Main card sets:

• Unresolved conflicts / unhealed hurts / outstanding issues – appreciations
• Rank:
  • Seniority – age, being here, position, knowledge etc.
  • Spiritual
  • Economic
  • Gender
  • Sexual orientation
  • Language / accent
  • Self-esteem etc
  • Local / foreign
  • Health, height, weight
  • Areas of expertise
• Unseen Realms:
  • Angelic kingdom
  • Nature kingdom
  • Other subtle beings
• Seen Realms:
  • The land
  • Soil
  • Weather
  • Animals
  • Plants
• Purpose (of the FFC) cards:
  • Appropriate balance between democracy and hierarchy – Alex
    What does this look like? – Jane
  • A centre of inspiration and demonstration of integrated and sustainable living, in which
    the ‘I’ is surrendered to the ‘we’ and the ‘we’ is surrendered to God – Robin
  • Designing community DNA for the next 50 years – Angus
  • To empower the younger generation by bringing spirituality and technology together.
  • To be more sustainable in the local area. – AL (?)
• Purpose:
  • To be a thriving community practicing and demonstrating sustainable values.
  • To be a visible and major contributor to Moray / local area.
  • To bring Park and Findhorn village together as one community. – Mark
• Affirmation of the disciple:

We are a centre of light within a greater light,
We are a strand of loving energy within the stream of love divine,
We are a point of sacrificial fire, focussed within the firey will of God
And thus we stand.

We are a way by which men may achieve
We are a source of strength enabling them to stand
we are a beam of light shining upon their way
And thus we stand. – Angus

• Part of a global movement/network – “Blessed unrest”
• The Park Ecovillage is:
  • A sustainable village for its multigenerational community
  • A campus of demonstration of applying spiritual principles to life on many levels – Cornelia.

Background

For many years we have been happy to live and work alongside one another without many rules, guidelines or official processes to help us resolve our various challenges and differences. The Common Ground has served as a living document that helps us to live in harmony and congruence, and the NFA’s Peacekeepers, the Foundation’s S&PD area, and various committed and skilled facilitators have worked to resolve more challenging differences with great success.

As we grow into a more complex, multi-faceted community, with an increasing level of complex business and financial interactions, there appears to be a growing need to create a body that can serve as an ultimate ‘court of appeal’ in cases where it has not been possible to facilitate the harmonious resolution of different perspectives and conflicts.

Proposal

I would like to stimulate a dialogue about the creation of an Arbitration Panel for our community which is empowered to make binding decisions on matters of dispute that lie within the Findhorn Foundation community (defined in this case as the FF and/or organisational members of the NFA).

I see this as primarily serving the resolution of organisational disputes but we could consider whether it could also be open to individuals.

This Panel would be an arbitration panel i.e. empowered by all parties in the dispute to make a decision, having heard from the relevant parties and gathered the relevant information. It would not be a mediation or facilitation panel.

Composition of Panel

The community (NFA members in this instance) would elect a pool of 6 trusted individuals, 3 of whom would arbitrate any given dispute. I would envisage at this stage that this would be voluntary work, but if the workload became significant this could be reviewed.

Next Steps

Clearly for this to be of value it would need to enjoy the confidence of all the major organisations in our community (FF, NFA, Duneland, NFD, THA, MAC, Pottery, Weaving Studio, others??) each of which would need to cede a degree of ‘sovereignty’ to such a panel.

Each organisation needs time to discuss this and offer feedback – say by the end of 2010 – with a view to having a finalised document we would all sign up to by Spring 2011, elections soon after, and the inauguration of the panel around June 2011.

Your comments please!
With love and appreciation,

Robin Alfred
(Chair of Trustees, Findhorn Foundation)

FOR DIALOGUE AT GOVERNANCE MEETING. JUNE. 2012

The Governance group has identified the following challenges, some of which apply to the Park settlement only and some to the Community as a whole. The list is not exhaustive, some of the issues are contradictory, and not all the issues may be seen this way by more than a minority.

A. Governance

1. The existing structures at The Park are too complex
2. Perception that too few people hold too many key positions
3. Those who live at The Park but who are not either landowners or members of the Foundation have no genuine say in its organisation
4. Perception that money gives you influence and power
5. Lack of substantial tangible benefits of NFA membership. (i.e. accommodation, paid work etc. rather than discounts on tickets)
6. Lack of clear, agreed consequences for people / organisations who break their agreements
7. No agreed and independent way to resolve disputes (e.g. Arbitration Panel)
8. Perceived non-inclusive, and overpowering, structure of the Foundation

B. Identity & Relationship

1. We are a community who don’t have an agreed and recognisable name for ourselves.
2. No clear outer boundary for community membership
3. New community members aren’t integrated well enough and are insufficiently well inducted into our history and philosophy.
4. No accountability for our individual and collective spiritual alignment
5. There are some difficult relationship issues, especially between experienced community members, that don’t seem to get resolved

C. Economic & Development

1. Lack of over-arching, co-ordinating body for developments with Parkwide implications
2. Lack of young people in the resident community
3. Lack of economic opportunities generally
4. High cost of living/buying accommodation at The Park/in Findhorn
5. Too many community members are semi-retired and/or not interested in making a contribution through their work.
6. Perception that either development of new buildings to replace old ones at The Park is very slow, or the pace of development at the Park is too fast and we have lost our connection with nature
7. Slow and exhausting process of innovation
8. Foundation continues to subsidise a significant amount of wider community activity and undertakings.

Doubtless there are more. Clearly, these are also artificial distinctions to some degree and many of these issues are highly inter-related.

One way of proceeding is to use a combination of the above, and the Change Equation, to form the basis of a brief.

Change Equation: D + V + A > R

i.e.
Discomfort with the present situation, plus a Vision of the future, plus an Achievable next step needs to be greater than the inevitable, and human, Resistance to change.

So, if the above list represents a set of ‘Discomforts’ with the present situation, in three areas Governance; Identity & Relationship; and Economy — we could

• attempt to prioritise which of the above issues most require attention;
• identify what we can most effectively do to address them from existing resources;
• work on a brief for a dedicated, wise, deeply embedded facilitator to work with the community to identify an agreed Vision and Achievable

Next steps in these three areas which we believe are a priority but do not feel we can easily address ourselves.

In Robin’s last proposal he set out some of the ways this might happen:

– individual interviews
– group / team / organisation interviews
– presenting feedback from the interviews to the community
– facilitating community meetings and other meetings as needed
– presenting research and ideas on governance to the community
– presenting proposals as they emerge, and amending as needed
– building consensus around the models and processes we will adopt

Clearly, this would need funding and the establishment of some form of representative Steering Group to whom such a person would be accountable.

Robin. Alex and Eian
June 2012