As someone who is interested in joining an intentional community and also extremely new to the process, I was wondering if those more experienced have any advice, suggestions, or warnings to share. I’d also encourage people like myself to share any specific questions or concerns that they might have as well.
Some questions I have:
How did you end up joining your first community?
What were some elements you weren’t prepared for that you would want other people to avoid?
What were some positive experiences that you weren’t anticipating?
What were your expectations, if you had any, before joining? How did they change?
If you are a part of a community leadership or member intake:
How did you go about establishing member applications and what was most important to you in that process?
What was/is the process for applying?
What do you look for in applicants?
What do you not want to see from applicants?
How do you come to agreements about new members?
What is the new member process like?
Feel free to pick and choose questions, or come up with and answer a totally different one! I am just a very curious and anxious person that wants to put my best foot forward in any new space, so information like this helps a lot.
Hello AshMM! My name is Van and I was wondering if you have had any luck with finding a community. I’m new to this process as well and I’m looking to join a community (commune). And to be honest I really don’t even know where to begin.
I’m in the same boat, hoping to become part of an intentional community at some point, hoping to join someone’s founding group to help get something new going, as most of the communities in our area aren’t a good fit for us, from the research I’ve done.
I’d say think about your core values for community, I wrote down five of them last spring when I thought I could get a community up and running by assembling a founding group (none of my friends who want the same things seem to have the wherewithall/committment for founders).
Once you have your core values figured out, whichever number you want, 3, 5, 7, whatever, look up all potentially relevent communities, there’s a good list here on the FIC website, also cohousing.org has a list and Global Ecovillage Network has a list, so you can have more searching options. If you find any that look like they could be viable you can check them out.
