Mike said yes. Here is what happens next.

The five moves (first 30 days)

1. The dinner ask: three questions, none of them money.

   (a) Does the caseload picture read true (Spanish-speaking surge, navigation load on caseworkers, seniors vs scams, ACP gap) — and is a measured waiting-room software pilot worth doing, or noise? (b) Who holds CCLI's and the diocese's mission-office and Caritas/CRS relationships, and will those doors open? (c) If a Global South node earns its evidence, would he and the diocese carry the story to Bishop Barres — blessing the sending, not a parking-lot box? You leave with answers and names, not a maybe. Owner: Jeff · output: track A go/no-go + the channel names

2. Track A, if validated: a 6-month software pilot inside one existing program.

   The Well/Primer stack on a cart in a Parish Social Ministry waiting room or senior-housing common room. No container, no solar, no construction, no diocesan property question. Measured on CCLI's numbers: caseworker minutes returned, clients reached who would not fill out a government form, senior scam-losses avoided, escalation-to-human counts. ~$25–50k philanthropy-funded; publish the result either way. Owner: Jeff + one CCLI program director · safe-environment + data posture inherited from the box design: nothing typed leaves the room

3. Track B, the thesis: place the container through the Church's own architecture.

   With the mission office and Caritas/CRS introductions: select one partner geography (Caritas member with an energy-access gap and an anchor parish/clinic/school), re-cost the node to local pricing (our US build $86–173k is the ceiling; mini-grid literature says grants cover 75–80% of capex at ~$8,500/kWp in-region), and stand up the sister-parish sponsorship: LI parishes fund and accompany a named community's node — build and burn-in on Long Island (vocational-ed partnership; real local jobs), bless it here, ship it there. Owner: Jeff + church-liaison workstream · the letter to Rome then travels WITH a Caritas partner and a bishop's blessing — the only version of that letter that gets read

4. Get one written turnkey quote.

   BoxPower-class containerized power block (no vendor publishes prices; ~$80–90k installed is the search-level anchor, fabrication "4–6 weeks" claimed). Two sizing options in the RFQ: code-light (≤20 kWh — below the NYS §1206 full li-ion trigger; covers program hours + modest outage support) or storm-strong (40–60 kWh, full UL 9540 + UL 9540A product listings required). The learning-first mission makes code-light viable — a real permitting simplification the resilience framing never allowed. Owner: Jeff · output: priced, listed, dated quote that replaces our two biggest search-only lines

5. Run the money-stack live checks.

   NY-Sun LI commercial block status ($/W and whether blocks are full); the LI storage incentive $/kWh (administered via PSEG-LI, not the statewide block); PSEG-LI Community Thrive (≤$10k, nonprofit bonus, closes Sep 30 2026). Known subtractions, do not model them: LI is NOT ICSA-eligible; Starlink has no nonprofit rate; FEMA BRIC (restored, $1B) is the cycle-two scale-up lane, not this node. Owner: Jeff · output: the real incentive stack under the philanthropic ask

6. Write the governance memo before the pad is poured.

   One page: parish council as governing body, the paid steward role (15–20 hr/wk), and the month-37 covenant — which institution pays operations in year 4. Every dead precedent in our research died of this omission; it goes in writing before hardware is ordered. Owner: Jeff + CCLI + parish · the letter to Rome quotes this discipline; the funder brief prices it

What it costs (verified 2026-07-14)

Compute honesty: a Jetson-class kiosk (≤60 W) is energetically free against a 12–16 kW array; an always-on RTX node (800–900 W from wall) is what reshapes the battery. We publish the energy budget; duty-cycled ≤1 kW compute is the design rule.

Where the container belongs (and where it doesn't)

Not Long Island. LI has grid, broadband, and buildings; the container's three superpowers are answers to their absence. Candidate deployment shapes, pending the Caritas introduction — each is a parish archetype from our research, not a commitment: a clinic-anchored village node (vaccine cold chain + CHW decision support), a school-anchored node (the Ghana-tutor evidence base, offline library), a market-town node (power + connectivity + trade knowledge). Selection follows the partner, not our map.

Long Island's four honest roles

Red lights & permitting (hardest first)

Reporting: what we publish to prove (or kill) scaling

Everything above goes into a public 18-month report, failures included — the deliverable that earns (or honestly forecloses) the pattern offer to Caritas and the dicastery. Independent evaluator is budgeted; we do not grade our own homework.

Operating plan (pilot phase » steady state)

Exceptions playbook (who moves, in order)

Pilot-phase intensity is deliberately ≫ steady state: the pilot's job is to burn down unknowns and write the runbook a second parish could pick up.

One node proves the commons. Three prove the network.

Staged, gated: fund node 1 now; nodes 2–3 release at the month-9 gate (thresholds published in advance: unique learners, return rate, corpus contributions, incident-free operation). Nodes 2–3 are cheaper (~$110k each: shared engineering, code-light sizing, runbook amortized). Program envelope: ~$600k to a 3-node network + 24-month federated report. The month-9 gate is real — if the commons doesn't earn its people, we publish that and stop.