Creating a Mission Statement and Defining a Set of Guiding Principles

Our first task is to define, with absolute clarity and deep conviction, the purpose of the community. An effective statement of purpose will be a clear, commonly understood statement of that which identifies and binds the community together as worthy of pursuit. When properly done, it can usually be expressed in a single sentence. Participants will say about the purpose, "If we could achieve that, my life would have meaning."

Along with a mission statement, we need to agree on principles by which those involved will be guided in pursuit of that purpose. Principles typically have high ethical and moral content. The best will be descriptive, not prescriptive, and each principle will illuminate the others. Taken as a whole, together with the purpose, the principles constitute the body of belief that will bind the community together and against which all decisions and acts will be judged.

MissionStatementWorkspace

Here is where we will flesh out ideas for NCDD's mission statement.

BackgroundInfoOnMission

This link leads to information about how people have been introduced to NCDD up to this point and what we think is lacking about this. It also includes some thoughts about why NCDD's work is important, and some other info about NCDD's goals and work so far.

OtherGroupsMissionStatements

This link leads to some sample mission statements we might want to look at as food for thought and examples of what we might do. We can also put mission statements here that we want to be careful not to duplicate.