RE: How do the committees work in your community?
From: Rob Sandelin (Floriferousclassic.msn.com)
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 22:07:41 -0500
One of the behaviors that in my opinion is a mistake, is when communities get 
into the measuring of contributions activity. In my observation it is much 
better to affirm and celebrate accomplishments and contributions than nag and 
degrade non-contributions. In the end, is the person who spends 20 hours 
planning the commonhouse more important than a person who, three years after 
you move in, spends hours with the children teaching them self asteem and how 
to read?

The person who has little interest in being a real estate developer, and so 
contributes little to those tasks, may be the person who enjoys organizing 
group rituals, or filing, or bookkeeping, or window washing, etc.  Cohousing 
groups often expect that all members are supposed to really care about the 
water system design and this can actually drive away very good potential 
members. I have seen whole groups spend 3 hours of large group time working on 
land development issues where 2/3rds of the whole group do not care one whit. 
What a waste of human capital.

Encourage people to follow their joys, and your community will be much more 
successfull. And rule #6 of successful communities is: When its your turn to 
clean the toilets, sing and make it fun for yourself. Mary Poppins was 
absolutely right, the dirt jobs can be transformed when you make them fun.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood
Just a spoon full of sugar,... uh organic fructose extract, makes the medicine 
go down...

Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.