SICA Community Platform

The Vision

"A safe space to find information, start conversations, projects, sharing our work, ideas, and vision. Giving and finding mutual support and inspiration. Learning from each other, together developing a sense of meaning and belonging."

SICA is creating an online community platform as a safe space for active Subud members around the world: discovering, developing and expressing our talents through our latihan and work. Our aim with this community platform is to also support building a lively and sustainable community and culture within the "Subud wings”. 

We envision the Subud Village Community platform to …

… continue the conversation after the different events

… get to know each other better, form a real community

… encourage and support members to develop their talents

… offer a learning environment for personal growth

… have helpers and mentors available for support

… bring together people & talents

… share inspiration and expertise

… co-create new events and activities

… safely talk and share experiences about Subud, latihan, testing, etc.

… discuss needs (SICA, members) and develop solutions

… find in-depth information on different themes

… discover real needs from members

… reveal needs and applications we don’t see yet

URGENCY TO ACT

The worldwide lockdown due to the Covid-19 Pandemic accelerated the process within the

SICA team to

- build a “web hub” (open and visible to all) to make all online SICA events worldwide

visible in one place (so many members organizing online events and live streamings).

- customize and provide a community platform to communicate and interact and

fulfill at least some of the points above (vision).

THE PROCESS

We started out with the idea to provide the community platform for SICA alone. Talking to

different members around the world, we realized quite soon this would exclude many Subud

members who either felt closer to another wing or didn’t have an attachment to any of the

Subud wings.

The „Subud Village” from the World Congress in Freiburg is our modeling idea:

a shared space for all wings to serve, support and encourage members to put the latihan into

action, to show projects, and share experiences. And not to forget: to find inspiration and joy

working together out of our inner feelings and connectedness.

The idea emerged of opening up our community platform to all Subud members

beyond SICA. For all those who seek to “put the latihan into practice and seek interaction,

connectivity, and dialogue about it.

WHERE WE STAND RIGHT NOW

We have started the testing version of our own “Social community platform“ on

Mightynetworks. Due to the urgency, we felt to act fast and opted for Mightynetworks as the

platform of choice for now. The decision was driven by the easy customization, compliance with

European data security, and last but not least being low cost compared to the services we get.

Depending on the growth and development of the community itself as well as the real needs

we are planning to assess, we aim to move in the near future to another platform at a certain

still to be defined point along the timeline.

Some Considerations that are guiding our process (in a nutshell)

1. Build the community on an easy to use platform. It is the people interacting –

not the technology that is central. A community is much more than a group and

doesn’t show itself overnight, it’s a process and needs work and dedication.

2. Currently testing the community platform to also be able to assess the real need

and features for a worldwide social platform/community platform (together with all

wing teams and the WSA executive)

3. SICA is committing itself as a driving force to organize this process and manage

the community building and development process. We would like to join forces and

coordinate with the other Subud wing teams as well as the WSA executive.

4. We will develop a membership and sponsorship plan as well as a strategy and

business plan to be able to afford a more sophisticated platform/community

platform with more features as well as being multilingual. We have identified two

besides Mightynetworks to be suitable, the additional functionalities also make a

difference in the price though.

5. The downside from Mightynetworks currently is the availability in English only.

We will be able to manage different languages with some “hacks” but this is not

ideal and seen as temporary. Mightynetworks is currently announcing the addition

of other language functionalities – but without a commitment on a timeline. When

deciding on the final platform, the multilingual feature will be central to our

decision.

6. The building and management of the SICA community is a work in progress.

Some fruits can already be observed with the activities in the community

www.sica-community.mn.co as well as on our internet web-hub

www.sica-subud.org

On our community platform, we are developing a space called CAMPUS.

It will feature different spaces to offer courses (online and offline) as well as a learning

environment with libraries (including Bapak’s and Ibu Rahayu’s Talks connected to putting the

latihan into action) and other valuable literature as well as mentors and teachers to share

expertise and support.

Current state

The community platform is currently in testing mode.  If you would like to be part of the "testing team", drop us a line at community@subud-sica.org and we will send you an invite link. 

In our Blog and Newsletter, we will inform you about any new developments.

With love,

Ismanah Schulze-Vorberg & the SICA International Team

#Community