The Good-Skookum Project
The Good-Skookum Project!
Overview
Our purpose at Sol Duc Leadership is simply to help develop the servant leaders, who will create, build, and grow, the innovative social ventures and nonprofit organizations, that are needed to help create a better world! In a sense we are an incubator for purpose-driven nonprofit social ventures
While we are excited about developing servant leaders, at the end of the day, our success is measured by the impact those leaders make, and by how many new and enduring great social ventures and nonprofit organizations they help create. We are currently focused on The Good Skookum Project.
The Good-Skookum Project
Overview
Our third Sol Duc Leadership initiative is The Good-Skookum Project. The idea for this project was developed by Dick Gourley during a personal retreat in Big Sur, during September 2008. At that time he was struggling with a long and difficult personal life transition. After many long walks in the rain on the Pacific Coast Highway, and on the many Big Sur Beaches, he concluded that “Life is often hard and discouraging!”
Unfortunately, life being hard was a new concept for him, since he had lived a very privileged life until then. Feeling the need to take action, he came up with the concept for a simple blog called Good-Skookum, using an early version of Typepad. And though he did not continue to post after April 2009, he learned a great deal from his time of reflection. In addition, he felt called to became an “Encourager” for individuals experiencing a difficult time in life. Dick was able to do that by quietly providing one-to-one care for life challenges, like grief, divorce, job loss, or chronic or terminal illness. He discovered that by being present and serving others, was a win-win for both his care receivers as well as himself. He did not realize he was planting the seeds for today’s Good-Skookum Project. Finally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he realized he could provide care virtually using Zoom and a private Online Community. In May, 2022, he created a minimum viable product (MVP) on Twitter, to facilitate customer discovery and validate the problem.
Our initial purpose is simply to help create a better world, by creating and operating the Good-Skookum Global Online Community that will encourage and serve others.
The community is being developed now on the Mighty Networks Community Platform and will go live on December 31, 2024.