''This is Chapter 3 of the [[SolSeed book]].''
=== Our eco-village vision ===
Imagine a near-future community founded by the SolSeed Movement. At first glance it would appear no different from a typical eco-village: eco-friendly buildings, solar panels, organic food gardens, and a population concerned with helping Earth's ecosystems thrive.
But there is another driving concern that weaves itself into the fabric of life in this community. Under a garden-covered roof is a large workshop where some of the community members are working on small-scale satellite designs, while others are developing miniature closed ecosystem models in glass boxes, prototypes for habitats in space that could ultimately support humans. Outside, a poster announces an upcoming space-industry conference to be held in the community, with the keynotes to be delivered in a gathering space that looks like a huge rocket nose-cone emerging from the ground, made of glass and covered with climbing vines. That structure currently holds a congregation attending a quasi-religious service with the theme "How to stay motivated to work toward the Destiny when we won't reach the stars in our lifetimes?" Unperturbed by such questions, children race among the apple trees outside, playing with model spaceships that they built themselves for a school project, using everything from pieces of used bottles and cans to pebbles, twigs, and woven grass.
This is SolSeed's vision of an ideal community, and we want to work toward making it a reality. Other people have different but equally beautiful ideas about how to build a life-bringing community. We want to find and connect with those people, for two reasons: to share ideas and build solidarity as a greater meta-movement, and to give people who are looking for community the chance to find the one they find most inspiring.
=== The broader movement ===
We see ourselves a part of a broader movement that shares our values of bringing life to ourselves, our communities, and the planet as a whole. We aim to support and partner with other kindred organizations that are bringing life. For example, we are closely aligned with the Awakening Science Foundation, a nonprofit founded in collaboration with John Boswell's Symphony of Science project, which will support charities and advocacy groups that advance the scientific worldview.
But more broadly, we're looking for allies whose missions are somehow life-enhancing, or at least aimed at preventing harm to life. The SolSeed Movement prefers to keep a positive focus, so of course we'll be particularly interested in forming relationships with groups that do things like building eco-villages and restoring ecosystems. But we won't shun the company of a far more common type of nonprofit, which works to mitigate the damage from phenomena like homelessness, hunger, disease, pollution, sweatshops, political oppression, war, and the destruction of whole species.
=== Gatherings of Kindred ===
We try to encourage other people and communities to express and live their own values, even though the norm in American society is to avoid even talking about such things in public, for fear of offending someone or just seeming naively idealistic. One way to do this is to create a space where this kind of sincerity is encouraged, and where people can find other people, communities, and organizations that share some of their values.
We envision this space as a sort of festival, with a large outdoor area dotted with tables where people from different co-convening communities and organizations (perhaps referred to as "tribes" for the sake of brevity and historical metaphor) will stand ready to describe and promote their groups and what they stand for. The only requirement for a group to participate is a commitment to respect all life, which we see as the core value of a vast worldwide movement that is only beginning to recognize its own existence (for example, through books like ''Blessed Unrest'' by Paul Hawken). Some people who come to the festival, particularly young people, may be searching for a place to live and contribute within that vast "movement of movements," and many of them will find one.
See also [[Getting Involved]].