asking, “How long are we going to refuse to extend basic income security to South Africans with as much right to a hot meal as you or I?”
Frye’s editorial, “Basic income pilot shows the way…” is online at:
https://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1116620
