Disaster Stories
The empacta story was not always a story of success. In fact, the way has been quite rocky. Here, a short overview on our biggest failures.
The botched sociological survey
After our succesful conference in Gorée, we convinced two talented scholars that we could do a world wide sociological review among auditors. The idea was to have an overview on informal practices of clients, while the sheer mass of interviews should give sufficient anonimity. We concluded NDAs with all participants and prepared together with the scholars the questionaires. We invited the scholars to our meetings, in order to establish a level of trust into the scholars. But then the scholars lost the trust that we will mobilize sufficient funds. So the survey stranded. A pity! So much invested and no outcome!
The ghosted community currency
Since the very beginning of empacta, we used our internal community currency: Members could do something good for the association and the board could grant them EQU (empacta equivalent of volunteer work), which they could use to pay their membership fee. However, when we made an attempt to make the EQU electronic, we had not the resources to convince the members to use the electronic purse. Thus, the ambitious project failed. Lesson learned: it is not the software, that is the solution, but establishing new habits. So many hours of work, and final all in vain!
The orphaned solidarity fund
´The idea was good and had a lot of support: Members would pay in a small amount and we would then use the funds in case of emergencies. When our member from Ukraine was evacuated in the first days of the assault on her country, we paid out. But then we could not find a volunteer who would administer the fund. So the good idea simply died because of missing energy.