It's not a fad at all. Bear in mind that our Integrated Community Development Plan is the fruit of 17 years of hard work. We had to go through a process of trial and error to come up with a coherent plan. One Small Town is real. There are already local initiatives in Lebanon and South Africa, with results on the ground. Other local initiatives are being set up around the world. We also have tools that are unique in the world, such as the OST Platform, to manage and coordinate all these projects on the international stage. Thanks to our contribution-based approach, our businesses will have virtually zero labour costs. This makes us very competitive, and we hope to shake up major players in the worlds of industry, retail, technology and more, by gradually nibbling away at their market share. We also have some huge projects that are going to change the face of the world, such as the Seed Bank. This project alone will challenge the virtual monopoly of a handful of seed multinationals. So One Small Town is not about to go away. On the contrary, the revolution is underway. More and more people are joining us every day and we hope to spread contributionism around the world through a domino effect.

Every One Small Town member who contributes 3 hours a week has free access to everything that our businesses and cooperatives produce: food or any other goods and services, energy and electricity, technology, Infinity tokens, etc. This, of course, becomes accessible once the business or cooperative has gone into production, i.e. after it has been up and running for some time. Of course, all this becomes accessible once the company or cooperative has reached the production stage, i.e. after the time needed to launch it. Structures are of course in place to ensure that these benefits are accessible in a reasonable way and that no one can abuse the system. That said, these benefits are not limited to the activity to which you contribute. They extend to everything our businesses and cooperatives produce or provide in the way of goods and services. In everything we do, we make sure we can meet the needs of our members, and we voluntarily produce 3 times more, to sell this surplus on the free market at unbeatable prices (because of contributionism). Profits and dividends are then distributed to our members and also used to implement our new projects.

We are not creating communities that live without money. Although the free exchange of what is produced or supplied within the One Small Town members and activities is part of the initiative, we use money for the development of our initiatives or projects. We even call for and include investments in our projects. Through contributionism, we multiply the benefits of our businesses. We use the tools of enslavement (and money is one of them) as tools of liberation; the difference being that it's not for individual profit, but for collective and equal profit. Slowly but surely, our model is demonstrating and aims to demonstrate that, fundamentally: money does nothing, people do everything. Ideally, we intend to pursue this model until it spreads again and again around the world, and becomes the new preferred reference until the old unequal and destructive model becomes completely obsolete.As far as money is concerned, it will also become obsolete in a One Small Town society because, between members, it has no use.

This frequent question (and misunderstanding) highlights the fact that many people do not know what communism actually is. Communism in the former USSR or elsewhere invaded the entire country concerned and took control of all property, all land, all farms, while killing tens of millions of people. Contributionism is, of course, absolutely not a new form of communism. Communism is a form of dictatorship (historically brutal) and totalitarianism imposing a way of life on everyone, taking away everyone's natural rights, all under total government control, without the consent of the people. Communism has an army, used primarily against the people. Business and property are all controlled by a single party. Communism is therefore the radical opposite and even the most extreme antithesis of what contributionism is, and what One Small Town is. Under a communist model, for example, you have no telecommunication or information-sharing rights (which are all controlled). Contributionism, on the other hand, offers everyone the opportunity to contribute all their talents, and encourages them to develop them, to create, to invent, to share, to free themselves from any form of self-control. Communism acts in secret with regard to its population. In the contributionist model, the entire modus operandi is designed to be totally transparent with and for each of its members. Why is this? Because business and roles of responsibility in One Small Town communities are truly under the control of all One Small Town members. No one can gain power and control over the others. Bad actors can easily be identified and removed from the group.

That's a pretty astounding comment. It shows how messed up we can be as a species and how confused we've become about who we are as human beings. What does it mean to be human? What is our human nature? It is, of course, more difficult to understand the answer to these questions living in the middle of the system we were born into. If you were born in the suburbs of Los Angeles, or in Africa, or in rural India, or in a small village or a big city in China, Iran or Russia, you will have a very different perspective on life and human nature. All this will have a profound effect on the reliability of your point of view, or on how you perceive the world around you, or on what you believe to be true or false.

We needed a mechanism to verify that OST members contribute their 3 hours per week. Crediting cryptographic tokens on a membership card with a QR code seemed like the easiest way to do it, and so the token was born! The INFINITY token is therefore proof of contribution of time – proof that the OST member contributed their 3 hours. All OST members are required to contribute 3 hours of labour per week, for which they receive 1 INFINITY token for every 3-hours of time contributed. As you understand, the INFINITY token is underpinned by true human activity and sweat equity - not just fresh air. The INFINITY Token is the official ONE SMALL TOWN (OST) community token shared with all OST members who contribute 3-hours of time towards their businesses and community activities. We require members to contribute a minimum of 3 hours a week, but they also have a choice to contribute up to 3 hours per day. As we grow the ONE SMALL TOWN projects around the world, more and more people will be contributing 3 hours per week or more. We expect to sign up between 200 members per town, to several thousand members per town. In Kuruman, South Africa, we expect to sign up 70,000 members. In Ras El Matn, Lebanon, we expect 5000 members. Soon there will be hundreds of thousands of people contributing millions of hours of FREE labour towards their own businesses and community upliftment projects.

Members who have contributed a minimum of 3 hours a week may exchange one of their OST Infinity Tokens for a basket of goods, at the end of each month at the OST Store (OST Superstore). OST Infinity Tokens that are exchanged for a basket will be held by the OST Store and used in whichever appropriate way necessary, for the maintenance of the OST Store and the benefit of the OST community. The Basket of Goods is a fractional representation and compilation of all food and other items manufactured by the OST initiative. Each contributing member is eligible to the same Basket of Goods as all other members, every month. Once they have received their monthly Basket of Goods, members can also shop at the OST Store, using fiat money, as they would at any other store, to benefit from our low prices. Compliant members automatically qualify for a discount at the OST Store. All sales at the OST Store will be done in FIAT currency for now, but it will be possible to use INFINITY tokens in the future. Finally, members can sell their INFINITY tokens in FIAT currency on the OST Platform. They choose for themselves a price for selling the tokens and sell them on the OST platform to a willing buyer. No one can crash the value of the token by dumping them on the trading platform as there is always a minimum price for INFINITY token sales.

It is simple. Go to the bottom of the page, click the button Become a member and follow the instructions.

To start your local One Small Town, you have to become a member first. If there is an ambassador in your country, contact him/her for more information. In countries without ambassadors, you can apply to become one. To start a local One Small Town, you will need to make a business plan for a community project and upload it on the OST Platform, If and when your plan gets approved, you can start executing it by contributing with other members.