Tribe/2005-05-25 Meeting

Tribe Meeting 25.05.05

Start: 14:00 Finish: 16:30 Present (3): Russ, Viv, Milan

Facilitator: Russ Secretary: Russ

Agenda Reviewing and feedback on the Charitable Trust document; particularly the parts relevant to achieving charitable status with the IRD, that is, Name, Objects, Philosophy, Aims. Order of address: as above

Russ explains how this meeting will be run. A mix of open discussion, with a sprinkling of ‘talking stone’ when necessary.

Agenda #1: Trust Name

Brainstorming what the name needs to fulfil: Not too abstract. Words with a nurturing feeling. Represents our core intentions and values. Social and ecological sustainability

Brainstorming some names: Sustainability Trust. Sustainable Culture Trust. Natural and Unified Life Trust. Community of Life Trust…

Resolution: We can send the deed to the IRD with merely a ‘working title’, so we can choose something easily when we need to, and the real name can be arrived at over the waiting period.

Agenda #2: Objects of the Trust

Various change suggestions were made, and Russ proposed to enact the changes in his own time. The general trend of the changes was to make statements more specific, and more directly and clearly addressing the criteria for ‘charitable status’.

Second Object suggested change; ‘To educate in the field of natural, sustainable living and cooperation. Russel suggested to follow through on this by adding something about ‘education’ in the culture section of Aims.

Agenda #3: Philosophy

Milan suggested adding the notion of ‘path’ into the vocabulary of our philosophy, ‘being on the path’. Viv expressed that she considered that very notion to be already represented in different ways in the philosophy document. Russel suggested that Milan could come up with what he wanted to express, that could go into the Aims section.

Milan raised the question: ‘why is the philosophy document split into ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’?’ We should consider this, and look at it next time.

Agenda #4: Aims of the Trust

Milan made a suggestion to include in the Aims, the idea of ‘Non-hierarchical management’. Milan said he would raise it at a future discussion.

Revise the first Aim.

Revise the way ‘Re:’ is used. At the moment it is being seen as headings, but that is not the intention, and so it has qualities that fall short of this function. We need to re-format them so they are merely indicators of which aims relate to which philosophy elements, and so the aims themselves are the dominant list.

Milan suggested we could define our terms, some of which are mysterious (e.g. ‘living systems’). Viv suggested we could do that in the future, because it was such a huge task, and it isn’t necessary for the trust application. Everyone agreed with Viv’s conclusion.

Meeting adjourned as we got up to Aim #8 I think.