Reimagining Communities as Social Enterprises: The First Step No One Talks About

Over the past years, I’ve been part of a foundation and community in the north of the Netherlands—just outside Leeuwarden—caring for a piece of land and experimenting with offgrid living. Due to a series of events, we found ourselves not only maintaining the community, but reimagining and restarting it entirely.

This process invited us to ask deeper questions: What does a community need to truly hold people? How do we design something inclusive, alive, and deeply rooted in nature? How do we build from the ground up—starting not with roles or outputs, but with presence, trust, and a shared purpose?

This project has been pulling on my experiences with inclusion, diversity, regenerative leadership models—and my work with nature, where the cycles of growth, rest, and regeneration offer wisdom about how people grow, too.

And through all this, one insight has stood out more clearly than any other: there’s a crucial step that happens before someone can take part in the labor market. And we’re not paying enough attention to it.

The Step Before the First Step

When we talk about social enterprises, we often think in terms of job creation, skills training, or economic empowerment. But what if we’re starting too late in the story?

Before someone can step into a job, a course, or even a team, they often need something more foundational: a reason to leave the house, a chance to reconnect, to rebuild trust in themselves and others.

That’s where community comes in—not just as a passive backdrop, but as an active catalyst for growth, confidence, and social re-entry.

In our community project, we saw firsthand how powerful this “first activation stage” can be. For people marginalized not just in the labor market, but in society itself, the community became the first place they felt seen, useful, and human again.

This is the role of community we so often overlook—and the one we urgently need to reclaim.

What Makes This Different? Rethinking Community for the 21st Century

In the past, communities were ecosystems—places where people of all ages and walks of life supported one another, lived together, and created a social fabric that held them through change and crisis.

Today, that fabric is fraying. Community has become siloed: retirement homes, religious communes, co-living experiments. These spaces have value, but they rarely function as the backbone of society the way traditional communities once did.

And yet in the age of "social media", our need for connection has only grown. Many people feel lonely, disoriented, or unsure of how to re-engage with society. That’s where this reimagined community comes in—one that doesn't just provide a place to be, but a place to become.

What if we built communities as social enterprises—not because they serve a single group, but because they activate human potential through connection?

The How: Communities as Ecosystems of Mutual Support

In most social enterprises, the model revolves around serving a particular group—refugees, people with disabilities, the long-term unemployed. And many communities also tend to form around shared identity.

But in the community we’ve been shaping, we took a different approach - it is not unique in this, but I briefly want to lay it out.

We welcomed people of all ages and life situations: students in their 20s, people in their 70s, full-time workers, retirees, those healing from burnout or navigating mental health challenges. Some come to work in the garden, reconnect with nature, others to connect with people, and some simply to be and eat some soup.

And here’s the most important part: we don’t label anyone.

Everyone is welcomed and celebrated simply for showing up. That alone becomes the first step of transformation. As people begin to show up regularly, something shifts. Confidence builds. Skills emerge. People take initiative—not because they have to, but because they want to.

Growth here isn’t linear. Sometimes it’s steady. Sometimes it’s a cha-cha-cha: two steps forward, one step back. That’s not just accepted—it’s expected. Because we’re not trying to move people from point A to point B. We’re offering a place to just be—and to be accepted as you are.

Letting It Emerge: Peer Leadership, Co-Creation & a Living System

What holds this together is not rigid structure, but light-touch coordination. We practice peer leadership—shared responsibility, co-created norms, mutual care. The structure is living and flexible, always adapting to what’s needed now.

Everyone can contribute in a way that fits who they are and where they’re at. One day that might be helping with the land. Another day, it might just be showing up and listening. Both are welcome. Both are valuable.

This makes the model incredibly human—but also precarious. We don’t receive government subsidies. There’s no formal safety net. And yet, that’s what makes the project feel so alive.

There is a business case underneath all of this—still evolving, still being shaped—but one that could be sustained through community participation, circular economies, and non-governmental support. The value this community provides isn’t abstract—it’s tangible. People find healing, growth, friendship, and purpose here. That is worth investing in - and I'm not speaking about money alone.

A Foundation for True Participation

This is what I hope lands most clearly: If we want all people to be able to participate in the job market, we must first build the foundational layers that make participation possible.

These foundational layers—of confidence, safety, connection, and belonging—used to be held by villages, neighbors, families. Many of those systems have broken down. But that doesn’t mean we can’t rebuild them. We can—and we must.

Reimagining community as a social enterprise isn’t just a nice idea—it’s a necessary act of regeneration and participation. It’s the step before the first step. I feel deeply grateful to be in a position where I can experiment, sow seeds of possibility, and learn from what grows. I don’t have all the answers, and I’m not sure exactly where this path will lead. But I’m here for the journey—with openness to share, connect, and keep learning together. And when we do that—together—so much more becomes possible.

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Want to know more about the project, check out our website. If you want to know more about me and my work, check out my website or get yourself on the waitlist for Wild Wisdom, a training to empowering changemakers, leaders, coaches and consultants with nature-inspired tools.