Cohousing-L Mailing List: community retreats

[Rebecca Reid (rreid]

At Piobneer Valley we have a retrewat every year in November, and have had 
since before we built. We don't go off site; we have it in the commonhouse. 
It is the onlyu event all yeaer that just about everyone comes to.  We start 
Friday night and end Sunday after lunch, and have our meals together all 
weekend. It is a regular line item in our budget.
Friday night is a ritual parade, a slide show that shows the community 
during the past year, and sometimes hanging out by the fir afterwards. 
Saturday and Sunday mornings have been all kinds of things from hired 
facilitators on consensus process, to a whimsical exploration of how tro 
spend our money, to life histories, to projecting what we want our community 
to be like in 5 or 10 years.  This year we may tackle the question of 
emotional support and conflict resolution in the community, since our 
Community Support team has faded out.
Saturday afternoon we do outdoor projects and hikes and games.  There is a 
special kids program Saturday and Syunday mornings, usually crafts or 
theater or something.
It is very successful in recommitting us to eawch other and to our lives 
together (which of course does not last very long after, but makes a 
difference anyway).
Each year it is different.  Each year it is planned by mostly different 
people.  Write me privately and I can give you lots more detail
Rebecca Reid
Pioneer Valley


> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:22:25 -0700
> From: "Sally Wright" <shwright [at] sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: [C-L]_ community-wide retreats
> To: "Cohousing-L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Message-ID: <00ca01c9019a$0a08ccb0$6401a8c0@R108807>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> To Existing Communities:
> If you have held community-wide retreats, we'd like to hear from you!
> Some questions:
> - Did you go off-site?  If you didn't go off-site, how did you create an
> environment that feels special?
> - Where did funds come from? Individual contributions? Community funding? 
> A
> combination?
> - What specific topics have been most successful? (Note: we have no 
> specific
> problems to focus on, but would like to deepen the community experience)
> - What did you do to attract high attendance?
> - Did you use outside facilitators?  Or if you used internal facilitators,
> what are some suggestions?
> - How did you incorporate kids in your program?
> - Do you hold them annually?
> - What hasn't worked?
>
> Our seven-year-old community has never held an official retreat, although
> we've had spectacular annual camping trips where typically half the 
> members
> attend. To build on these successes, we're considering offering a
> community-wide retreat. We'd love to learn from others' experiences!
>
> Sally
> Pleasant Hill Cohousing
> Pleasant Hill, CA
>
> shwright_at_sbcglobal.net
> 925   288   1666
>
>
>
> >


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