A New Social Invention:  The Communiversity

In the coming decades, communities will become the principal actors and the new
knowledgeable citizens of an emerging world civilization.  In that ascendant culture, a
new social invention, the Communiversity, will become an important vessel both for
learning and for forming a more purposeful, well woven and robust web of creativity,
collaboration and compassion in a community.  
       
A Communiversity is a natural next step for a community or region that wishes to
demonstrate care for all of its citizens.  The Communiversity is a new social invention
in which whole communities learn together and apply that learning to meet the
present and future needs of their town or region and the needs of the whole family of
life.  The goal is to weave separate groups within a community into a whole cloth of
interaction and learning through shared experiences, shared goals, and shared
opportunities for contribution to their communities.  

A Communiversity could offer the following prospects and services to its
citizens:

 A plan to help communities become small businesses
 A magnet for growth from within
 A process of working with town leaders and citizens to discover and establish a new
identity for the town in the world
 A free series of learning events designed by citizens and held within a town for the
purpose of inventing new fun and generating new wealth
 An ongoing think tank for discovering new ways for a town to save money and to    
keep money within its borders
 A way to get more people engaged in town activities
 A vehicle for helping citizens become cognizant of the benefits of creative
government and how to utilize those benefits
 A way of integrating ongoing programs such as Cool Cities with other initiatives
 A platform of support for local businesses and entrepreneurs
 A council to seek out business startups and bring them to town
 Real-time people-to-people communication using Fast Forum® groupware
technology created by the Forum Foundation of Seattle, Washington

What Will Communiversities Contribute to the state?
New wealth is a product of new integration.  Communiversities will produce
something never done before by using integration and creative collaboration as tools
for generating wealth, health and harmony.  

Other Opportunities Include:
• A new form of learning in which whole communities are both the “students” and the
“faculty”;  
• Shared learning between and among all ages and interests;
• Celebrations which reflect the diversity of the community;
• A Community Investment Program (CIP) which will assist communities to move in a
planned and integrated way toward self-sufficiency in areas such as energy, food
production and health services;
• A school for Community Entrepreneurs which could prepare teams of six to ten
citizens to lead a community to greater integrated self-sufficiency  through innovative
learning experiences;
•  New approaches to such essentials as energy saving; food production; water
purity; health services; heat and electricity production; green building would be
developed and displayed;
•  A television and online production facility in which group learning projects can be
shared with a wider audience throughout the region and beyond.

The Communiversity and the Knowledge Entrepreneur

One important focus of the Communiversity would be increasing the self-sufficiency
of the community and region in which it resides.  Over time a Commniversity could
lead to the invention of a new economic engine for the knowledge era.   This
economic engine would offer the following benefits:

•  Clarifying both the historic and the future identity of each community
•  Saving money through green self-sufficiency
•  Creating new wealth through investment in local innovation


By joining hands, minds and hearts, a community can:

       Imagine………..…….Incubate
       Innovate………………..Invest
       Invigorate……………Celebrate.

For more information, contact Unity Scholars
626 Penney Road, New Gloucester, ME  04260
Telephone:  (207) 926-5933  Fax: (207) 926-3970
unityscholars@earthlink.net

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The Role of Transformation
We view transformation as a major change in form, nature or function that is an
integral part of all life cycles.  Knowing that transformation will happen offers
individuals and organizations the opportunity to anticipate and design the ideal
outcome of this stage of growth.  Nature Planners, as Transformation Guides,
become skilled facilitators, designers and leaders who have studied transformation in
depth and are prepared to guide this critical stage of change.

What Is a Transformation Guide?
The Transformation Guide helps organization leaders to discover the path of
optimum future success in their enterprises and to develop an integrated plan to
achieve that success.  Guides understand that transformation is a distinct stage in the
evolution of an enterprise, one that  holds great promise and potential but also great
peril and is knowledgeable and skilled in nature’s patterns of growth, social  design,
creativity techniques, and facilitation.  The Guide also understands the critical role of
transformation in the life cycle of an enterprise; the predictability of the stages of
growth and change over time; how to think in terms of natural cycles and natural
order.  

The capacities of a Transformation Guide include:
         creative facilitation of groups to unearth deeper motivation
        how to build synergy through the integration of differences within and between
groups
        utilizing the tremendous power of creative thinking that is released when        
groups see and work with a chart of the past, present, and ideal future of an
enterprise or domain
        how to function and lead with principles of local, procedural, universal and
eternal levels of value and action
        the compatibility of the optimum success of an enterprise with the greater
good of all
        the value and magnetic power of a group “covenant”

“Nothing is more difficult to do than that which is obvious.”

This quotation summarizes the essential challenge of “improving communication.” It
is common knowledge that most of the problems in the world can be traced to poor
communication. What are the emerging “enabling technologies” for improving
communication?  How do we explore the essentials of great societies AND
individuals?  Few would argue with making the world a better place for all to live. The
large number of seemingly unsolvable problems such as poverty, war, disease, and
starvation has one root cause. We are simply “not ready” to solve them. There are
no demons or boogie people. We do not posses the wisdom to solve them yet.
Without enough wisdom we are incompetent at solving our big problems and
preventing little problems from festering into new big problems. Is there a direction
that can raise and sustain continuous improvement of human wisdom?   We at the
Nature Planning Network believe there is an answer:

Wisdomweather is the measurement and prediction of human creativity,
consciousness, compassion, and cooperation based on collective thinking and natural
emerging patterns. The feedback system is intensely interactive and collaborative
since it must be done “of, by, and for” people - in other words, humans healing and
empowering each other together, toward higher collective wisdom.

Rather than focusing on concrete models and methods or abstract concepts, Wisdom -
weather focuses on emerging patterns.  Wisdomweather enables an organization to
be “renaissance ready” or “emerging ready”. Emerging is a description of being and
becoming moment–to-moment. It is the place that exists between up-to-now and from-
now-on.

Practically all environments, businesses, governments, and societies appear to be in
a perpetual state of emergency. In that state, the old adage “I hear I forget, I see I
remember, I do I understand” has become obsolete. Now the adage appears to be “I
hear I forget, I see I forget, I do I forget, I feel I remember, I receive insights I
understand”.

Like developing the science of Meteorology, Wisdomweather will evolve a new
science that evokes insights and ideas and patterns, dynamics, linkages, and other
key variables that lead to prediction of wisdom flow through such measures as
consciousness, creation, cooperation, and compassion. The professionals in this field
will be creators of Questions and Cues through a role that mirrors the lightness and
inspiration of a Muse.

If you would like to learn more about the Nature Planning Network,
Wisdomweather or about how you can become a Transformation Guide, we are
happy to speak with you, answer your questions and send you additional information.
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