this website
This website presents a vision for Spectrum Community — an intergenerational intentional community and future physical community center, partly based on providing young people the means of self-directed liberated living and learning (without school). The community is meant to be valuable for all ages, as a social center and vehicle for working on projects together.
Spectrum can be a group and a place for co-working, socializing, organizing, entrepreneurship, community and regional activism, etc. The core values are expressed in the books that inform the youth project – liberated, self-directed, empowering living and learning.
who we are
We are a broad, inter-generational community made of individuals, families, partnerships, and singles in the Oakland / Berkeley region of California.
mission
Spectrum is a community devoted to
- supporting and empowering people to live life fully, deeply, and personally, with joy and satisfaction;
- living and sharing life in that manner; and
- creating a healthy, peaceful, prosperous, vibrant society and world.
In fewer and figurative words, we are aimed toward living fully and creating a healthy world.
More specifically, we believe we can improve our lives and the world with greater
- self-awareness, self-understanding, and self-actualization;
- communication and problem-solving skills and habits; and
- connection and community.
There are certain skills and understandings that we are attempting to share, to create a culture that shares these insights and continues the search for ever more effective skills and understandings.
vision
We want to build healthy cultures from the ground up, transforming ourselves and our families and relationships, creating social and cultural hubs of activity, and turning our neighborhoods and cities into safe, clean, beautiful, and prosperous places where we cooperatively and entrepreneurially create community and societal solutions.
status
We are a semi-active and, so far, a small community, seeking participants and co-founders and co-organizers, especially with regard to our effort to create and be an alternative to school for young people.
strategy
We achieve and advance our mission by working on projects such as creating an alternative to school for young people, and by engaging in activities such as a book club, a meditation group, and weekly get-togethers for a day of recreation and enjoyment. See our Activity page for more details.
structure
We plan to offer both free and paid services. We plan to operate with membership dues and contributions and special program prices or tuitions, and with a structure that gives distributed, transparent power and responsibility to all contributing members according to their interest, talents, and capacity for responsibility.
We plan to take an experimental approach to decision-making, perhaps starting out with direct democracy or sociocratic principles of dynamic, collaborative governance. We can try different approaches and see what works best for our members.
We are currently an informal group, but we will be working on determining the best legal structure to take, whether that is to be a 501(c)3 non-profit or some other category.