WE Share Charter & Guiding Principles
Preamble
We share projects. We share guiding principles.
The WeShare initiative exists to support the Waiheke Island community by co-creating a resilient, holistic, and community-owned infrastructure that centers on energy sovereignty, financial wellbeing, environmental stewardship, and shared governance. This Charter and Guiding Principles document replaces all previous drafts and integrates the foundational intentions, aspirations, and protections required to deliver this vision with integrity, transparency, and care.
SECTION 1: PURPOSE AND INTENT
This Charter and Guiding Principles set forth the shared commitments, foundational agreements, values, and vision for WeShare. Our initiative is built on trust, community empowerment, sustainability, and respect for natural systems. We support diverse voices, healthy debate, and a continuous evolution of structure and strategy based on lived experience and emergent needs.
WeShare is committed to:
– Building a community-owned, financially sustainable energy infrastructure.
– Supporting broader circular economy initiatives including housing, food systems, transport, and communications.
– Grounding all decision-making in shared values, consent-based governance, and full transparency.
SECTION 2: GUIDING PRINCIPLES
All actions, decisions, and meetings shall follow these principles:
- Community Energy Resilience: Empowering individuals and neighborhoods through decentralised, renewable, and secure energy systems.
- Natural Stewardship: Prioritising the health of ecosystems, biodiversity, and spiritual connection to land and life.
- Bottom-Up Innovation: Valuing grassroots participation, knowledge-sharing, and participatory design in every stage of development.
- Open Access and Equity: Ensuring all community members have fair access to solutions, data, resources, and opportunity to participate.
- Regenerative Design: Creating systems that restore, replenish, and regenerate our natural, social, and economic environments.
- Consent-Based Governance: Ensuring decisions reflect the informed consent of stakeholders with no coercion, manipulation, or gatekeeping.
- Transparency and Accountability: Making operations, finances, and decisions accessible, trackable, and accountable to the public.
- Global Solidarity, Local Action: Supporting the global just transition while staying deeply rooted in local needs, capacities, and relationships.
SECTION 3: UNBREAKABLE AGREEMENTS
WeShare operates under foundational agreements that are non-negotiable:
- Community Ownership: At no time can any individual, business, or entity take ownership or control of WeShare or its assets. All assets remain permanently within community control.
- Non-Extractive Model: No decision or partnership shall be ratified that extracts value from the community without consent and equitable return.
- Environmental Integrity: All projects must lead to a net positive ecological impact. Harm to the natural world must be actively mitigated or avoided.
- Net Positive Community Benefit: All actions must measurably support the wellbeing, empowerment, and resilience of the Waiheke community.
- Independence from External Influence: WeShare remains politically and commercially independent, free from undue external pressures or interests.
SECTION 4: STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES
– Partnerships: Foster open partnerships with local, regional, and national groups while protecting community sovereignty.
– Independence: Build local knowledge, skills, and technology to maximise community self-sufficiency.
– Resilience: Design systems that endure economic, social, and climate disruptions.
– Knowledge Sharing: Aggregate, share, and reuse existing open-source knowledge.
– Innovation: Support development of open-source and blockchain-based tools for community management.
– Sustainability: Ensure interdependence between social, environmental, and financial ecosystems.
SECTION 5: OUR COMMITMENT
We commit to:
– Serving the collective interests of the Waiheke community.
– Nurturing holistic wellbeing—economic, spiritual, ecological, and personal.
– Creating a just and peaceful transition to resilient, inclusive systems.
– Remaining adaptive, transparent, and values-led in all we do.
SECTION 6: VALUES WE LIVE BY
– Awareness: Remaining attuned to the needs of the whole.
– Integrity: Keeping our word and honoring our agreements.
– Self-Development: Committing to continual personal and collective growth.
– Reciprocity: Doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.
– Generosity: Sharing knowledge, tools, and opportunities freely.
SECTION 7: EVOLVABILITY AND COLLECTIVE STEWARDSHIP
WeShare is a living system. All aspects of this charter are designed to evolve. No document, system, or structure is permanent if the community decides otherwise. Change occurs through open, collaborative, and consent-based processes.
> We do not seek to fight the existing system—we build the new, together.
Document Status: Living Charter & Guiding Principles, Version 1.0
Effective Date: June 2025