Consulting & Advisory
Policy advisory, commissioned research, relational-ethics review, program design, evaluation, and training — for governments, the UN system, universities, hospitals, and other NGOs.
Serendip Commons Society
Towards Relational Being
Where encounters become serendipity, and relationships work wonders.
A non-profit corporation cultivating the conditions for relational being, shared meaning, ethical co-existence, and co-creation.
Why we exist
Purpose
So that no one is left alone with what they cannot bear alone — and no one is cut off from what they could only become together.
Vision
A world where no one is left alone — where what is heavy is shared, where meaning is made together, and where people become themselves in relation, even across distance, asymmetry, and vulnerability.
Mission
Serendip Commons Society's mission is to cultivate the conditions for relational being, shared meaning, ethical co-existence, and co-creation — through international research, development, technical assistance, education, and cross-sector partnership.
People, institutions, and meanings do not exist first and form relationships afterward. They come to be through their relationships. Much of modern life is built as if the opposite were true — and in the name of efficiency and scale, it can sever the very relations of care it was meant to serve. We take the opposite starting point.
What we do
Our activities serve one end: to support, develop, and complete the seven infrastructures of relational being. In practice, that takes four forms.
Research & Development
We develop infrastructure ourselves: methods, curricula, indicators, frameworks, and — where it serves a relation — technology. Open-source in principle.
Development Support
We help partners build their own relational infrastructure: co-design, technical and methodological support, and long-term stewardship.
Deployment
We help put working infrastructure into real settings — care facilities, schools, institutions — and study, in the open, what actually happens.
We work in the open. Process is shared, reflection is collective, infrastructure is built together — so anyone can follow a project, observe it, and respond.
The Seven Infrastructures
By infrastructure we mean the durable conditions that let relational being be understood, happen, be sustained, and continue. Here is what each one means, in plain terms.
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Understanding clearly how people are actually connected to one another.
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Understanding why people in our age feel increasingly lonely and unseen.
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Letting people who are far apart, lying in a hospital bed, or living alone still feel that someone is near.
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Keeping a person's own voice audible in the decisions that shape their fate — care, welfare, education, justice — not only the data.
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Letting different people — including those with disabilities, the very old, those who struggle to express themselves — make something together, rather than be left out.
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Teaching the next generation how to truly listen and how to live in relationship — not only how to test and compete.
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Sustaining a relationship when it cannot be repaid in kind — when the other is fragile and depends on you.
Projects
Each infrastructure is carried by concrete projects. Every project is shown with its abstract and — where available — its proposal, reports, and disclosures, so anyone can follow the work in the open.
Projects will appear here as they are opened to the public.
Participate
We work with three circles: the institutions we partner with, the people who care about a particular question, and the people our work ultimately serves. Participation here is project-level and relational: you take part in a specific project's work and network, close to the people and the question.
Follow a project
Subscribe to a specific project and receive its open progress log — daily or weekly.
Join a project
Take part in a specific project rather than the org in general — early co-presents become, e.g., first testers of a care system, named in the work.
Become a member
Join the Society as a participating member and help shape its direction.
Volunteer a skill
Translation, design, research, or development — matched to a project that needs it.
Read & subscribe
Follow our publications and open outputs as they are released.
Publications
Our research, organization documents, and disclosures. Most are works in progress — click through to see what's planned.
Latest
Placeholder entries — a live news feed will replace these.
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This site launched as a working draft.
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Mission, vision, and the seven-infrastructure framework drafted.
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Serendip Commons Society established as a non-profit corporation in Delaware.
Organization
Serendip Commons Society — a non-profit corporation registered in Delaware, USA, working internationally. Details below are provisional.
the Serendip Institute
Our research arm — the “raft” that builds the theoretical and conceptual infrastructures and our early evidence base.
Toward Serendip Commons
Our long-term direction: an open, co-created commons that grows out of transparent process rather than being declared.
Members & partners
Members, volunteers, and partner institutions across several countries.
Governance
Transparent and participatory by design; representative structure and decision records to be published.
People
The people behind Serendip Commons Society. Select someone to see more.
Get in touch
Registered in Delaware, USA · working internationally. For partnerships, research, or participation, we would be glad to hear from you.