What if...

What if when you’re walking down your street, or any street, you could press a button on your phone and automatically see what that community cared about? Or what important changes were being proposed, schools closed, pubs opened, building works planned?

And perhaps, if you felt so inclined, you could respond meaningfully to the proposals, confident that you were being listened to. Or that you could find like-minded people on your street to organise with, play sport with or even – who knows? – fall in love with.

Whether you had five seconds, five minutes or five hours, there would be a way for you to get involved, on your own terms.

In the future our streets will stop being bricks and mortar hiding community members from one another. Our streets will be revealed as communities of passionate individuals: students, parents, consultants, builders, even politicians. All currently separated from one another by their busy lives and the collapse of traditional civil society; they will once more come together to argue, organise and agree how we manage our communities and country.

Right now...

Izwe.com is a social networking website that enables people to have their voices heard on issues that matter to them, responding to institution led consultations in a top-down fashion, but with functionality that enables them to raise their own issues with the council, bottom-up. Like any good conversation, it is two-way.

We're operating in nine localities from Summer 2010.