Human Relations  Lab
August 10 -16, 2008

Compassion is the radicalism of our time.
His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

About Us

Mission Statement
Our mission is to show it is possible to create a sustainable community with the many layers of
culture and organization required for the development of mature, healthy human beings over a whole life, and that it is possible to enjoy doing this by using learning games.

A Brief History
In January 1981, after a dozen years of developmental work, Dr. John L. Hoff and his wife, Colette Hoff, M.Ed. called together a group of 105 people to consider how to be more facilitative of people interested in community. The group caught a vision of the need for communities and within weeks incorporated as the American Association for the Furtherance of Community. The Association currently has 25 shareholding members. The Association was formed to discover and apply the best strategies for developing people and utilizing small groups for personal and social change. The founding group decided to develop a demonstration community. They explored models for community development and chose one for a longer, deeper study. Thus was formed the Goodenough Community, the Association’s first demonstration project. In the search for a name, the term goodenough, first coined by D.W. Winnicott, a British pediatrician and psychiatrist, came to mind. He claimed that no orphan child survived who did not allow in the love of a caretaker—what Winnicott called “a goodenough mother.”