1. Knowing which values we all share can help give a sense of unity, and empower us to put energy into achieving our goals, knowing that the people around us have the same vision.

2. We can use it as a yardstick to measure decisions we make – if a decision fits with the vision statement, then it has more value.

3. It clearly shows new members what we’re about.

For it to be meaningful and useful, it has to be in plain language, and represent all of our members. At the end of the day, Goolawah is what it’s members are. So Goolawah’s vision is the common vision of the individual members. We’ve all got different dreams for what the co-op should be, but the parts of the dream we have in common form our collective dream.

We’re not talking about what you think the co-op stands for right now, or what you think it might be like in 5 years time, I’m talking about what you want the co-op to be. In your ideal world, what would Goolawah be like? What values would it hold dearest? What things would happen here?

Sometimes it’s hard to separate values (ie. protecting the environment, or honesty) from actual things we want to see done, like building a community centre, so there are separate questions for each. While we’re at it, this is a good opportunity for us to reflect on the strengths that we currently have and can build upon, and the weaknesses that we need to work on.

This is the first step of the process, where a smaller number of people take part in the survey with open-ended questions. These questions will be compiled to make a second survey for as many people as possible to fill out, including closed questions and open-ended questions, to make it easier to put the most common answers together into a shared vision statement and reflection”.

To complete the survey go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XVVTG62