Once the sale of the Tivoli Housing Co-op was complete in 2014, the Common Fire Foundation shifted its focus dramatically, limiting itself to providing basic support for the Beacon Co-Housing community. The Foundation previously had a much more expansive vision of helping to support the creation of numerous intentional communities nationwide that shared our values related to communities as a foundation for personal and collective transformation. The information on this page represents our PREVIOUS more expansive vision and is provided here in the hopes that it may help to support or inspire other people’s efforts in this field.
Who we are and what we achieve in the world depends so much on the people and community around us. This housing co-op was created with the purpose of nurturing the very best in people who want to make a difference in their communities and the world.
The co-op residents in May of 2007 wrote the following:
Our Purpose for Our Home
We aim to be a cooperative household of nurturing, inspiring, and diverse people whose lives are woven together in a shared commitment of creating a better world. We aim to support each other in living and working to be more effective and joyful agents of change in our communities. We do this in the following ways:
- Providing mutual support;
- Cooperating to free energy, time, and money;
- Sharing and learning from our different experiences, interests, and issues;
- Challenging each other to live and work in ways that promote the change that we wish to see in the world.
Over the course of 2008 the co-op residents worked on writing up a set of common values. We finalized them in March of 2009.
Common Values
This space is created to nurture community – within this space we hold the following values:
Individual and Interpersonal
We value our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing. We support each other in pursuing our passions and creativity and in leading fulfilling lives. We value experiencing and sharing the broad range of human emotions.
We nurture joy in our lives, in our home and in the broader world. We value joy that sustains us and makes us more capable of doing work to create a more beautiful world, even as we are conscious of the violence and destruction that exist.
We value cooperation and mutual aid that allows us to be more effective in our work and personal pursuits. We value consensus as a model of decision-making.
We hold that our personal development and ability to be effective change makers is greatly enhanced by living with people who support and push us to reach our highest good.
We value ongoing personal growth by sharing knowledge and insight with one another. We hold each other to a high standard and support each other in living up to our stated goals and values. We view critique as a valuable opportunity to learn, and seek feedback from our housemates about ways they see we can move our lives more in line with our beliefs.
We recognize that we are each in different parts of our journeys. We respect that each of us is working toward positive change in our own way and that each house member’s personal truth about the best way to work toward this goal is worthy of respect.
We strive to have our communication with each other be as effective as possible. We communicate directly, honestly and clearly and take the time to understand one another. This is especially true in conflict. We enter conversations with an openness to hear, a loving heart, and with the expectation that our housemates will meet us with the same level of integrity.
Broader Interpersonal and Social
We aspire for the co-op to consist of a group of diverse, inspiring, committed, responsible, approachable people.
We value diversity as a way to help overcome the disparities that exist in power and opportunities among different communities of people. We appreciate the learning and empathy that comes from engaging with a diversity of people. We value creating and manifesting visions of the world and strategies for change that reflect the needs of all people and beings, demonstrate our collective wisdom, and build stronger alliances.
We strive to be as effective as possible and are committed to using our actions to help make change in the world. We are committed to using our personal choices, work, and privilege to better the world to our greatest ability.
We are committed to creating a living-environment that encourages continual learning. We engage in meaningful conversation, expose each other to new ideas, and increase our awareness about the world and the part we play in the problems and the solutions.
Big Picture
We value sharing a home with other people who strive to nurture a safe and supportive environment and overcome oppression.
We commit ourselves to do the ongoing work of overcoming oppressions as they may exist within each of us, within our co-op and within the broader society. We recognize that it takes reflection and effort to overcome biases and habits that arise from historic and current societal inequalities based on race, ethnicity, age, ability, gender, sexuality, class, etc.
We value fair management of common resources. Our definition of common resources are, at minimum: those we share directly within the household; at maximum: those we share with all. We value consciousness and responsibility in our use of non-renewable resources.
We seek to live in sustainable ways that allow the ecosystems that we and all other beings rely on to thrive today and to continue to do so in future generations.
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- Support & Trainings
The Purpose