San Francisco Backyard Neighborhood & Learning Center
… is what we’re calling ourselves… So far we have spent a fair amount of time developing a common vision of our goal, to ensure that what we’re building will have a strong foundation. This is what we are creating:
Vision Statement
Our vision is to create a cohousing community in the heart of San Francisco where children are self-directed learners. We value diversity, social and ecological responsibility, mutual learning, and joy.
Mission Statement
We want to experiment with ways to live sustainably, responsibly, and joyfully as part of a vibrant, densely populated city. We intend to do this by creating an urban retrofit cohousing community with selected shared indoor spaces and with sunny backyards shared between neighbors. We will accomplish this in the following ways:
- We will begin by purchasing a multi-unit building with a sunny backyard within the next year. We like the North of Panhandle neighborhood of San Francisco because it is centrally located and has many large multi-unit Victorians and Edwardians with large south-facing backyards. We also like the Duboce Triangle, Mission, lower and upper Haight, Castro, and Noe Valley neighborhoods.
- We will reach out to neighbors to collaborate on projects and take down fences, sharing selected indoor and outdoor spaces. Our intention is to provide an excellent environment for children to practice self-directed learning, improve our ability to practice sustainable living, and perhaps even enable us to be a seed for an urban ecovillage.
- We will consume as little as possible and reuse everything we can. This means doing things like producing food and goods in our backyard, conserving and using renewable energy, collecting rain and reusing water, recycling building materials, and conserving and sharing whatever else we can.
- We will provide a safe and nurturing environment for the children of our community and for children of other families to socialize, play, observe, and learn from whomever or whatever they may happen upon in day-to-day life. The common area will have many opportunities for children to observe nature; interact with older and younger children and adults; run, climb, and jump; experiment with materials and processes; garden, cook, build, repair, and sew; dance and make music and artworks; play games; and, through it all, learn valuable life skills.
- We will strive to model respect, cooperation, and interest in learning and creating. When children observe adults working collaboratively in a respectful and cooperative way, they learn how to treat each other well and how to organize and execute their own learning projects.
- We will learn from children. We are fascinated by their honest expressions of their feelings and unfiltered experience of the world around them. Involving children in our processes will enhance everyone’s joy.
- We will take a proactive approach in regards to developing healthy interactions and relationships with other people. We will consciously make an effort to continue to learn and grow regarding how to have healthy interpersonal relationships. In particular, since children are central to our group, we will study and help each other work together to cultivate our skills related to theories of communication, learning/playing, and discipline. Ways we will do this can include a “continuing education” paradigm, in the form of a book club, classes, dialogues, lectures, movies, etc.
- We will use decision-making techniques developed over the years by cohousing groups and other intentional communities to be more productive and better at resolving conflicts, for example, agile planning and consensus decision making.
- We will build lasting community and a sense of ownership and control over our environment by collaborating and participating in the design and maintenance of the shared community.
- We will strive to be diverse and non-dogmatic, not requiring any one lifestyle, diet, or spiritual or political purpose.
- We will reach out to networks of people outside of our own group and try to serve as an inspiration for many similar neighborhoods in San Francisco and other cities.
- We will keep joy in mind as a worthy goal.
This page has the following sub pages.
