Re: The vision thing -- what good is it?
From: Craig Ragland (craigraglandgmail.com)
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 07:46:05 -0700 (PDT)
Mariana, I'm so excited for you and your community. You may be starting a
wonderful new journey... perhaps your community's second journey - one that
starts as an adolescent, rather than a babe?

Songaia recently completed a series of monthly 4 hour planning workshops.
The first few were internally facilitated, then we brought in Gordon Harper,
a ToP expert (Technology of Participation) for the last 4. There has been
tremendous participation, including community members who are not often
present for our day-to-day gatherings (we eat together 5 meals a week, etc).

Our focus has been around redefining our relationships to our greater
neighborhood, which now includes New Earth Song and Life Song Commons, on
two adjoining properties. How might we share our abundance? How do multiple
centers of initiative relate, collaborate, and pull together to grow
goodness?

At this past Saturday's fundraising banquet, I shared a little about our
neighborhood "expansion" as part of my "swan song" speech at the conference.
Like Ann, I expect to get a little glimpse of what was offered online... it
was just a few slides, with a lot of heartful words, which I'm not sure were
recorded. Raines?

At the conference, there were numerous examples of communities that are
doing important work today that has been built on their "platforms" of a
strong, stable, high-functioning community. We got the most about this from
Liz Walker for Ecovillage at Ithaca, which inherrantly has a larger context.

Hopefully, others will share more about this and other aspects of the
conference. Right now, I need to focus on some related content for the next
issue of Cohousing Now.

I do expect to share a lot more about the developing "eco-neighborhood" that
is growing around Songaia after I retire in the coming weeks.

In community,

Craig

On Jun 20, 2011 10:12 AM, "Mariana Almeida" <missmgrrl [at] yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> We have a mature coho community of about 15 years duration in Berkeley,
Calif.
>
> There have been calls as of late to define (or rather re-define) our
vision and
> values as a community.
>
> Have any of you done this in a mature, basically well-functioning
community?
> What should we consider in the discussion? What are the things
(categories) we
> need to define?
>
>
> I especially struggle with "what will doing this arduous group exercise
actually
> give us"? I would like for the outcome, the articulation of this vision,
to help
> us in everyday decision-making as we move forward with necessary future
> projects.
>
>
> And we have some important things upcoming: succession planning (when
units turn
> over), how much self-management we want to continue to do, investing in
> environmental sustainability (solar, water catchment), how to add people
as
> associate members, etc. Some guiding principles will help us with these.
>
>
> If nothing else, if you folks have some solid examples of vision
statements and
> how these assisted your community in a set of decisions, that would be
swell.
> Again, this is about a mature community, not one in the forming stages. (I
think
> the vision statement in a new community is more about attraction of
folks.)
>
> Yours in community at the beginning of summer,
> Mariana
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