RainbowGathering.eu is the result of the Common Effort of many siblings, who support the idea of a multi language website, aimed to build a plattform for news, views, visions and practices in and near the European Rainbow Family.
There are many possible ways you can contribute to this website.
If you are a native English speaker, you can proofread English language texts. Send your corrections or suggestions by clicking at the contact link under each article at this website. However it may be – bear in mind we are using as much as possible the British variant of English, en-GB.
Soon, we will make translations in other languages: German, French, Italian and Dutch. Are you native in one or a few of those languages? Offer your help or proofread already made translations. No doubt, automatic translations will help to speed up the translation process. However, at least 10% of such translations need to be corrected manually. Like this, you can summarise my experience in this context.
Are you good in visual design, drawing, photography and/or any other creativity? Contact us.
Do you have a feeling with HTML coding, WordPress, other digital languages and CMS systems? Or you want to learn and improve such skills? Join the RainbowGathering.eu Focalisers!
Is there any way you can help?
Please, reach out and join the Common Effort!
Do you have any suggestions? Please share them with us!
Disclaimer
no one has the right to speak on behalf of the Rainbow Family as a whole
For each article at this website RainbowGathering.eu, only it’s author is responsible. No individual or group has the right nor power to speak on behalf of the Rainbow Family as a whole. The “Rainbow Family of Living Light” is an informal world wide network without legal personality. At later versions of this website, more visions will be shared, on how the Rainbow Family functions.
Do you have any suggestions? Please, share them with us!
Published Common Effort articles
Beginning with British English, soon multilingual
For now, we start with a initial version of this website in British English – supported by spell checkers and proof readers in that specific variant of English.
This website is meant to be multilingual. The digital setup is designed in such a way, that an any number of languages can be added.
In the coming days and weeks, we will start with translations into other languages, that will be most urgent on the way to the 2025 European Rainbow Gathering in or near Belgium: French, German, Dutch and Italian.
Are you willing to help translating in some other language? By example Spanish, Portuguese, Czech or Polish? Please, contact us! Any other language or dialect ? We are looking forward for your contact and contribution!
This means in practice manually correcting about 10 to 20% of texts generated by different automatic translators. On the other hand, the use of such translation tools absolutely speeds up the translation process. However it may be – we soon need the help of people who are (nearly) native in one or a few of the languages German, French, Dutch and/or Italian. All of them do need a good understanding of English too.
Many Rainbow siblings speak Russian, Ukrainian or both languages. We prefer to get translations into both languages simultaneously. That’ s why, we encourage those who speak Russian, Ukrainian or both languages to work together.
Another thought: Over the years, the Israeli Rainbow Family has played an important role at European Rainbow Gatherings. This is a very good reason for a Hebrew version of this website. On the other, I am wondering wether an Arab version of this website should need to appear together with the Hebrew one. This is still an open question for us. Maybe, we can carefully and respectfully talk about this round the fire at the 2025 European Rainbow Gathering. A careful attitude is much more important then velocity in this context.
Suggestions and offers for help? Would love to see you become a valued contributor and focaliser of the Common Effort
Key features of the website RainbowGathering.eu
The website is going to be worked out in the latest version of WordPress, along with Oxygen. This is all open source software. It is running at the server of Christian, a Rainbow brother with an IT company. Roughly, the site looks like this
| Name | Function | |
| RainbowGathering.eu | New, views, visions and practices in and near the Rainbow Family | |
| Welcome Home | First page, home page. Welcome page. Links to new contributions elswhere at the site | |
| CircleLetter News | New developments and announcement in and around the Rainbow Family | Links to new contributions to CircleLetter News will also appear at Welcome Home |
| European Rainbow Gathering | Everything about the yearly European Rainbow Gathering | Links to new contributions to European Rainbow Gathering will also appear at Welcome Home |
| Visions | All basic information about Rainbow Gatherings – ‘Rainbow basics’, FAQ, hygiene, scouting, circles, consensus, etc. | Links to new contributions to Visions will also appear at Welcome Home |
| Common Effort | Calls for help and information about this website | Links to new contributions to Common Effort will also appear at Welcome Home |
Suggestions and offers for help? Please, share them with us
Communication at RainbowGathering.eu for those involved in scouting and content creation and development of this website
Some secure open source software gonna be used for communication at RainbowGathering.eu.
One channel is going to be available for each who is involved in the European Scouting Group that is coming into being on the way to the 2025 European Rainbow Gathering in or close to Belgium.
A second channel is going to be “Common Effort” – it is meant for each of those who are or want to get involved in working out this website.
For either of those two forums, the following principles apply – each subscription to it needs to be approved manually. It is not possible to automatically subscribe to it online.
Suggestions and offers for help? Please, contact us
What about invitations for the 2025 European Gathering?
What about the invitations for the 2025 European Gathering? Will we totally stick to the idea of personal invitations, via personal messages only? Or will we set up some mailing list with manual approval for each person who wishes to be subscribed? For now, those are still open questions. They need to be answered round the fire, by consensus, by the council of scouts for the 2025 European Gathering.
Already a few things are seemingly crystal clear.
NO invitation online, on open websites or social media. One of the 2024 Vision Council consensus decisions is this one:
Social media is no Rainbow.
During some years, it has been possible to get direct access to an invitation with all location info after sending a mail to a so-called autoresponder. In an automatic reply, a link came back with access to a zip file with the location details. From retrospective point of view, it was too easy to get location info in such a way.
What about invitations via RainbowForum.net?
On one hand, especially Rainbow elders are still used to getting invitations via that channel. I, Bas, am getting more and more complaints because it is not possible any more to get location info via there about the European Gathering.
On the other hand, there is a growing tendency to not publish any more location details at RainbowForum.net.
Motivation for this changed attitude – it is simply too easy to create an account there, after which you get access there. Additional motivation – the software platform at which RainbowForum.net is running, is seemingly out of date and obsolete.
Me personally, I understand both the Rainbow elders and others who attach to RainbowForum.net and those with hesitations about that platform. I feel, we need to offer some reasonable alternative instead of RainbowForum.net. My provisional proposal:
- at the European Scouting Council on the way to the 2025 European Gathering, we gonna get together a special circle who will work ideas aimed at working out some smart invitation policy.
- Let’ s consider working out a mailing list or something similar – only manually approved subscription possible.
- Each who will get involved in that special circle, will have a possibility to manually subscribe someone to that invitation mailing list.
- Each who would like to get subscribed to that mailing list, needs to answer a few questions:
Did you ever attend a Rainbow Gathering before?
If not, why would you like to come?
Is there any other connection between you and the Rainbow Family?
Suggestions and offers for help? Your contribution is highly welcomed!
Secure internal e-mail communication
Roughly, there are two kinds of mail addresses at the domain RainbowGathering.eu – personal and functional ones.
Functional mail addresses have to do with some administrative role at RainbowGathering.eu. Such a mail address can be shared and transferred from one focaliser to another one.
There are good reasons to give each involved sibling in RainbowGathering.eu the opportunity to get a mail address at the domain RainbowGathering.eu. However, careful reflection and planning is still necessary.
Whatever option we choose for, some secure open source mail software will be used.
Suggestions and offers for help? Please, share and support us
The circle who has worked out this first version of RainbowGathering.eu
The Focalisers:
- Bas Roufs for the content of this website
- Fox for IT development
- White Wind for IT support
- Christian Bubenheim for hosting, IT support and great working conditions
Bas Roufs carefully takes into account feedback of Christian, White Wind, Fox and several others while working out this draft.
Please, join the Focalisers!