Think OutWord Core Group Community and Social Threefolding The core group is for anyone interested in being part of community with the shared ideal of bringing about personal, local, and global health by developing a living thinking through working with the ideas of social threefolding. There are no age limits or geographical restrictions. Participation in Think OutWord Sessions Quarterly Conferences: Think OutWord will continue its basic training - the larger public sessions that are offered 3 times during the course of the year. These sessions provide inspiration and encouragement for all participants, are a public face for Think OutWord, and a necessary training ground to work with threefold ideas and experience their reality. The fourth Think OutWord session, a core group retreat, will take place in the fall, and is an opportunity to review the year and co-envision the future. Core group members should ideally have the intention of supporting and participating in all four of these conferences. Such participation might include planning, hosting, facilitating, carrying some of the general work, or presenting. Core group members will convene a full day in advance of the public gatherings in order to work more intimately. The 3 remaining sessions this year are scheduled for April 30-May 3 in NYC, July 5-12 outside Boston, and October 1-4 in Spring Valley, NY. Weekend Intensives: Think OutWord will also continue to host Weekend Intensives where we focus almost exclusively on the element of study, taking on a whole text as we did with Steiner's "Philosophy of Freedom" and "World Economy" lectures this past year. Core group members are encouraged to attend these intensives when they're able, as well as help plan and execute them or design and host one of their own. Programs and Projects Programs: Beside conferences, Think OutWord seeks to develop additional programs (our only program, thus far, is the Credere Fund which we hope to expand by way of creating grants for innovative work in other fields). The results of our programs will be shared at core group meetings when appropriate and reviewed at the fall retreat. At this point such programs are run by smaller, self-governing groups made up of both community members and Think OutWorders. Some core group members currently participate in this work and all are encouraged to support it. (Core group members participating on the review committee of the Credere Fund cannot apply for the Credere grants, though these are open to all other core group members. Core group member's applications will be reviewed with equal weight as non-core group members.) Ideas for potential programs that are currently simmering on the back burner: o An Initiative Development Program focused on capacity-building and learning necessary practical skills (fundraising, leadership and facilitation, business plans, etc) Projects: The core group is committed to helping each other take initiative. It is a space where we can bring our individual interests and concerns to the table and where we can help each other think through them, network, and collaborate. Some of these individual projects can then be taken up by the whole group and become programs. We also just need to come together to think strategically about what we're interested in and called to do as a group. Hopefully many of the projects and programs we take up will be born out of our coming together and shared work. Ideas for potential projects that are currently simmering on the back burner: o Convening Think Tanks (Think/Feel/Do Tanks) focused on bringing all stake-holders together around a given issue in a given locale to begin working through some of the imminent challenges we face. Independent and Group Research Independent Research: We also want to help support any study/independent research a core group member is doing – whether it's connected or not to a specific project. This can mean offering a space to share and get feedback, helping each other find mentors and peers to work with, and general networking. It can also mean an opportunity to work up the material into a presentation for a conference or for publication on NetworkM, Lilipoh, etc. Group Research: Smaller study, social, and action groups are awesome and highly encouraged. We're already moving right along on this. At the February conference a few groups were mentioned: one in Philadelphia around threefolding, one in Spring Valley around Awakening to Community, and one in Harlemville focused on exploring various expressions of contemporary thought. Besides these, another group might emerge in the Berkshire-Taconic region that is interested in exploring questions around the social heart: how to work more consciously with spiritual beings in groups, organizations, communities, and networks; what relation different social forms, organizational and governance structures, have to this. The research done in these groups can be distilled and brought to the whole group, thereby serving to strengthen and ground it. Method Our method as a group will probably be pretty straightforward. Come up with new ideas through study and discussion and then form agreements - either volunteer to take up a task or ask someone else to. We are therefore always left free to take up an activity or not. We've thought about a number of ways that we can weave and grow our work together throughout the year. One is by working with a shared text. Another would be to work together online, maybe by contributing to a shared blog. We could also work with exercises or design tools such as questions that would help us analyze and enter more deeply into our experiences from a threefold perspective. Next steps Between now and May (when we next come together) we do want to start on a few of these things. We're planning to read Towards Social Renewal this year – which means everyone should read the introduction and first chapter by May. Another thing we would like everyone to complete is a short bio – just a few paragraphs that say where you've come from and what your present day concerns/questions/inspirations/initiatives are that you bring to the group. We’ll collect and compile these, and then distribute them before we meet again so that we can begin to lay some of the groundwork for our work together. There are other items of business that we'll also look at in May. Seth has been doing much of the administrative work and would like to dedicate himself more fully to coordinating Think OutWord and core group activities in a part-time paid position. He'll work up a job description and he and Sarah will present our finances when we meet. We also need to reexamine our relationship to Hawthorne Valley Association (they currently grant us nonprofit status by acting as our fiscal agent). Besides that we just need to sit together, develop a shared vision, and figure out how best to bring it to fruition. If you have any thoughts on all this stuff please let us know. Onword, Outword, and Upword! yep. Seth, Sarah, Kristin, and Peter
o Think OutWord Forum – a series of teleconferences featuring individuals who have a deeper understanding of the current social and economic crisis and what can be done.
o Best Practice Interviews – a series of interviews with “best practice” experts in different fields working out of the ideals/principles of social threefolding.
