We serve the vision of a world in which place-based communities
become increasingly thriving and resilient. Rather than relying on the
government to authorize and drive change from the top down, we believe
that the shift to a global wisdom culture must also be initiated on the
ground through the efforts of ordinary citizens within their home
communities and cities.
Thousands of innovative approaches to community growth have been
developed and successfully applied in real communities to bring the
diverse voices of the community together to produce wise, collective
visions and actions. The fundamental goal of these approaches is not to
achieve an ideal state for a community but to develop an ongoing process
through which a community can constantly recreate itself by mobilizing
its own resources and collective wisdom in response to the challenges
and opportunities it faces.
Leading community thinkers across civic, corporate, and social
organizations consistently say that an integral, whole-systems approach
is an essential factor in developing long-lasting community wellbeing.
They consistently point to the interior dimension of relationship and
culture as the primary social development need. Many outer tangible
solutions to our ecosocial issues already exist. The inner cultural will
and commitment to use them does not.
What community wisdom systems are strengthening the people and places
where we live today? The regional and national organization and network
hubs listed in the Movements section are a treasure-trove of useful
information. We offer summaries of local ecosocial approaches here.
Transformative Co-leadership: Stewardship for Today and Tomorrow
In our interdependent society, co-creating a healthy community
requires committed participation from across the “megacommunity” of the
major organizational sectors: civic, social, and corporate.
Multi-stakeholder community councils, whole-systems planning and
analysis, and collaborative organization and funding structures are
examples of geographic community leadership tools for both today and
tomorrow.
Community stewardship today tends to be concentrated in specific
sectors or domains in a community, often operating rather
independently. More integral community stewardship systems are emerging,
with new forms of partnerships, networks, coalitions, and alliances
working across traditional grassroots and organization boundaries to
address complex eco-social issues. Key elements are common spaces for
community dialogue and action and an open inclusive attitude. Leading
resources include the books Megacommunities, Abundant Community, the
reports in EcoSocial Design Strategies, and the following approaches
below.
Art and Soul: Celebrating Beauty, Peace, and Circle of Life
Artists, healers, and faith and spiritual leaders tend the inner
heart of the community. They provide spaces and places for people to
simply be together in a meaningful way, to focus on the values and
beliefs that are important to them and to develop and heal their
relationships. Community groups embrace beauty, peace, and diversity
through a broad range of creative expression in music, art, and theatre.
Artistic expressions such as community theater productions or local
talent shows, can also be memorable ways to knit the fabric of
community. and through a wide variety of gathering centers honoring many
faiths and beliefs. They maintain the rhythmic heartbeat of the
community through honoring life and community passages with ceremonies
and rituals such as weddings, funerals, and group prayer and meditation.
Leading resources include interfaith organizations such as the United
Religions Initiative (www.uri.org),
community art projects such as quilting bees, and local/global peace
campaigns such as the UN International Day of Peace
(internationaldayofpeace.org). Community healing circles are a local
approach.
Community Healing Circles
In indigenous cultures, the primary role of the shaman was to
maintain the delicate balance between the human and nonhuman worlds
through rituals and trance journey work, for the health and harmony of
the community. Through their rituals the shamans would remind the human
community to honor the sacred dimension of the greater Earth Community
of which the humans were just one part. In the modern secular West, we
have largely forgotten this perspective or often reject it as primitive
superstition. Yet the consequences of our failure to respect the
intrinsic worth and sacredness of the nonhuman worlds have, of course,
become alarmingly clear in the reports of the mass extinction of
species, vast deforestation, climate change, and other deeply troubling
dimensions of the global ecological crisis. Furthermore, there is now
considerable research from the field of consciousness studies that
strongly suggests that our prayers, meditations, and intentions do have
nonlocal healing effects (Nicol, 2010).
Accordingly, we believe that convening community-healing circles that
explicitly honor the sacred dimension of ourselves, our communities,
and our natural environment is a vital element of a truly integral
approach to community development. These circles could involve
shamanistic healing ceremonies, collective prayer and/or meditation, or
any other form of spiritual practice that resonates with the group and
is directed toward healing and blessing the community at large. Like
many things in life, the most important elements are the intention you
bring to the work and the consistency of your practice.
Leading resources include the book Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy and Molly Brown (1998) as well as organizations Deep Ecology.org (www.deep-ecology.org) and Permanent Peace (www.permanentpeace.org).
Education and Communication: Learning and Getting Along
The more we listen and learn from each other about our communities
and the broader world we live in, the better we understand and
appreciate our own place within the community. This awareness can bring
comfort and satisfaction from a greater sense of belonging and more
capacity to make effective change where we live. Educating ourselves
about our local communities at history and cultural centers, the local
Sierra Club (www.sierraclub.org)
or land trust, and other uniquely local learning opportunities is a
fabulous way to have fun, meet our neighbors, and learn useful skills.
Learning about the local/regional/global connection through the media
(such as YES! And National Geographic magazines, public television and
radio) and seminars (ShiftNetwork.org, dialogue)
The opportunity and challenge of today is learning together in
community so that we can think together in community. Participating in
classes and gatherings together as community members and leaders to
explore and discuss local ecosocial systems is a necessary ingredient in
developing the trust and the expertise for wise local stewardship.
Meeting in smaller circles about resilience/security (www.localcircles.org), sustainability (greendrinks.org) or any issue is equally important in building neighborhood trust and expertise.
Bringing people closer together in community also inevitably involves
encountering our differences—different political views, educational
backgrounds, communication styles, cultural assumptions, and so on. Our
communities are healthy to the extent that they can allow these
differences and integrate them in a higher creative synthesis. Easier
said than done! Many of us have painful associations with conflict and
tend to avoid it where possible. Others of us may tend to jump right in
but later wish we didn’t. Furthermore, many of us have had disheartening
experiences of our current legal and political approaches to resolving
conflict, which, because of their adversarial frameworks, often
exacerbate the tensions between the people involved, involve a huge
amount of time and money, and leave lasting rips in the fabric of
community. Yet with the right kind of “container” (and plenty of courage
and commitment), sitting in the fire of conflict can bring communities
closer together and unleash tremendous creative energy. The following
innovative approaches are examples of intelligent frameworks for dealing
with conflict and differences within communities.
Convening: Hosting Community Conversations
Bringing community members together for respectful, inclusive
conversations is fundamental to building healthy communities. Effective
conversations can take the more free-wheeling form of a community salon
or the more deliberate and meditative form of a talking council or
circle in the spirit of indigenous wisdom traditions. Leading resources
include the book Change Handbook and Open Collaboration and the websites
for the World Café (www.theworldcafe.com), Commonway (www.commonway.org), Open Space (www.openspaceworld.org), Conversation Café (www.conversationcafe.org), Future Search (www.futuresearch.net), Change Handbook
Community mediation
Community mediation involves the use of trained community volunteers
to provide mediation services as an alternative to the judicial system.
Community mediation offers many advantages over traditional legal
approaches to conflict resolution, such as:
- It provides a forum for dispute resolution at the earliest stage of the conflict;
- It uses mediators who reflect the diversity of the communities served; and
- It is committed to providing services to clients regardless of their ability to pay.
According to the National Association for Community Mediation (n.d.),
a typical community mediation program has 1.5 equivalent full-time
staff, 30 active mediators, and a $40,000/annum budget. Many community
mediation centers have well established programs for schools that help
to create a culture of nonviolent conflict resolution among the children
and teachers.
Leading resources include the book Peace Skills: Manual for Community Mediators by Kraybill (2001) as well as the National Association for Community Mediation (www.nafcm.org).
Health and Recreation: Wellness, Play, and Celebration
Public health and wellness is a vital component of a thriving
community. Local governments and schools play an important role in
community health, with faith and other organizations helping to create a
safety net for people in need. Many familiar nonprofit institutions
such as the YMCA.org, UnitedWay.org, and the Lions Club and newer
emerging networks such as care2.org and communitycommonrs.org include
health as a core part of their mission. Individual health providers and
support groups such as twelve-step fellowships for addiction recovery
provide
Social groups, sports leagues, parks and recreation programs provide
group settings for fun and play, a necessary spice of life. Community
fairs, festivals, and parties like Green Festivals
(www.greenfestivals.org), EarthDance (www.earthdancenetwork.com), and Burning Man (www.burningman.com)
are enjoyable celebrations which build connections between community
members in relaxed, informal settings. Creative approaches such as
InterPlay (www.interplay.org) have been developed that work with art and/or play to intentionally foster community transformation at a deep level.
Giving and Rights: Caring and Sharing Services
Volunteers, donors, and community service civic and social
organizations tend the outer heart of community. They operate from a
sense of community caring, ethics or values and dedicate their time and
money to community welfare. The poverty-fighting network Community
Action Partnership (www.communityactionpartnership.com), community foundation network Council on Foundations (www.cof.com),
Rotary Clubs (rotary.org), are examples of large local/national network
serving community needs. Service efforts usually focus on a particular
aspect of community support, but by helping one part of a community,
they contribute to the whole. The opportunity and challenge today is to
develop megacommunity (corporate/social/civic) awareness and
collaboration to leverage the talents and capacity of all our community
resources. Social wellbeing can no longer be sufficiently funded by
nonprofit donations or taxes alone. Crowdfunding (eg. www.indiegogo.org) is one example of a new collective funding mechanism.
Equitable human rights of North Americans across race, religion,
gender, and economics, is a social justice imperative championed by
thrivingresilience movements across the spectrum, from established
institutional networks like the United Way to more recent phenomenons
like the Occupy movement. The concept of intrinsic rights for local
communities is also emerging in America. Communities and cities are
adopting charters of community ethics including the Earth Charter
(www.earthcharter.org) and the Charter for Compassion
(charterforcompassion.org). Some communities are creating codes of
ethics and legal sovereignty to steward their local commons resources
such as water rights.
Governance and Design: Social Contracts & Ecosocial Technologies
Governance and design systems involve the agreements we make to live
together in a specific place and the information and technologies we use
to design those agreements. Governance includes the legislative,
executive, and judicial aspects of government: public policy advocacy,
creation, engagement, and enforcement. The civic renewal movement works
to establish neutral forums for public deliberation on critical
community issues, increased public involvement in the development of
regional community indicators, and more collaborative approaches to
local and regional planning processes.
Ecosocial design systems include information systems, research and
development, and analysis tools and indicators required to understand
local community ecosocial systems. Design systems originate from action
research institutes like the PostCarbon Institute (www.postcarbon.org) or Sustainability Institute (www.sustainabilityinstitute.org)
and literally thousands of universities across the country, corporate
products like GoogleEarth (www.googleearth.com), and nonprofit efforts
like regional analysis tools from BALLE (www.livingeconomies.org) and
Ecotrust (www.ecotrust.org).
Here is a sampling of the latest interesting approaches to systemic governance and design.
Community Democracy
Tom Atlee (n.d.) and others have argued persuasively that our current
democratic processes need to evolve to reflect the whole systems
worldview emerging from advances in both the natural and social sciences
over the past century and to make our democracies more truly
representative of the voice of the people. As Atlee says, truly
participatory democracies that tap into the collective intelligence of
the people would do more than measure opinion polls or simple majority
votes. They would devise processes that, firstly, built the capacity of
the whole community or society to reflect on itself and, secondly,
elicited the collective wisdom of the whole for the benefit the whole.
Innovative democratic approaches that invite a deeper level of
participation from ordinary citizens in the governance of their
communities include citizen deliberative councils, wisdom councils, and
stewardship councils.
Leading resources include the books Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All by Tom Atlee (2002) Civic Revolutionaries: Igniting the Passion for Change in America’s Communities by Henton, Melville, and Walesh (2004), and the websites for citizen deliberative councils (http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-CDCs.html), the Center for Wise Democracy (www.wisedemocracy.org), America Speaks (www.americaspeaks.org), and the Democracy Collaborative (www.democracycollaborative.org), and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (www.deliberative-democracy.net).
Restorative justice
Restorative justice is an umbrella term for community-based
approaches to criminal matters that emphasize repairing the harm caused
by the crime. In a restorative justice circle, victims and offenders
meet face to face, along with key members of their communities and a
skilled facilitator, to address what happened in the crime. Victims are
thus given an opportunity to express their pain, and to feel heard and
understood. Offenders are given the chance to realize the full impact of
their crime and to make amends. Both victims and offenders tend to rate
this process a “highly satisfactory” way to deal with crime. Since
1989, New Zealand has made restorative justice processes the hub of its
juvenile justice system (Restorative Justice Online, n.d.).
Leading resources include The Little Book of Restorative Justice by Howard Zehr (2002) as well as organizations Restorative Justice Online (www.restorativejustice.org) and Centre for Restorative Justice (www.sfu.ca/crj).
Asset Mapping
Many recent approaches to community development challenge the
traditional focus on identifying a community’s needs and argue instead
for the benefits of mapping a community’s assets. Mapping assets helps
to connect people and resources within a community, stimulates the local
economy, and provides a great foundation for community visioning or
strategic planning processes. Furthermore, many communities have used an
asset-mapping process as a springboard to develop their own Quality of
Life indicators, another innovative way for a community to know itself
better and to track its progress by its own standards.
Leading resources include the book Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets by Kretzmann and McKnight (1997) and the organizations Integral City (www.integralcity.com), Sustainable Seattle (www.sustainableseattle.org), and Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (www.livingeconomies.org).
Necessities and Exchange: Secure, Sustainable Stuff
Necessities and exchange systems concern the tangible practical stuff
we people in communities need to live our daily lives. Necessities
refers to the food and water supplies, air, land, shelter, clothing,
energy, emergency medicine and services, and biodiversity we need to
survive and thrive: the must-have abundant resources in a thriving,
resilient society. Exchange involves the things we trade to fulfill our
fundamental needs and the infrastructure systems we use to exchange
them: transportation, business, finance, etc.
Leading resources include books Go Local by Michael Shuman
and Sustainable World Sourcebook by Sustainable World Coalition and
websites onthecommons.org, resilience.org, shareable.org, and
greenamerica.or
