#YearOfCommunity - Your questions: What is the structure of the community? How do they function from the legal point of view?
As for previous questions, there is no universal answer and we will focus on what we know about Arterra Bizimodu. Arterra structure is based on sociocracy (see the article linked below) and to get a little bit deeper into it, we will focus in this post on circles - how do you choose them and to which we belong.
Every task in sociocracy is implemented by a small group of people called a circle. There are more than thirty circles in Arterra right now and they are organised in a horizontal, flexible structure (you can see it here). Every person is expected to join 2-3 operational circles (which are those that really do the work on the ground, fulfilling everyday tasks) and with time also 1 management circle.
While choosing your operational circles, you should take into consideration 3 factors:
What are you good at? Where can you contribute the most to?
What do you want to learn?
What does the community need at the moment?
The ideal would be if you belong to one circle in which you are an expert and you can fully contribute to the task and one from which you want to learn. When we arrived we immediately got to know which circles needed more people and we strongly considered that in our choices.
Right now we both belong to 3 different circles.
Anna is part of:
International Projects - responsible for creating and implementing international projects, they also partially take care of international volunteers who come to Arterra for around 8 months.
Aterpe - responsible for the accommodation of volunteers, visits and events participants.
Health, hygiene and beautification - responsible for cleaning common spaces and making them more pleasant.
Andrea is a part of:
Kitchen - responsible for running our common kitchen, where we prepare everyday lunches for the whole community.
Exteriores - responsible for outside spaces, making them clean, functional and pleasant.
Maintenance - responsible for maintaining our common spaces and equipment.
Answering the second part of the question, right now Arterra status is that of an association, although not all members belong to it. There are big changes coming up now and they are considering creating a cooperative.