Introducing *The Civic Enlightenment Project* and soliciting feedback

This meetup group, along with some others, is now a part of a Sacramento-based pilot for civil society community organizing. At this event, we want to introduce this new initiative (as described below), explain how the meetup groups relate to it, and solicit your feedback.

This is being organized by The Civic Enlightenment Project (CEP), which is an initiative of the Eudaimonia Institute, a recently created 501c3 nonprofit organization headquartered in Nevada City, California. CEP aims to address the fundamental challenges that are threatening free and open societies: the breakdown of the socio-cultural fabric and institutional decay in our era of weaponized news, distrust, and hyper-partisanship. Our mission is to promote peaceful, well-informed, and flourishing communities through a unique approach that integrates civic engagement with inner development practices.

What sets us apart is our coordination model between hub networks at local, national, and international levels. Unlike scattered individual initiatives, we're building an interconnected system where local hubs can share resources, coordinate efforts, and amplify impact through strategic alignment. Our hub coordination model, which involves what we call “meta-hubs”, provides a process that can give greater impact to other civic initiatives because it builds on relational and developmental capacities.

We employ a separation of concerns model with specialized hub types, including those that are focused specifically on certain community needs such as civic engagement, sensemaking, inner awareness, trust building, meaning making, and material well-being. The idea is that each hub would have its own distinct functions while maintaining integration with others so as to collectively provide a foundation for bildung, which is a word that refers to holistic community development, self-cultivation, and transformative life-long learning.

Software development is an important aspect of this. Through connections with partner organizations that are developing technologies for privacy-preserving coordination and information-sharing, we have access to tools that could dramatically improve efficiency and enable secure and generative collaboration between hubs. We work to weave together online and in-person connections and our efforts emphasize face-to-face relationship building while leveraging digital coordination.
We recognize that civic health challenges transcend borders. Our international focus involves partnering with established nonprofits to create and foster more local hubs in various cities, regions, and countries.

Trusted Information and Institutions: Our partner sensemaking hubs directly address misinformation and weaponized news by teaching citizens critical thinking skills, information evaluation techniques, and how to distinguish credible sources from unreliable ones. In partnership with other organizations, we are helping to incubate such hubs in cities and regions where they are needed most. We strengthen institutional trust by building bridges between communities and civic institutions through improved dialogue and understanding.
Strengthening Civic Spaces: Our core mission centers on creating and coordinating physical and relational civic spaces through local hubs that bring diverse community members together for meaningful engagement. We specialize in building the social infrastructure that makes all other civic activities more effective.
Elections and Governance: Our civic engagement hubs focus on democratic participation, voter education, and governance literacy. We develop civic leadership across all sectors and create informed, engaged citizens who can participate constructively in democratic processes and hold institutions accountable.
Civic Tech and Measurement: Through partnerships with technology developers, we're building coordination tools for hub networks while pioneering comprehensive impact measurement using the MetaImpact Framework. Our approach to measuring civic health across multiple dimensions contributes to the broader civic tech ecosystem.

We define success as the emergence of communities that can navigate complexity with both wisdom and compassion and where citizens have developed enhanced capacities for sensemaking and constructive dialogue (Clear + Deep Impact), where diverse groups have built authentic relationships and trust across difference (Wide Impact), and where local democratic institutions and civic infrastructure have become more resilient and effective (High Impact). Ultimate success means communities that can address their own challenges through coordinated collective intelligence while maintaining the inner awareness and relational foundation necessary for sustainable peace and democratic flourishing.