Approach
The SOAR Approach to Development
New Earth Village's SOAR Approach to community development is highly focused on improving the quality of relationships among people. Our core belief is that when people are valued, included, encouraged and supported, anything is possible.
Below, read about the Four Elements that shape the SOAR Approach ...
1. The Life-Centred Learning Community
2. The Eight Ways: Strategies for Development
3. Spirit Makers: Leaders Who Spawn Change
4. The Four Ps: Principles, Possibility, Partners and Passion
For more detailed information about the SOAR Approach, please see Process and Training on the Top Navigation Bar
1. The Life-Centred Learning Community
The goal of the SOAR approach is to create a place where each person feels nurtured and actively nurtures others as she learns and works to advance her own life, the lives of her family members and the community's shared vision. In other words, individuals and the collective community are mutually supported to be all they can be.
In such an environment (people support each other, community supports people and people support community), people self-organize, hold themselves accountable and fully engage their creative human potential. We call such a place a Life-Centred Learning Community.
The views we express in New Earth Village and the training and support we provide all reflect our concept of the Life-Centred Learning Community.
2. The Eight Ways: Proven Strategies for Development
The SOAR approach utilizes eight proven ways or strategies to carry out development. Each way is an essential element of the transformative change process that leads to the Life-Centred Learning Community:
- Increase urgency
- Build a powerful team
- Get the vision right
- Focus on strengths
- Empower your people
- Create quick wins
- Communicate for buy-in
- Make change stick
3. Spirit Makers: Leaders Who Spawn Change
Community leaders play a pivotal role in change. They hold immense power to rally their people, shape a compelling vision, bring in new ways of being, and create and maintain change momentum. SOAR places special emphasis on developing the capacity of community leaders to infuse the change effort with S.P.I.R.I.T - the lifeblood that nourishes and maintains change and draws people together to create a Life-Centred Learning Community:
- Sincerity
- Passion
- Inclusion
- Rejoicing
- Intention
- Trust
4. The Four Ps
SOAR has four fundamental characteristics or defining features - Principles, Possibility, Partners and Passion:
Principles
The SOAR change process invites participants to subscribe to a set of core principles or ways of being that are universally recognized as essential to building healthy relationships and a cohesive community. As well, clients are urged to add their own ways.
Possibility
SOAR chooses not to focus change efforts directly on solving problems. Instead, it focuses on identifying and building on present strengths and on creating and realizing a community vision on the very edge of possibility.
Partners
The best ideas and the most successful and rapid changes occur when people work together - in conversation and in action. Throughout the change process SOAR emphasizes self-organized partnerships, not only as a way to make change but as a 'way of being' for the long term.
Passion
We talked in SpiritMakers about the importance of leaders having passion for the change effort and conveying that to members. But for members to feel that passion, they must feel ownership for the vision, feel valued and trusted by the organization, feel free to be creative and feel supported to take risks in their work. When those conditions are met, the passion (life-centred energy) flows, people self-organize and remarkable things happen.
SOAR is designed to help you create the conditions for passion to flow.
Synergy
The Four Elements - the Life-Centred Learning Community, the Eight Ways, SpiritMakers and the Four Ps - are woven through the course material of SOAR ProTraining. As the Four Elements are employed in your change effort, they interact with each other to create synergy, something much greater and more transformative than the sum of their individual effects. Like a loosly woven basket - flexible yet strong - the Four Elements provide you with a powerful tool for creating your Life-Centred Learning Community.
A Step Back in Time
We see SOAR not as a new approach to human and community development, but as a return to 'what was' - the traditional ways in which Indigenous Peoples have lived in community since ancient times:
- Whole community inclusion
- Adherence to a code of conduct
- Attention to what works
- Alliances for mutual benefit
- Openness to new ideas and ways
- Nurturing what gives life
- Committment to learning and excellence
- Devotion to family and community
- Courage to explore new lands
- Collaborative action
- Oneness with the Earth
- Reflection, humour, and friendship.
