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The Goodenough
Community
Initiative 1
of The
American Association for the Furtherance of Community
The first initiative
of the American Association for the Furtherance of Community  was
to create a demonstration of its ideals--The Goodenough Community.
This would-be community
established a council and selected leadership. Their name came to them
from studying literature on mental health, there finding the importance
of each person choosing to learn and to heal—to be helped. The
community they desired would be created by a kindly and generous
response to the needs of their own lives. In a first step they ran
across the statement by D.W. Winnicott, a pediatrician and a military
psychiatrist during World War II, who observed that some orphaned
children pined away and died unreached by anyone’s efforts while other
orphans allowed some nurse or physician to comfort and assist them.
Dr. Winnicott
stated that it was clear that for a child to survive that child must
allow someone to be a good enough mother, father, caretaker. The
declaration of themselves a Goodenough Community came partly as a
pledge to allow themselves to receive individually what they—together as
community—offered as service. Another nuance of the name Goodenough
is that these founding members wanted to research and experiment with
models for organizing themselves and in so doing they were not aiming
for perfection as much as exploring without judgment processes that
worked “good enough”.
The Goodenough Community was the first project
developed by the American Association for the Furtherance of Community
and it continues because developing human potential is central to their
mission. This community remains an educational organization that has
researched, experimented, and documented its life for 27 years.
If you find your self
interested in any aspect of our work, and want to become more involved,
please email
office@goodenough.org) to continue a dialogue with us. If the
telephone is more to your liking, call (206) 323-4653.
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The
Goodenough Community
System |
