TenTogether Story

Heath Arensen, founder of TenTogether

The world is shifting, we can all feel it. From politics, to technology, to culture, to planetary boundaries. Should we be afraid, hopeful, or both? I choose hope. What we do know is that much will change.

TenTogether is a vision for what a new future system, one with people at the center, might look like. It is a piece in the puzzle of a much larger emergence. It is one part experimental, but at the same time confident in the path.

TenTogether is built on the belief that humans at their core were designed to create, to bring new things into the world. When you ask someone if they have a dream, you will usually see a spark of energetic excitement. Most of us have a dream. And this dream, this inner push to create something, tends to be unique to each person. But how many people ever get to truly bring their creation into the world? The barriers of time, money, and most importantly — belief that it can be done — keep these dreams just dreams.

TenTogether's aim is to bring more ideas into the world. These ideas start within a person, almost like they have emerged from a source deep within and sometimes seemingly from beyond. What would happen if more of these ideas came into the world? Because each holds a uniqueness, while being similar to others, there becomes a web of interconnected and organically decentralized coordination between them.

When individuals are resourced to bring their ideas to life, and then remain in connection through purposeful community and organized integration with the creation of others, a new system organically emerges. This is TenTogether. Simply, it is the resourcing of individuals to bring their creations to life, the systems of coordination between what emerges, and a community building and owning together.

TenTogether is reminiscent of our earliest structure of cooperation, the village. It is a community of purpose working with shared values towards a common future. An infinitely connectable world and a focus on the individual within it has eroded the value of smaller cooperative communities. The village as it was is gone. But through new ways of working and intentional design, the value of the village can return.

TenTogether is a model for building new villages. This is the inspiration for the name — ten together rather than one alone. It is organizing more things collectively rather than as individuals. It doesn't have to be ten, but it is more than one. There are things in life that belong to an individual, others to groups, and some for everyone.

It will start as a community, building common understanding and encouraging the collective to create. As the community grows, we imagine a fund to resource creation, and new ways to build, share, and sustain what matters together.

Togetherness inspires me. When living in Kenya, I used to volunteer weekly at an orphanage. Our activity would usually just be to bring a ball and play football. Most of the children were barefoot, adeptly navigating the thorny and rocky soil. There was a day when one of the young boys received a gift from a relative, a pair of shoes. What I saw next would impact me in ways I still don't have words for. He took one shoe and put it on. He then took the other shoe and gave it to his friend. With smiles they ran onto the soccer pitch, with one foot bare, the other protected. They still had one foot exposed to pain, but there was joy in the sharing. There was not a thought of ownership, no this is mine. Just, this is ours.

Can we think about ownership differently? Can we think of wealth differently? Can we shift from mine to ours?

This is the village. The village is community. The village recognizes that we are not individuals floating through life disconnected and alone but that at our core we are designed for connection. Designed to create, to know, to give, to respect, to love. The village has people, but it is not only people. The village is rooted and sustained by nature. The forest, the fields, the river. A village is an organizing system for life.

TenTogether challenges current systems, looking them in the eyes and saying, we can do better. We need a vision of markets that sees creation and wealth not as held primarily by individuals but more in the custodianship of communities.

This is the future we are building toward. It begins with people. It begins with you.