OUR MISSION IS..
Nurturing and growing our individual selves, our group cohesion and our collective vision, while relating respectfully and harmoniously to each other and the land.
This is our Unique Value Proposition and the ‘How’ Kanjini Co-Op fulfils its Mission.
Sharing daily life in a spiritual, joyful, and cooperative way, while developing primary production and other thriving businesses which capture market needs and align with our values.
This is our Organisational Development and is the ‘What’ Kanjini Co-Op will do to fulfil its Mission.
PIONEERS WANTED!
We are seeking pioneers, who are willing to volunteer to help us manifest this incredible vision on this amazing property. The project has endless potential and it needs more pioneers and innovators to take it to the next step. Currently, we only have camping areas available for newcomers. You will need to have your own camping set-up, be able to live communally, and be committed to keep growing your personal, social and environmental awareness.
Come and join us in creating this sustainable community while enjoying clean soil, clean air and clean water on our unique 6600 acre property with stunning views, a 25 acre lake and 3km of pristine emerald creek.
If you are the pioneer type and this appeals to you, please fill out this questionnaire to express your interest
Kanjini envisions to be:
a mutually supportive and diverse community creating a joyful and abundant existence while being sensitive to sustainability and our ecological footprint.
a cooperative system which moves from private ownership of land to shared custodianship
a place to develop, use and promote smart solutions to contemporary problems as well as being an example of what co-operative living can achieve.
a community that promotes respect for diversity through education and is a healthy, safe place for all ages and cultures.
a place that provides lifelong nurturing, learning and growth in intellectual, physical, social and spiritual realms (“spiritual” is to express, moment to moment in our work and our relations with others and our environment, qualities of awareness, respect, cooperation and helpfulness).many people holding hands
filled with people that work towards an environmentally sustainable future practicing natural farming methods and utilising intelligent technology and design, reuse and recycling.
a community that strives to have a positive impact on individuals, wider society and on the environment.
a group of people that share understanding, processes and discoveries with the wider and global community (through papers, products and/or workshops).
a group embracing Social Sustainability by practicing nonviolence, cooperation, interdependence trust, mutual respect, awareness and caring for one’s self, each other and our environment.
a community that welcomes joy, acceptance, trust, gratitude, abundance and celebration
a community that values energy spent on improving interpersonal communication and deepening our connections to each other and the world around us.
a community that has a holistic approach to health care, seeking to integrate many healing modalities and traditions into our lives.
a group that does not adhere to any particular religion, but encourages and supports each other to grow in awareness along our own spirit
About Us…
We are a group of dedicated people who recognise the need for change; particularly with our beautiful planet facing major crisis such as climate change, decreasing food security, land fragmentation, economic collapse and social unrest.
With our combined life experiences, insights and knowledge, we feel living sustainably in a mutually supportive and cooperative system of shared custodianship is one answer to these issues: moving from “this land is my land” to “we are one with the land”, from private ownership to sharing.
As ever increasing land fragmentation and degradation occurs we are determined to be a part of the ever growing community dedicated to growing foods with minimal impact on the earth. One of our aims is to sustainably provide our food by organic, biodynamic and biological methods utilising smart land care practises such as Permaculture design. We are keen and enthusiastic gardeners and several of our members have extensive agricultural and farm management experience.
We want to contribute to the wider community and global community, as a model of sustainability by sharing understanding, processes and discoveries (through papers, products and/or workshops). Kanjini Co-Op has several very dedicated members who already use smart solutions to contemporary problems such as electricity generation. We are a group that utilises intelligent technology and design and practises reuse and recycling.
We are committed to creating abundance while being sensitive to our ecological footprint. We are dedicated to providing affordable housing and opportunities for income for our members. Our recognition of the Earths’ finite resources encourage us to be innovative.
We welcome joy, acceptance, trust, gratitude, abundance and celebration for we all feel very blessed to be here now at such a tumultuous but exciting time for the planet. We embrace Social Sustainability by practicing nonviolence, cooperation, interdependence trust, mutual respect, awareness and caring for one’s self and each other.
We respect the need for privacy while maintaining a commitment to community.
We sing, dance, laugh and celebrate together to enhance and foster love, friendship, fun, tolerance, trust and truth.
We commit to honesty with each other, clear communication and peaceful methods of conflict resolution.
We share knowledge, creativity and skills and intend that all our interactions to be imbued with compassion, respect, caring, warmth and affection to create an environment conducive to fostering the fullest development of human potential.
Kanjini Co-Op ~ The Beginnings
In January 2006 a dear friend of ours, Mia, called a meeting of like-minded people with the intention to create a Cooperative to buy some land together.
There were several people at the meeting who were interested simply because they couldn’t afford to buy their own house. Most of this group wanted individual ownership, so they could borrow money against their share of the land.
The rest of the people liked the idea of equal members owning a Cooperative which in turn owns the land and all major assets. The latter group continued to meet on a more or less regular basis.
Why We Chose a Cooperative not a Company
A company and many other legal entities give one vote for each dollar invested, while a Co-Op gives one vote to each member, no matter how many dollars that person has invested (Kanjini Co-Op does give other incentives to investors). A company can never get rid of a shareholder, no matter how obnoxious, while a Co-Op can expel members who do not abide by the rules. A company cannot charge its shareholders (for example to cover operating costs), while a Co-Op can levy membership fees.
After considering these and other differences between a Company and a Cooperative, it was agreed that one-vote-one-person is much better suited to a people-friendly organisation than one-vote-one-dollar. A cooperative was much more suited to our intent to pool our energies, be they financial or physical or creative, so we can live, work and celebrate together.
It was also decided very early that we did not want to allow a situation where the bank owns our land, so we restricted the capacity of the Co-Op to borrow money to less than 10% of its assets (unless its very existence would be threatened otherwise).
Soon the importance of sustainability came into the discussions.
We agreed that western society cannot keep living the way it currently does, without destroying the planet. We wanted to start living in a much more sustainable way.
We noticed that big business and the media have an interest in the fragmentation of society. If they can get everyone to live by themselves, by pushing individualism, they can sell their news and their products to more households.
We decided that we want to re-discover the joys and advantages of communal living, which is also less resource hungry and better for our environment.
Last not least it is more fun and less work for everyone if we live together and share.
We recognised the importance of creating our own food and electricity in order to not have to rely on an economic system that might collapse any time.
In meeting after meeting our vision emerged.
Once we knew what we wanted to do together, we looked at what we needed to do to create a Cooperative designed to make that vision come true.
Becoming a Cooperative
To register a Cooperative we needed many different documents, so we set about to create them all.
The Queensland government offers a set of model rules, which we worked our way through to change and adapt them so they would be better suited for our intentions. After many month of sometimes quite tedious meetings we came up with our Kanjini-rules.
We created a share structure that would allow anyone interested in our vision to become a member.
Our introductory shares will allow people to start as a member with as little as a $2000 deposit, providing they commit to paying the rest off or the Co-Op agrees to them working it off.
For people with lots of money who wish to invest more than the basic full share, we created investment shares.
Next we had to create the Disclosure Statement, which outlines very clearly what the primary and secondary activities of the Co-Op are and what members can expect to receive from the Co-Op as well as what the Co-Op expects from its members.
This document is a bit like a company prospectus.
The Disclosure Statement required us to also create several annexes to it and we added a few more:
Labour and Food Schedule
Maintenance Contribution Schedule
Rights and Liabilities
Property, Assets and Improvement Schedule
Business Plan
Conflict Resolution
Kanjini Vision
As you might be able to appreciate, to create and fine-tune all those documents in meetings with three to twelve people took quite a long time. In fact it took us three and a half years, a lot longer then we anticipated. Consequently we did not tell many people about our plans, since having even more people at the meetings would have slowed us down even further.
Throughout the whole process we strived for unanimous decisions and as far as I am aware we achieved this aim.
No decisions were made if there were less then than three people came to a meeting (which happened very rarely) and all documents and changes were emailed to all interested people before being fi finally adopted.
While the people coming to the meetings changed, everyone made some contributions to the final documents and we wish to take this opportunity to thank everyone who was involved in the birth of Kanjini Co-Op.
We also made sure that we had a good cross section of potential member (for example some people with lots and others with no money).
All of the above documents were discussed at least twice and all were adopted unanimously.
In early 2009, when most of the documents were nearly finished, we decided to set a date for our foundation meeting and we choose the 20.09.2009, just because it is a cool date and adds up to 22, a master number in numerology.
In about April, Shiralee started on our Kanjini.org website, which went live on the 29.06.2009.
We started spreading the word and were thrilled that we received over a dozen enquiries from potential members in the first month. We have put some small ads into different magazines and hope for more people to join us in this exciting venture!
We look forward to sharing the Kanjini Co-Op Vision with you.
