Local Communities Project
A small group for local leaders
“The small group is the unit of transformation”
Ordinary people finding their way, day by day
A small group for people who:
- Want to build local community
- See their own participation as key
- Are concerned about social control affecting or inhibiting local connection.
- Recognize that personal responsibility and accountability are needed
- Are willing to risk emotional vulnerability
What it looks like
- Seven 90 minute zoom calls on Saturday mornings
- Based on Peter Block’s community-building methods. Click here for a summary of the book and some of the core ideas. Andrew has led or co-led many calls loosely or directly based on Peter’s methodology.
Operating Guidelines(from this summary of Peter’s book Community: The Structure of Belonging)
Social fabric is created one room at a time, the one we are in at the moment. It is formed out of the questions “Whom do we want in the room?” and “What is the new conversation that we want to occur?”
The key to a new future is to focus on gifts, on associational life, and on the insight that all transformation occurs through language.
Each step has to embody a quality of aliveness, and strategy evolves in an organic way.
The essence of creating an alternative future comes from citizen-to-citizen engagement that constantly focuses on the well-being of the whole.
We have all the capacity, expertise, and financial resources that an alternative future requires.
The small group is the unit of transformation and the container for the experience of belonging.