How the Traveling Village works
Traveling Village is a community experiment combining learnings from intentional communities with the freedom of digital nomadism. Here you can find more about our structure and philosophy.
Manifest
Co-creating
Co-creating is a core part of TV. We believe that if you work on something, if go through some hard things and if you have a say, the connections and community will be stronger.
A village for everyone
We want a healthy, diverse community (just like a normal village). We are not trying to create a cult, where everyone thinks or believes the same. TV is also designed with 100% freedom for each family, so everyone can at all time take the right decision for their family
An experiment
The overall goal is that TV members return home (or continue their travels) transformed. That they will take even more conscious lifestyle choices in the future and that we all learned something about the meaning of community.
Building in public
We are dedicated to sharing what we learn, so it can be easier for others to build similar communities. We want to use social media in a way that contributes positively, which means: Not using kids as marketing, being transparent about the hard things, and not creating a fake pretty image of village life.
Intentionality, but with freedom
Every family in TV has 100% freedom. Being “a village” means that the community is not sensitive for families taking time for themselves, going on trips, etc. But we do have the intentionality that we agree on how things work, we have some infrastructure to help us and we all commit to the same things (like our community fund, going on the whole experience). That intentionality helps create stability because it’s not new people coming and going during the 4 months.
Non-profit
Community is at the heart of everything we do. We encourage connection among residents, creating a supportive community where everyone feels at home. Make new friends and a forever family at the Coterie.
Finance
Every family pays a community contribution that goes into our communal fund. The money is spent on local fixers, communal meals, events, etc. In Village 1 the amount was approximately $3,000 per family. Finance is handled by the Finance Workgroup who track all spending and keep everything 100% transparent. In Village 1 we developed detailed systems for handling the finance.
Infrastructure
Behind the scenes, we have a lot of infrastructure, which is handled by the Infrastructure Workgroup. They are responsible for handling all our data, sheets and docs, but also our digital townsquare, communication channels. The WG also arrange the village meetings.
Workgroups
We have a serious of workgroups that makes everything work. Workgroup consist of 3 to 6 people, with one moderator who is the overall responsible. Workgroups include the above mentioned, but we also have workgroups for communal meals and an emergency and conflict workgroup. Everyone can suggest a WG.
Communal meals
In Village 1 we had two weekly communal meals. We are a lot of people and 99% of the time we are split out in smaller groups. The communal meals works as our community glue. It’s the one thing that is always in the calendar, where every gets together and get the chance to reconnect.
The handbook
Our handbook works as our terms and conditions. It’s essentially a bunch of stuff that we all agree on, so we are on the same page. It helps align expectations and reduce the risk of conflict. You can read the latest version of the handbook here.
Village meetings
In each location we have two village meetings, where each family try to have at least one adult to join. The village meetings are lead by the Infrastructure Workgroup and it’s here we can discuss the hard things, help each other and solve things before they become big problems.
Decisions
We use a system inspired by sociocracy. We want to optimize for the development of the community, not necessarily status quo. We also want to make it easy for us to take decisions and move forward and we also want to avoid a strong hierarchy where a few decides everything.
Workgroups can have assigned areas where they can make decisions and handle a budget. We also have a consensus-based system, that bigger things can go through. Here it’s possible to support a proposal, stand aside and block. The details of the decision frameworks is accessible in our handbook.
The big why
Why are we creating Traveling Village and why should you join? We believe that both we and you need to be sure about “why”. Joining TV is a big commitment, it’s a rewarding experience but also intensive and not just easy. The overall idea with TV is to experiment with lifestyle and we hope everyone returns home knowing more about themselves and how they want to structure their life.