CPsquare's DRAFT mission statement

Who we are

We are a diverse community of practitioners. We come together to share knowledge and build a practice around our passion for and belief in the potential of communities of practice as a vehicle for positive world change.

• We are diverse. We are live in all corners of the world from foothills of California to the rivers of Laos to the fields of Zimbabwe. We work in and across sectors from Wall Street to Parliament, on farms and in villages, at universities and over the internet. We practice many crafts from law to medicine, facilitation to education, farming to parenthood.
• We are a community. We are in relationship. This relationships are rooted in shared values and nurtured by cohesiveness and trust. We give to the community as much as we get in return – it is a reciprocal relationship, value is given to and created by members of the community. We are committed to each other as members and together we are committed to the success of the community’s mission, goals, and objectives. We genuinely enjoy working and learning together, we celebrate our successes, learn from our mistakes, and have a whole lot of fun along the way.
  
• We are practitioners. We put our skills and knowledge into action. We practice our craft in the world. We bring our learning and insights from our individual practice back to be shared with community.
  
• We share knowledge. We come together to share our thinking, best practices and first-hand experience with building communities of practice. We do so openly and in the spirit of improving ourselves individually, as a community and as members of the broader global community.
  
• We build practice. We are committed to packaging our insights and knowledge into practical tools and resources that can be used by the community and shared with the world. We are committed to building the body of knowledge on communities of practice and further legitimizing it as a valid and successful approach to solving a variety of problems.
  
• We share a passion and a belief in the potential of communities of practice. We are passionate about our work, especially as it relates to building communities of practice. We are so passionate that we are willing to offer our time, share our knowledge, and contribute resources to support and nurture this community. We so strongly believe in this approach that we have chosen to build a community of practice for the domain of communities of practice – we walk our talk.
  
• Vehicle for positive world change. We believe that the formation of communities of practice will help give energy to a broader social movement for positive world change. We believe that the act of being “in community” is a more positive and effective way to operate in a world of ever increasing interconnectedness and the key to making this world a better place for us all.

Organizational form and community governance would flow from this mission.