Project Overview

Driving principles, frameworks, and research for a more enlightened society.

Driving Principles

These are the driving principles of The Civic Enlightenment Project (CEP), including its model, its framework, and the research being conducted:

  • Community hubs should focus on particular domains and should coordinate with each other

    The seeds of renewal are being planted by community-based organizations and their local affiliates, but it is not possible for any single one of them to cover all of a community’s needs. These hubs might begin by focusing on some highly important matter such as encouraging civic engagement, promoting democratic resilience, or some other core need, but they finding that this cannot really be accomplished unless they work to help the people in their community to develop information evaluation and sensemaking skills, collaborative skills, relational skills, communication skills, collective decision making literacy, etc. Seeing these additional needs, some community-based groups are expanding the scope of their work to include more areas and functions. As the scope of their work increases, this can make their work too complicated and difficult to manage. Indeed, holistic community development is an admirable goal, but no single organization can cover all of the needed bases. Instead, these organizations and hubs can coordinate and weave with each other so that every needed service would be provided by some group, but that no one of them would take on too much burden. This is why CEP has adapted Hanzi Freinacht’s Montesquieu 2.0 model, with its decentralized model of political functions, and applied it to civil society through networks of hubs and meta-hubs.

  • Inner developmental practices should be a part of the overall process of community development

    Many community-based organizations that are focused on saving democracy are not realizing the importance of inner development practices. Some of them tend to focus heavily on cognitive and mental processes for information evaluation and voter mobilization. Having inner development processes in the loop is essential. This is where partnership with the Inner Development Goals and their network of local hubs focused specifically on inner development work, is important.

  • Knowledge-based institutions need to be strengthened

    Community development and civic engagement organizations have a very difficult job because so many people are doing poor public sensemaking. This owes much to the weakness and dysfunction of knowledge-based institutions whose role is to gather, scrutinize, analyze, and curate information. This includes news and media organizations, schools, universities, think tanks, and some governmental agencies. Ideally, these institutions would contribute to a healthy information ecosystem. If these institutions are corrupt, ossified, elitist, or captured by nefarious agents who are actively and aggressively propagating disinformation then the information ecosystem becomes unhealthy and civic culture consequently also suffers greatly. Therefore, it is important to put efforts toward improving knowledge-based institutions. The CEP team has conducted research into sensemaking processes and is working to strengthen knowledge-based institutions and create a more vibrant and healthy information ecosystem. 

  • We need better visibility into existing local community organizing efforts

    There is a lack of understanding of what others are doing in communities and how these efforts might be interwoven and made complementary. What are the organizations? What are they doing? What is their functional area? What is their scope of work? Where do they operate? Do they have multiple hubs in different cities and regions? Are they mostly virtual and online? This is where network ecosystem mapping is useful.

  • We need to be able to measure impact across many dimensions

    There is a lack of understanding of how to measure positive impact on communities, on people’s lives, and on overall democratic institutional strength. Impact should not be reduced to a single dimension and this should take into account a diverse range of considerations, including the individual level, the behavioral level, the relational level, and the systems level. This is where the MetaImpact framework, with its quadruple bottom-line (people, planet, profit, and purpose) is very useful.

  • This is not just domestic – it is international and global

    Within the USA, organizations aiming to promote civic health are mostly focused on domestic considerations. We would benefit from taking a more international approach, which would see democracy, free speech, and the rule of law being threatened in many countries. There are also interdependencies across countries that are important to consider. This is where connections with the Institute of Applied Metatheory and its efforts to create a global action network, are helpful.

  • We need more advanced academic research

    Many civic health efforts are driven by the private and nonprofit sectors and do not have significant connections with academia. There are opportunities for civic health efforts to be partially driven or overseen by academic institutions so as to provide domain expertise, advanced research capacities, and the ability to connect more directly with values-aligned governmental organizations and elected officials.

  • Systems thinking and metacrisis considerations are essential

    Civic health efforts are often focused on building democracy, improving news and information, engaging citizens, and community development, but they do not as often have sufficient considerations for systems and complexity, including the deep interdependency of government, the natural environment, technology, psychological well-being, and other complex phenomena. Considerations for system-wide threats, challenges, and crises to human civilization and the health of the biosphere are in the domain of metacrisis studies. This is where it is important and helpful that this CEP has connections with the other initiatives within Eudaimonia Institute, including the Strategic Metacrisis Mapping Initiative, Integrative Approaches to the Global Metacrisis, and Visionary Realism & the Metacrisis.

Who We Are

The Civic Enlightenment Project addresses fundamental challenges threatening free societies: breakdown of socio-cultural fabric and institutional decay amid weaponized news, distrust, and hyper-partisanship. We promote peaceful, flourishing communities through coordinated hub networks integrating civic engagement with inner development practices.

We create coordinated networks of local hubs using a “separation of concerns” model where each hub specializes in critical areas:

Our Innovation: Weaving among civil society hubs to create “meta-hubs” and to provide regional coordination that balances local autonomy with strategic oversight, creating multiplier effects that strengthen all civic initiatives.

Defining Success

We define success as the emergence of communities that can navigate complexity with both wisdom and compassion and where citizens have developed enhanced capacities for sensemaking and constructive dialogue (Clear + Deep Impact), where diverse groups have built authentic relationships and trust across difference (Wide Impact), and where local democratic institutions and civic infrastructure have become more resilient and effective (High Impact). Ultimate success means communities that can address their own challenges through coordinated collective intelligence while maintaining the inner awareness and relational foundation necessary for sustainable peace and democratic flourishing. 

Our Theory of Change

The Problem: Democratic societies face interconnected threats—institutional decay, information ecosystem dysfunction, weakened social fabric, and hyper-partisanship—that no single organization can address alone.

Root Causes: Organizations taking on too much (scope creep), neglect of inner development, weak knowledge institutions, fragmented efforts, lack of coordination, and insufficient systems thinking.

Our Solution Mechanism: Create a coordinated network architecture using “separation of concerns” via specialized local hubs connected through meta-hubs.

How Change Happens Across Three Horizons

Two Loops Model Integration

Dominant System Loop (Declining)

  • The hub network acknowledges current democratic/civic systems are in decline but not yet dead
  • Works strategically within this system while managing expectations about its limitations
  • Supports those managing the transition away from extractive or harmful institutional patterns

Emergent System Loop (Rising)

  • Naming & Connecting Pioneers: Identify and network innovators
  • Nourishing Communities of Practice: Meta-hubs provide resources and coordination
  • Illuminating Success: Amplify stories of successful new models
  • Fostering Critical Connections: Focus on relationships among pioneers

Strategic Multiplier Effects

  1. Specialization increases effectiveness – Each hub does one thing well rather than everything poorly
  2. Coordination creates network emergence – Interconnected hubs become more than the sum of their parts
  3. Integration addresses root causes – Inner development + civic skills + information literacy work synergistically across all three horizons
  4. Infrastructure building lifts all boats – Better relational and developmental capacity helps both H1 reform efforts and H3 emergence
  5. Multi-scale coherence – Local autonomy + regional coordination + international partnerships create resilient, adaptive networks
  6. Bridge building transfers value – Connecting old and new systems ensures wisdom and resources flow bidirectionally

Ultimate Outcome: Peaceful, flourishing communities with resilient democratic institutions, healthy information ecosystems, and citizens equipped for both inner development and collective action.

Partnership Benefits

  • Hub Creation – Establish specialized hubs where your mission is needed most
  • Network Coordination – Meta-hub model to coordinate local affiliates effectively
  • Global Scaling – International partnership network for cross-cultural expansion
  • Technology Integration – Privacy-preserving coordination and information-sharing tools

Why Partner With CEP?

Effective Infrastructure – We create relational and developmental infrastructure that strengthens the entire civic ecosystem. Better community sensemaking, communication skills, and civic leadership makes every civic initiative more effective.

Broad Integration – Our model ensures holistic development. Local hubs maintain specialized focus while participating in coordinated action that amplifies collective impact across local, regional, and international levels.

Contact us to partner