How does one person, group, or ideology provide guidance to another?  Provide too much and your being bossy or infringing on freedoms. Provide too little and your being too vague and it often results in blame over failed attempts. Any group large or small, organized for any purpose, usually starts with shared principles, a common purpose, or a vision of a brighter tomorrow for all. Companies, churches, businesses, and governments all use one or more of these tools to establish the foundational framework for what comes next.

As social creatures we desire, we need, to belong. To share what we have learned and learn from others. However, many wars have risen over the call to “educate”. This is largely because those efforts have been focused on teaching others what to think, which is called indoctrination. There is another way, a way where teaching people how to think for themselves is the gift of a shared experience and multiple perspectives. Where individual expression is critical to the reliable innovation of the whole and the whole recognizes the intrinsic value to provide those innovators in their individual journeys through life.

While some have special needs, the vast majority of people can move freely on their own. Never an issue until your freedoms starts infringing on the rights of someone else or short-sighted individual behaviors compromise the biological integrity of the Living Earth. As one species this is our home and even when we can travel among the stars, good stewardship of Earth is a duty we all equally share. This common purpose inspires a vision of a brighter tomorrow for all and the principles on which we all share in triumph and defeat. To those ends, guidance becomes a practical matter of sharing tools, showing how to use them, and sharing in the work and the bounty of the shared experience.

For those who have pledged to be good stewards, we have created a handbook to guide individuals and groups through orientation, establishing chapters, and creating the first project that anchors our efforts in this here, this now. Functionally, a workforce development group for the regenerative economy, those efforts begin with nurturing personal growth, which is the core function of the tribe mentality. To ensure the one doesn’t get lost in the many, the governance of ARK is layered to provide for the needs of individual communities with regional support and a reference point of an advisory board of high caliber professionals, whose careers have been waging peace in a world at war.

Its easy to see the war raging in the world around us. Not just in the middle east, Europe, or some “far-off” place to American eyes, but right here at home and waged with the most insidious weapons of fear, confusion, and doubt. It’s easy to build walls and allow labels to define people who are not you. Its’s easy to accept on merit the word of the system, what is “safe” to eat, what is “true” to know, and what is “right” to believe. It’s easy to give up, lay down, and let the darkness take you. Many have fallen and gotten up so many times from so much trauma, that the act of standing is seen as the action of a fool, but they are wrong. Courage isn’t the absence of fear but acting in its presence and this guide, this organization exists to nurture the hope in the change that is you.

It is for these noble spirits and weary souls we organize in peace as effectively as those who love war. And through individual action and group strength, we will break the bonds of addiction and set free the engine of innovation that will bring generational prosperity. We will be here to help each other heal, lift each other up, and inspire in all to be the most excellent version of their next best self.  Because that’s what family does.