Principles
The organization of The Harvest Collective as a business and our operation as a steward of the environment is through deliberate and principled processes. To accomplish our goals, we recognize the need to use social tools that are adaptable and well-suited for the challenges we face. How we organize is the initial life-giving pattern from which all our projects grow.
As a business, we embody the Seven Cooperative Principles. These principles are shared by all other cooperatively organized businesses and reflect our participation in the solidarity economy.
As a self-organized entity, we also employ the Eight Principles for Self-Governing the Commons. These principles reflect studies of real-world communities that sustainably manage shared natural resources, such as pastures, farmland, and forests. These principles guide us as we create community ownership in vibrant ecosystems.
As designers of ecosystems, our team centers around Permaculture Ethics as we apply the Twelve Permaculture Design Principles. These ethics and principles keep us grounded in the simple truth that building sustainable and resilient ecosystems means seeing humanity as a part, not the center, of the world we inhabit.
Finally, as a self-regulating body, we are implementing the tools of sociocracy. Our organization makes decisions by consent and in a single voice by ensuring each person is heard equally. While this may sound tedious, these tools are effective precisely because they decentralized and distributed authority and responsibility.