Why Thriving Commons?
In Thriving Commons, we strengthen communities through shared engagement. By bringing service providers, community advocates, artists, and individuals of creative enterprise into one dynamic space, Thriving Commons provides boundless opportunities for collaboration, resource sharing, and creative visioning to make our world a better place. This is our BIG PROJECT – inspiring one another, organizing together, standing alongside one another, and aspiring with disciplined intentionality to fashion our hometowns, counties, states and beyond into places where universal human dignity is celebrated, and human agency is respected. In other words, we work together to make all our common spaces places of mutual thriving.
Founded in Frederick County, MD, Thriving Commons serves the greater region and any others whose mission and values align with our Community Standards and who seek to be in fruitful partnership.
Thriving Commons is NOT a social media site! Nor is it a course platform, a message board, or a chatroom. It has these features and more, but Thriving Commons itself is a COMMUNITY, where individual members and organizations intentionally gather to advance a shared vision through collaboration and organizing. Here you will find:
- NO ADS!
- NO ALGORITHMS!
- NO DATA MINING!
When You Join Today
Welcome to the landing page, which you can think of as a community gateway. Beyond this threshold you will find gathered individuals and organizations working toward a common purpose: universal human thriving.
Thriving Commons is organized around the vision of a physical community, with a dynamic Town Green marked by engaging features, communal gathering spots, and surrounded by a diversity of organizational spaces including:
- Resource Rooms – Open spaces offering complementary resources and experiences.
- Meeting Halls – Closed spaces for designated specific members where non-profit Boards of Directors meet, volunteers receive training, and organizations flourish in shared planning.
- Store Fronts – Open spaces featuring merchandise and services for sale.
- Service Centers – Closed spaces where specific clients access direct services.
- Club Houses – Closed spaces where individuals gather to enjoy shared interests or work on common projects.
Covenant: Community Standards
In Thriving Commons, all are welcome to gather around certain shared principles. If these principles are not for you, no hard feelings. We have every confidence you will be able to find a different place you can call home. For those who choose to enter this common space, the guiding principle is easily summed up as this: care.
Care about your community and all the people in it. Care about future generations and be attentive to the legacy we will be passing on to them. Care about all forms of curiosity: intellectual, artistic, social, scientific, philosophical, spiritual, the list goes on. Care about the exploration of human potential, both individual and communal. Care about the physical environment, both close to home and around the globe. And finally, care about yourself! You can’t do the good and important work of loving our world into a better being if you don’t attend to your own needs.
It's not too much to ask – that we agree to engage in partnership only with others who also care.
And so we don’t ask you to sign a contract, we ask you to covenant. For our BIG PROJECT to work, we all agree:
- That our intentions, reflected in the fruit of our endeavors, are to advance the equal rights of all members of our human family, recognizing that all assertions of supremacy, in any form, corrode universal human thriving;
- To value facts supported by evidence, precision and integrity in asserting claims about individuals, groups, and organizations, and to cite our sources so our fellow community members can verify and draw conclusions based on peer reviewed research and documented public discourse.
- That our words and actions, offered in good faith, will be formed and fashioned to advance universal human thriving, to invite mutuality in discernment and problem-solving, and to hold one another accountable in the spirit of healing and repair; and
- That all present in Thriving Commons will engage in work and commerce with the utmost professional integrity, with honesty of motive, transparency of deed, and the honoring of commitments.
If you deny services or participation in your organization, or if the fruits of your labor advance such exclusion, regardless of your stated mission, based on stated or perceived LGBTQI+ status, disability, marital status, gender, race/ethnicity, faith proclamation or lack thereof, or any similarly situated identity, you will not be permitted to lease space or participate in open conversations in Thriving Commons.
By entering Thriving Commons, you agree to abide by these community standards and updates thereof.
Advocacy, organizing, educating, and joining our collective prophetic voices to speak truth to power – these are how our BIG PROJECT will prevail, as we are united in our pursuit of a better world.
About Shared Public Features:
SharedPublicFeaturesRecordingScript.docx
About Community Partner Spaces:
CommunityPartnerSpacesScript.docx
About Custom Global Spaces:
