Defining the Junction Village Community Land Trust's Vision, Mission and Aims
- JVCLT
- Feb 17
- 3 min read
In Fall 2024, Board members and volunteers for the Junction Village Community Land Trust (JVCLT) came together for our second visioning retreat to define and align our organizational Vision, Mission and Aims.
“The vision is your dream. What you want the world to be.”
“Your mission is how you will contribute to making the dream come true... the relationship between you and your vision. While the vision is a dream, the mission is action focused. It stakes out a territory. It says this is my subject, my industry, my work. This is what I’m going to do.”
"Aims are tangible, measurable goals that will change as they’re completed."
“Your Vision is the dream that keeps you going when things are bleak and accomplishing your aim provides the daily satisfaction... In the end, if you avoid your dream, work may be drudgery. If you avoid your mission, your relationship to the world will be fuzzy and confused. If you avoid defining a clear aim, you risk not just missing the target but having no target.”
~ Sharon Villines, "Sociocracy: a Deeper Democracy; Collaborative Governance- Transparent, Inclusive and Accountable"
Following the JVCLT’s first visioning retreat last winter, JVCLT members reconvened in September to further clarify our Vision, Mission and Aims. Founding Board member John Wright hosted this event, while Heather Watt-Kapitain facilitated.
Heather helped us negotiate a clear statement of our shared intent for the JVCLT. Words were weighed, pondered, mulled, cogitated, and kicked around. Sentences were written and rewritten, punctuation was debated, and all those in attendance contributed to the careful crafting of these important organizational statements. Laughter punctuated creatively contentious group deliberation.
Within two hours though, the JVCLT had come to mutually agreeable wording to define our Vision and Mission:
Vision
We envision a world where the Land is honoured and stewarded with responsibility and love. All beings have a healthy home in a network of thriving, generative communities inspired by reciprocity and possibility.
Mission
Junction Village Community Land Trust is a nonprofit social enterprise that fosters partnerships to secure, steward and responsibly develop land, and to co-create and nurture healthy, ecological, intentional communities.
After lunch, and once the wording for our Vision and Mission statements had been drafted, we turned our attention to the various different operational teams or “Circles,” as they’re called in sociocracy–the model of governance that underpins the JVCLT.
We use sociocracy for our organizational structure and decision-making processes because it is a system of governance based on democratic values of equity, freedom, and collaboration. It is an inclusive system, where all voices are valued, and decision-making powers are spread out across Circles (which function like committees). These Circles are often related and overlapping, and while all Circles report to the General Circle (or Board), they also each have a degree of independence within their domains.
Currently, the JVCLT has six Circles, and in the later half of the day, Heather helped us solidify explicit aims and timelines for most of them, including the Governance, Finance, Fundraising, and Storytelling Circles.
This workshop was vital for providing the JVCLT with a clarity of purpose that, as Heather noted, can be seen as both the backbone and immune system for JVCLT’s sociocratic governance model, allowing any policy or project proposal, at any level, to be evaluated in terms of its alignment with our Mission.
If the JVCLT’s Mission and Vision resonate for you too, and if you’d like to learn more about the different Circles and their aims, check out our “Get Involved” page. Our network of volunteers is continuing to grow, and we welcome anyone passionate about creating affordable housing and building connected communities to join us in making a difference!
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