Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: starting up - what to do first?

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

If the same people show up to the second meeting, you might want to start
doing some getting to know each other kind of work. If you are going to
succeed, you are going to have to build enough sense of community with these
people that you trust each other with tens of thousands of dollars of each
others money. Strangers don't do this, friends and collaborators do. One
strategy I heard from a successful group in California is that they started
doing potluck dinners almost immediately. There was an educational session
before the dinner, the dinner was purely social. For the educational session
they used chapters in Chris Hansons Cohousing handbook, and they also used
some of the stuff on the Intentional Communities Resource Pages.

Somehow you need to get people so excited about this group and its project
that they will invest lots of time and money. Building social connections,
which is what cohousing is all about, is a great way to start.

I would disagree with Elizabeth that you should even think about land at
this point. You don't have any kind of structure or commitment or community
yet to move on it. People are not likely going to walk in the door and put
in a large investment and commitment. You will want to build up to that
point however. The Cohousing handbook has some good advice about how to
setup a group.

Rob Sandelin
South Snohomish County at the headwaters of Ricci Creek
Sky Valley Environments  <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous [at] msn.com


-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of timnabby [at] juno.com
Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2003 2:06 PM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: [C-L]_starting up - what to do first?




Hi!

We've started a cohousing group in NJ, (our second meeting is tomorrow) and
I'm trying to figure out what we should be doing now, and what we should be
waiting to do until after we reach some sort of critical mass, so I thought
I'd ask how each of your started.

We have done some flyers, and advertised it to friends and acquaintances,
but although there is a lot of work to do to get this going, we don't really
know where to start.

Does it make sense to create mission/vision statements at this point?
Does it make sense to go to county planning meetings and talk to the
planners about cohousing when we don't even know what county we're
interested in, or how long it will be until we have enough serious interest
to decide?

Thanks,
Abby


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