Motivation
I believe that community is one of the strongest sources of meaning in our lives. From our tribal roots where community meant survival, to the rise of ‘We are Human’ movements giving people a sense of togetherness in work and homes, to the shared religious rituals that create belonging and harmony, humans have always sought connection with one another. It’s never been easy, but today, it’s harder than ever.
Our lifestyles have become more and more individualistic. We drive everywhere, stay in our homes, and don’t talk to each other on the street. We lack third places – places outside of work and home where we can feel a sense of familiarity and new connection. An increasingly atheistic generation has forgotten the kind of belonging religion used to give us, and has failed to replace it. Worse: no one is talking about loneliness and its stigma.
Good communities incubate innovation and creativity – think of the salons in France where intellectuals used to meet to discuss the latest ideas; the Olympia Academy; la Bande de Picasso. A feeling of belonging allows people to be authentic, to move from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset, and to take risks knowing that they have people to support them.
This is what drives me to build communities that give people a sense of belonging and foster creation.
Product
iteration one: Project community
In the first community initiative I ran, we collected a group of around 10 people who met bi-weekly. Together, we experimented with authentic relating games, brainstorms on topics such as ‘What is it that makes us happy, and how can we integrate that into our lives at university?’ and finding and solving our bottlenecks together.
Iteration 2: Meraki Collective
The Meraki Collective is a coworking community that I co-founded at the University of Pennsylvania. The goal is to create a space for people to resist the pre-professional pressures and instead, work on side projects that they’re excited about. We have weekly coworking sessions and regular events. Events we’ve run in the past include a TED-talk style event, a dinner on artificial intelligence, and a large informal gathering centered around the question: ‘What are you most excited about right now?” We have gathered a community of > 60 students, and have become a hub where people share events and projects they’re working on.
The first iteration petered out after a semester, but gave me a lot of insights on community building. These helped ensure that Meraki Collective was a lot more successful. Some of these learnings include:
You have to strike the right balance between organic and structured. In the first attempt, I had such a rigid vision that I stifled the community from becoming what it organically wanted to be. With Meraki Collective, we have experimented a lot and allowed the community to drive the instantiation of the vision. For example, we’ve tried many different event structures and stuck with the ones that people resonated with the most.
Institutionalization is valuable. I wanted Project Community to be its own initiative outside of the realm of Penn. However, ignoring the environment you’re in and trying to operate in a vaccuum doesn’t work. With the Meraki Collective, we’re acknowledging that members of the community are Penn students with time constraints and certain worldviews. To change the culture at a large institution like Penn, you have to change small elements and slowly build a movement rather than trying to operate in a radically different space.
