Recap of February 10, 2008 meeting of Asheville Communities Network

 

Introductory Session was led by Alex Mawhinney and Jean Marie Luce. 15 attended the meeting held at 3:30 p.m. before the regular meeting at 4 p.m.

At about 4 p.m. Jean Marie Luce welcomed about 50 interested participants to an update from some of the groups who are working on forming community, with the title “Keep the Dream Alive”. See the reports below.

The focus for this ACN meeting was on the group interested in forming Community for the 2nd Half of Life. These specific programs are held on the even months of the year.

The Beguine Project

Co-Founders, Marianne Kilkenny and Morgana Morgaine presented details about the history and formation of the Beguine Project. An overview of past accomplishments, tools and insights were shared. They reported that limiting it to a core group of 6 has helped focus more efficiently, and they have just completed the Vision, Mission, and Values and are moving on to Goals and timelines. They have committed to having the basic documents completed by the end of March so that they can then go back to the larger group and choose "work groups" to take us to the next action steps and possible presentation.  They plan for some site visits, letter of interest, and taking the next steps to bring the women’s village based on the Beguine’s to the broader community in 2008. At the conclusion of the presentation Morgana led the group in a chorus of mantra’s used by the Beguine group.

Submitted by Marianne Kilkenny 

ElderSpirit Community Asheville

 

ElderSpirit Community of Asheville members Richard Tomaskovic, Bob Howarth, and Marianne Newman presented a three part report.

Richard narrated an interesting history of ESCA from its inception in fall of 2006 and described the growth and decline of participation as site search, mission & values formation, preference surveys, workshops and fun events played out.  Spin offs of several small groups (pods) occurred during this period as well as some self-determined attrition.
Bob outlined ESCA’s plans to meet with several developer-contractor companies and explore the feasibility of building a community complex that satisfies the criteria set out in ESCA’s recently generated Letter of Interest. ESCA believes it must grow in size to initiate a contract /agreement for a 20 to 30 unit community.   To stimulate growth as well as to discuss practical implementation of the ESCA values of Mutual Support, Wellness, Spirituality, Simple Living & Respect for the Earth, Service, Creative Expression and Justice & Peace,  ESCA plans workshops open to all interested parties.  These will be announced in March.
Marianne presented the Letter of Interest recently generated by ESCA to be used as the body of requirements, wants and preferences in discussions with developer-contractors.  The Letter will be used to help orient providers as to ESCA’s membership makeup, our criteria and needs as to location, neighborhood attributes, residence size and characteristics, and our cost range.  ESCA thinks that “getting in on the ground floor” in this manner, prior to site selection and construction, will make it more likely to get what they want.

 

Submitted by Bob Howarth

 

Jubilee !

 

Method: Pot Luck

 Conversation          Followed by a short study             Workshop/Practice

(Spiritual Poetry)           (Specific curriculum)                     (What to do)

 

We worked on:

·        Community Values 

·        Mission Statement

·        We discussed community locations  benefits & liabilities of Rural, Suburbs, City  

·        We built a chart on the dynamics of commitment & trust 

·        We role played decision making

                                                 

 We have learned:

 You can’t sustain a group willing to commit time, money & other resources until you have a relevant and practical project to focus on.

Submitted by Bill Bailey

 

 

Unity Intentional Community

 

Our project is at a beginning stage. We have compiled our initial interest survey. The results among other things, indicated a group of people interested in an elder-rich community, with equally divided interest in various locations. It is our observation is that those who want to live in a rural setting are the ones continuing with the process as our core group.
During our next meeting we hope to come up with a working document that will contain our Mission and Vision statements.
Because our land is already secured, we feel we are a step ahead of other groups. However, we recognize that we have an enormous amount of work to complete before we can break ground.

Submitted by Barbara Beck