Your Questions Answered : November Q&A

How to Talk about Village, Our Mission & Avoiding Exclusion

Q1: “How can I talk about Village to others?”
(Question asked to Jason Sears, Administrative Director of VillageCo)

Jason: I start by acknowledging that Village isn’t for everyone. That’s why I start by saying “do you want to know your neighbors?” or “do you like the idea of meeting more neighbors?” These questions bring in a field of thoughts and ideas that align closely with our intention in building local connections.

From there, I encourage people to speak from their own passion and experience, e.g. “I’m involved with this organization that’s helping neighbors come together using a gathering model” or “I attended this thing called Village and enjoyed meeting people there!”

And finally, you get to the “ask”, or the reason you may be talking to someone about Village. It could be to invite them to attend, or to enlist their help in starting a Village. “I’m looking for folks who like this idea and who want to help get something going in our neighborhood. Would you be interested?” or “I’m a part of a Village Builders program and am looking for a few people to help me by attending the local gatherings. Is that something you’d consider?”

Q2: “What are you trying to accomplish as an organization?”

We get asked this a lot! Our vision at VillageCo is a locally connected world. We are addressing the challenges and barriers holding us back from being connected locally, which we see as two-fold:
1) we lack spaces we can go to where we can meet people locally, and
2) we lack ways of connecting that ease social anxieties and allow for genuine connection.

Our 2025 strategy is about putting our Village Gathering model to the test, which addresses these two challenges head-on. We recruit Village Builders to implement the Village model in their areas & then we learn alongside their experiences - what worked, what we can do better. Throughout the Builders cohort, we offer weekly live support calls, guides, support materials, and practice spaces for Builders to learn facilitation skills.

Our hope is that as we grow, we can offer these simple tools and practices to many inspired Village Builders - helping create more Villages everywhere - leading to a world that feels more connected at the local level.

Q3: “I want to build a Village with a goal in mind, however I don’t want to exclude others who might have a different mindset. How can I do that?”

This is a very important question! Many people seeking to build community have an agenda in mind - and that’s a good thing! There are many organizations focused on specific causes or beliefs, but this is not the goal of Village.

Every cause wishes they had more people supporting them, but these groups often fail to see that the space they’re hosting only filters for specific types of people. By making spaces feel comfortable to a variety of people, more people tend to come and will contribute in different ways to a cause.

The Village Gathering model was designed with this in mind. The main focus is on building relationships, a universal need for all humans. As a Village grows and matures, more elements are added into Village gatherings which allow for the kinds of activities that are common to issue or belief-based organizations, however they are not the main focus of a Village.

For example, someone passionate about cleaning up the environment may bring topics about that into Open Space to engage other Village members around that. Or, they may offer Engagements, which are member-led activities that happen between gatherings. An environmentalist may want to offer an eco-volunteer opportunity to their Village as an Engagement, or they may want to host a discussion group to ask what can be done locally in support of the environment.

It’s very important that each Village Member has the opportunity to join, or not join such spaces. That is what allows Villages to be very diverse, and bring together all kinds of people. We do not ask everyone to believe the same thing, nor do we ask everyone to participate in the same action. We each decide for ourselves :)

Do you have questions for us about Village building?

What kinds of issues come up for you when community organizing?