What BETTER Looks Like fosters the development of beloved community by helping individuals imagine, articulate and create visions for a better world. The intentional infusion of love into our interactions has the power to create the radical changes necessary to make the world better.
WORKING DEFINITIONS
- Better: There are several ways to talk about things being better. When we visualize a better world, we do not mean, “slightly less bad than it was yesterday,” but rather,better as in healed and whole again. This formulation for better asks people to create their greatest vision for the world.
- Beloved Community:: The core value for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was community based on love, which he described as “overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless and creative”…”It begins by loving others for their sakes” It is love seeking to preserve and create community.”
- Community: We each interact in many communities. We invite people to explore the community they wish to impact whether it be family, workplace, or local and global villages. Defining the community in which you wish to create a change will make it easier to visualize the change you wish to make.
FOUNDING PRINCIPLES
- Everyone is a healer, an artist or a teacher: The vision of Co-founder, Rob Graydon, is that everyone on the planet is here to be a healer, artist, teacher, or some combination of the three. We invite people to explore what they came to heal, create and teach.
- When people come together in loving community, problems can be solved. Wherever nature creates a poison, the antidote grows within reach. Our work is based on the premise that when people come together in loving community, problems can be solved given the resources within the community.
- We need to be well organized in the name of love and peace. Founding member, Marie Goretti Ukeye, lived through the Rwandan genocide, which killed nearly 1 million people in 100 days. She observed that so many people were killed because it was well planned and organized. She says, ‘If we are going to be that well-organized in the name of violence and war, we had better get that well organized in the name of love and peace.” We offer tools to help create support and structures based on love and peace.