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Making the Rainiest Place in India Wet and Green Again!

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In October 2020 Sadhana Forest started its reforestation effort in Meghalaya, a state in northeast India, which is known for its hilly terrain and extremely high rainfall.

When we first came to Meghalaya we thought that our experience in water conservation and reforestation was not relevant. Then we started traveling the state and witnessed first-hand the massive deforestation, soil degradation, and the great challenges with the water supply. After a few more visits and a deeper understanding of the ground reality, we started working with the Government of Meghalaya on training local communities and demonstrating different water conservation and tree planting techniques. 

Our solar-powered deforestation bus

Two old wooden buses were turned into a mobile reforestation unit. They were fitted with a small kitchen, bathroom, and solar panels on top to meet the electrical needs of the team. With these buses our team of long-term volunteers drove across the state for one and a half years, working in 25 different villages.

Conducting training with local villagers

The focus of the team was on water conservation (swales proved to be very helpful on the sloped terrain), reforestation (using only native species), soil regeneration (using legumes that were chopped and dropped), and training. In every village, local people were trained in the aforementioned techniques. We planted only indigenous, food-bearing tree species, with the aim of improving food security in the area.

Our team lived very simply, staying in the villages, cooking for themselves, and sleeping in the buses and in tents. This made them very accessible to the local villagers, who welcomed them with open arms. The trainings were met with great enthusiasm, and in every village motivated volunteers stood up to continue the ecological restoration work after the departure of our team. The project was a great success and the Government has asked us to establish three permanent immersion centers in the state, one in each of the tribal regions: Garo, Khasi, and Jaintia hills. These centers will enable an immersive experience in nature and sustainable living and will provide training in water conservation and reforestation. A team from Sadhana Forest will live in each one of the centers and will interact with the local people and provide training.

Digging swales as a part of our water conservation work

If you are interested in making a long-term commitment and getting involved, you can email us at india@sadhanaforest.org. 

About the Author

Sadhana Forest is an international reforestation and water conservation volunteering organization. Sadhana Forest welcomes 1,500 volunteers per year that come and stay on sustainable vegan off-grid community campuses. It was founded in 2003 by Yorit and Aviram Rozin in India and later expanded to Haiti and Kenya, working on food security with local people living in drought-prone rural areas planting indigenous food-bearing trees. In 2020 a new project was started in Meghalaya, northeast India. Find out more about them on their website sadhanaforest.org.

Grounding: A Reflection After 20 Months of Living in Sun Clover Ecovillage

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This article was written by Luvian Iskandar.

When I first discovered the idea of ecovillages and saw existing ecovillage communities in various countries, I was instantly captivated. I became fascinated with how people choose to live together while intentionally and holistically designing their way of living upon shared values of regenerative living. I saw a community of people that understands the global socio-environmental problems (climate change, inequalities, etc.) we are facing and choose to take matters into their own hands instead of waiting for change to come.

For my master’s program, I wanted to study the development process of ecovillages as I had the feeling that I might be involved with one in the future. After looking around for feasible study sites around me (I was studying at National Dong Hwa University on the East Coast of Taiwan), I was introduced to a new ecovillage initiative called Sun Clover Ecovillage which was only two hours away from my campus. It is a community started by a husband and wife who moved to rural Taiwan from the city to build a space where people can live a more healthy lifestyle while cultivating a strong connection with each other and nature. For my research, I got the opportunity to join the initiative as a participant observer for eight months, being involved in all of the daily activities. 

Through my immersion there, I learned and experienced a lot about the things that happen in the initial stage of an ecovillage community and also developed a deep relationship with the Sun Clover family. In fact, I enjoyed my experience so much that I ended up back in Sun Clover and became a resident there for a year after I completed my studies. During that year, I feel that I grew and healed a lot as a human being. I feel more connected with myself, people, and the environment around me. I have just recently moved back home to Indonesia, so I thought it was a good time for me to share some of my experiences and reflections from the 20 months I spent in Sun Clover Ecovillage.

daily activities in Sun Clover include farming rice, food processing, cooking, eating, taking care of the baby, tidying up the house, taking care of our garden and chickens, building projects, and much more.

When I first came to Sun Clover, I came as an ecovillage enthusiast whose idea and experience of ecovillage came solely from articles, books, and videos I found online. I brought along with me my interpretation and imagination of how life would be completely different in an ecovillage from the way of living in the mainstream: how people live a very low impact lifestyle through living simply and intentionally, having a deep connection with nature, living in natural structures that mimic their surroundings, having food grown from our very own multi-variety gardens, living with a community of people that supports each other, practicing nonviolent communication all the time. My imagined version of an ecovillage definitely falls into the utopian side of the spectrum (not that that’s a bad thing) but with it, I also have this mentality “if I just go to an ecovillage, all of the world’s problems -as well as my own- will disappear!”.

Rice farming using natural farming methods

My experience of living in Sun Clover is very different from this imagined version. Being a new ecovillage initiative, Sun Clover is more like a family rather than a community of people. There were only the two co-founders and their baby when I first came (I was the first person who lived with them for an extended time). We were living in a regular concrete house that the family rented. We were farming rice using more eco-friendly methods of natural farming and selling our rice online, but we didn’t have a garden where we grew our own food. Instead, we purchased all of our groceries from the market. 

At times, I was wrestling in my head with the mismatch between my imagination and the reality I was experiencing. It took me a while to realize and accept that even though the ecovillage that I imagined was similar to where Sun Clover is moving towards, we’ve got to start somewhere and the mismatch is simply a part of the journey. 

Living in Sun Clover made me realize a lot of the practicalities of starting an ecovillage. For example, one of the reasons we were not growing our own food (although we do have space for a garden) is because we simply didn’t have the time and energy to do it. Our natural farming rice farm requires a lot of our time and energy as we do a lot of the work manually and we need to take care of orders and delivery. There are regular chores like cooking and cleaning, and on top of all of that, we have a baby to take care of. We only have three people to do all that work, and we were busy bees a lot of the time and often a day went by just like the flick of a hand. 

Ah-Hsu with our first cabbage harvest

Towards the end of my stay there, I was already able to see the progress we made. One more person joined to live full-time with us, which made us 5 people (including the baby) and it already felt a little bit more like a community. We started our garden and within a few months started to eat the vegetables we grew. We built a few rooms for people to stay, in and built an irrigation channel using natural materials. It’s really nice to see how we have made a few baby steps towards our ecovillage vision.

Through this experience, I learned that developing an ecovillage is not as simple as I naively thought before, especially in the beginning phase. It tied my dreams and visions of an ecovillage into the ground and taught me how to use the dreams and vision as my north star while starting with the realities of being on the ground where my feet are. 

My admiration and appreciation towards people who are building, developing, and living in ecovillages have only grown and multiplied since I first came to Sun Clover as I witnessed the commitment, actions, thoughts, heart, love, patience, and life energy that are compassionately poured in every step of the way towards manifesting “the more beautiful world.” 

I’m utterly grateful for being able to be in Sun Clover in its nascence, witnessing and being a part of this very interesting stage full of mysteries, possibilities, and uncertainties. It has been such a rich experience the past year.  Although I only shared about how it has been grounding in this piece, the time I spent in Sun Clover has been healing and nourishing too. But that’s another story for another time 😉.  

Sun Clover family and some of my friends during a gathering before I left

I have endless gratitude for the family in Sun Clover. Jensen and Michiko, the co-founders, for letting me in although both of them weren’t ready for having an extra member when I first came (I learned about it later), and for the love, care, and guidance that both of them give all the time. Ah-Hsu for joining us, anchoring us with his calmness and his deep and genuine care for everything. And, of course, Sarasa (the baby) for the unbearable sweetness, cuteness, and chaos that adds so much flavor to our daily life. Cheers to all the times spent together and all the things to come!

About the Author

Luvian Iskandar, Indonesia

Luvian works with GENOA as a communications coordinator. When he became aware of the social and environmental degradation in the world, he found out about the holistic approach within the ecovillage movement to regenerating social and environmental systems and resonated with it. He chose to study the early development stage of ecovillages for his master’s program, thinking that he might be involved in such a project in his home country, Indonesia, in the future. Upon graduation, he lived and worked in an aspiring ecovillage community in Hualien, Taiwan for a year before moving back to his home country, Indonesia, where he now resides.

Joining the Ecovillage Lifestyle Experience Week at Gaia Ashram

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This article was written by Lila Sahj.

Simple but profound, the Ecovillage Lifestyle Experience Week was humbling, soul-nourishing, and inspiring. My intention for the week was to listen deeply and learn, to be humbler and appreciate my life & nature, to open and feel more love in my heart, and to apply the knowledge I gain to my life, and then share it with others. 

We were guided by the wise & wild Om (whose stories could fill books), on a journey through the 4 Dimensions of Sustainability: Social, Economic, Ecological, and Cultural. 

I was expecting it to be very community and nature-oriented, so I was surprised at how central personal awareness and growth was to the process, which I deeply appreciated. We all reflected on our lifestyles & designed them anew, inspired by the mind-expanding questions we were given. I like this personal approach because I believe that to change the world, it needs to come from within – culture shift in ourselves & the collective. Being in an environment where we feel connected to all of life and take the time to explore true heart’s desires facilitates the emergence of a holistic mindset; one that values all life, including oneself. I wish for every young person to do this program. 

If I had to place my bets on which topic would be the most emotional, economics would have been the last topic I would have bet on. But answering the questions of “What is wealth to me?”, “What do I want in my life?” “What makes me feel alive?”, and “What makes life worth living for me?” were the most powerful questions asked so far, and I questioned what I truly needed and wanted in order to flourish. I found that I most value joy, fun, and playfulness; freedom and the resources to take my time & space to relax and do what I love; being with people I love; the ability to flourish – to grow and learn in ways that feel aligned to me; a sense of safety and security in a grounded, comfortable home, and of course, beautiful food (and an outdoor shower would be fantastic, too). 

Questions like this aren’t asked in “normal” environments. Having the space to reflect on life and design it holistically is a fantastic experience, which I would recommend to everyone looking for a fresh start, hope for a better future, and some peace and connection with what is truly real: others & nature!

I witnessed and experienced tears of gratitude, liberation in movement and body through the 5 Elements Dance, deep peace in meditation and connection with nature, feeling seen by others, having a deeper connection with myself, and being part of a small and tight-knit community with lots of fun moments throughout. Other experiences included creating a skit, documentary night, yoga, and being led around the farm by a partner with my eyes closed, exploring all my senses – one of the most pleasurable and peaceful things I have ever done. 

I love living and being in ecovillages. Magic happens in these places that don’t happen anywhere else. It’s the influence of great souls who share their thoughts and way of life. It’s the entire new culture and system which honors all of life, including your own hopes, dreams, and talents – waiting to empower you so you can flourish! It’s the nature, the fact that I wasn’t in a single closed room with 4 walls. Everything is open, connected – it’s reflected in the architecture of the place. I love the simplicity of life here. I love the food (too much haha), I love the fact that I can go and switch the water on every day at 17:30, watching the sprinklers go from small to tall towers of water. I love the satisfaction and peace of sitting there witnessing the seeds I planted sprout and grow. I love watching the sky change color, seeing the sun peak gold through the clouds, hints of pink and lilac coloring the sky as the day turns into night. And of course, being barefoot as much as possible! I find myself taking off my shoes as soon as the ground is soft enough to bear. It just feels better. 

This week has shown me the power of deep listening to others and reflecting back on people’s strengths. There is a magic created when another person’s eyes are shining as you tell them the light that you see in them. It is a gift we can all give to others, going deeper than the average compliment. It requires observation of the other, curiosity, listening, remembering, and compassion. This way of communicating leaves everyone around feeling better 😊 as we remember we are all celebrations of diversity. We learned during the topic of ecology that diversity is resilience. Without diversity, the soil dries up, erodes, the leaves get bitten away, and the yields are less. Our differences are what we can use to work together to create a new system that nourishes all life. The meaning we each give to our lives and our willingness to be open-minded and compassionate is what helps this bloom. 

It was beautiful to see the intentions everyone set at the beginning of the week blossom into fulfilled wishes and more, as seen during our final sharing moment around a bonfire. Pleng played the drums, Sin’s awesome dance music filled the air, Simon kept the fire burning, Niki held loving space, and Ben presented his beautiful art. The course ended synchronistically with the full moon and we ended our evening playing a fierce game of Ninja under its glow, a symbol of completion, the waning moon an invitation to internalize the teachings that resonated most and to share them with whoever is curious. 

I leave this week feeling much more grounded and connected to nature, something that I had been missing for a long time. I experienced the deeply humbling feeling of asking nature for permission before I sit in the company of its trees, shrubs, spiders, and crawling ants, well aware that this is not only my home, but theirs too, and theirs first. 

I was aware and committed to my life’s purpose before this week, but the tools and knowledge parted to me during the program have grounded and deepened my plans and what I want to express. Gaia Ashram is a place to go when you want to connect back to yourself, other people, and nature, in an authentic and peaceful way, without the stresses of “normal life”. 

Paraphrasing Om, this is not a place to escape from your life. This is a place to learn, to expand, and to empower yourself with awareness of your own strengths, skills, and talents, putting them into practice in the community so you leave (if you do 😛) being, even more, yourself, knowing what you love and what you find important – which I believe is exactly your purpose & medicine for the world 😊. 

Thank you, Om and Tom, for holding the space and for your wisdom, and thank you, everyone, in the course and others living in Gaia Ashram. It is wonderful being part of this community, our hearts united in the mission of life honoring life. 

Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu,

May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all. 

—

Read Om Sunisa Jamwiset Deiters’s (co-founder of Gaia Ashram) article about the Ecovillage Lifestyle Experience Week here.

About the Author

Lila Sahj

Lila is a 21-year-old Project Management student & a coach. She has been researching and experiencing ecovillage and holistic living since 17 years old and found a deep love for community and natural living. She has undergone her own spiritual and self-healing journey, and she now holds space for others to go through their own journeys. Her coaching focuses on empowering the other to reconnect with and trust their own intuition, heart, and body so that they can live authentically and share their medicine for the world. The concepts of systems thinking, the permaculture principles, the 4 Dimensions of Sustainability, and regeneration are key to her coaching and project management style. She holds a Belgian passport but was born in Singapore and has lived in Myanmar, Indonesia, Malawi, Thailand, the Netherlands, Cambodia, and Spain. You can find more about her on her Instagram page @divine.play.coaching.

GENOA Annual General Meeting 2022

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On March 11th, the GENOA Council and Office Team came together to hold our Annual General Meeting (AGM). In this meeting, the office team reported and celebrated the activities and achievements we had in 2021to the GENOA council. We also proposed, discussed, and consolidated our plan for this year of 2022.

You can read the meeting notes, see the presentation slides and watch the video recording below which includes the highlights of our activities, financial report, and also future plans.

For this year of 2022, our office team is planning to turn inwards to clarify our purpose as a network and organization, and also find and install structures in place that match our values and context to be able to fulfill our purpose of existence as a network and organization. We will also be looking for funding and support for our activities in the coming year in the latter half of the year.

The process of turning inwards and clarifying our purpose will be done through an internal project called Metamorph Project in which we will dive in and engage with the different stakeholders of the network to clarify our purpose, understand what has worked and what are the things we are lacking in our current structures and how we work. The outcomes of this project will be brought into discussion with the council and members of the network to be discussed and implemented. You can find more info about it by looking at the project proposal below.

GENOA Metamorph – Project Proposal

Please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions about this project. During this project, we will be engaging in conversations with some of you as stakeholders of the network. If you are keen to share your perspective, experience, and hopes about GENOA please let us know by writing to us at genoa@ecovillage.org and we will make sure to include you in the conversation. If you are keen to join in this process with us by volunteering, offering coaching, or consultancy, please kindly write to the same email address. 

Thank you so much for your continued support. We are excited to embark on this journey inwards and look forward to engaging with you, dearest stakeholders, to co-create in this evolutionary process of the GENOA Network.

Please note that as we engage in this project, the office team will lower the volume of our activities (such as community calls).

Ecovillage Experience Week at Gaia Ashram, Thailand

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How do we get people to be inspired, interested to join the community, and learn deeply during their time at Gaia Ashram? This was one of the questions we contemplated during the lockdown in Thailand.

The pandemic affected Gaia Ashram as an international learning center and community due to the lockdown and shutdown of transportation for international travelers. This made us cancel a lot of programs offered in English for international travelers. However, We also observe that more Thai and local people have a stronger realization of how sustainable living and lifestyle such as ecovillage lifestyle is quite resilient in this kind of situation. We then emerged with the idea of launching the Ecovillage Lifestyle Experience Week (ELEW), where people can get an introduction to ecovillage design principles and also experience how it feels like to live this lifestyle.

We design the program where the participants get a theoretical session in the morning and join the hands-on/ practical work in the afternoon. The daily routine flows as Gaia Ashram’s usual routine where we start the day with daily yoga practice. Breakfast starts at 7.30 am where we gather together to bless the food and remind ourselves how grateful we are to be alive on this planet earth. After breakfast, we have our morning session which is class time for workshop participants until 12.00 am. The afternoon session starts at 14.30 pm, we do practical work together until 17.00 pm. After that, we continue with a dance session at 17.45 – 18.30 pm followed by meditation until 19.00 pm as the way to wrap up our day. Workshop participants join our daily chores to do dishes, tidy up, feed the chickens with kitchen waste, etc.

Our aim was to have people experience Gaia Ashram’s lifestyle and cultivate an understanding of why we designed our lifestyle this way. How we use ecovillage design principles as guidelines to design our life and the importance of holistic and whole system design.

This program and most of Gaia Ashram’s programs from now on are bilingual, English – Thai. We intend to start promoting the ecovillage concepts and Ecovillage Design Education to Thai audiences as well as international participants. 

We also made this Ecovillage Lifestyle Experience Week (ELEW) compulsory for those who want to volunteer or take an internship at Gaia Ashram. They have to join this ELEW program before starting their volunteering/internship period. 

We offer this program monthly at Gaia Ashram, usually in the first week of the month. We have done this program three times already so far.

We found that the participants value the programs both in terms of the experiential part of it as much as the theoretical inputs. The lifestyle where each day we find the balance of the use of the head, heart, hands and also the time to connect with nature, work with nature, and experience community spirit. 

We found that this program helped volunteers/interns to understand the big picture of Gaia Ashram, our core values, and why we have our structures as they are. 

The interest among Thai audiences has increased. As a result, more Thai People are interested and inquire about the full Ecovillage Design Education program which we will offer in November/December 2022.

Read an article by Lisa Sahj about her experience joining the Ecovillage Lifestyle Experience Week here.

Gaia Ashram

Gaia Ashram is an Eco-Education center on Permaculture, Ecovillage Design, and Deep Ecology. Gaia Ashram aims to be a place where we live holistically, practice, and realize the interconnectedness and the oneness of all beings.

For more information about them, visit their website and Facebook page.

From Climate Ambition to Rethinking Climate Vulnerability

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A Post COP26 Reflection as GENOA delegate. Written by Sarah Queblatin, GEN Regional Representative & Ambassador.

As I write this, almost 3 million Filipinos who were directly affected are waking up to the devastating aftermath of Supertyphoon Odette which intensified from Category 1 to Category 5 in 24 hours ripping through islands in the central and southern part of the Philippines. Given my time zone difference, I realized it is still December 16, the same day that Supertyphoon Washi / Sendong triggered a deadly flash flood in Cagayan de Oro City, nine years ago in 2011 which was my first experience in responding to disasters. I am in Findhorn Ecovillage in the north of Scotland after the COP26 in Glasgow and I look back to why the ecovillage model has been central to my approach to transforming the narrative of DRR (or Disaster Risk Reduction) into that of Designing for Resilience and Regeneration). You can listen to my podcast on this as interviewed by Morag Gamble.

Responding to the flash floods after typhoon Washi through psycho social support assistance was my first introduction to humanitarian recovery. Today, a decade later, I am now with my own organization, Green Releaf Initiative, a partner of the Global Ecovillage Network, working with the same approach integrated in permaculture gardens in disaster recovery and an innovation lab on ecosystem restoration underway.

Joining the Ecovillage Movement and GEN

After typhoon Washi, I was burning out from ensuring we meet large numbers of participants over delivering quality in the sessions we needed to design to adapt to the realities firsthand. I asked myself, “how might we heal broken systems without the same factors that caused them in the first place?” Then the response that emerged was to come from wholeness where a whole systems approach through regenerative design started unfolding for me. It brought me back to my interest to study ecovillage and permaculture design in my 20s. So I was naturally drawn to join a healing ecovillage in the Philippines in 2012. A year later, Supertyphoon Haiyankilled over 7,000 people and displaced thousands of Filipinos. I volunteered to help in one of the affected villages together with permaculture and ecovillage designers. 

A year later, I joined the Global Ecovillage Network Oceania and Asia then was invited to work for the UN Working Group of GEN International which evolved into a role as Advocacy Coordinator from 2015-2017. This role enabled me to help GEN in its representation and work with the United Nations where it has a consultative status in the UN ECOSOC and a civil society observer for the Conference of Parties (COP) for the Climate Change conferences. I was able to represent GEN from the 21st – 24th and now the 26th COP. Working with former GEN Executive Director Kosha Joubert, GEN UN Representative Rob Wheeler, and representatives from each region, we engaged with government leaders, civil society groups, and other movements relevant to the cause of regeneration that GEN modeled in lighthouse projects and communities from its network of 6,000 members around the world. 

Coming from one of the most climate vulnerable nations and regions in the world where climate emergencies have been taking place with growing intensity over the years, being able to share our voice and work has been a privilege and opportunity. With GEN’s Ecovillage Development Program, we explored how communities can model low carbon lifestyles that restore social and ecological ecosystems that can meet the Paris agreement goals and the SDGs through participatory design. 

Below are some of the events that I participated in at the COP26 in Glasgow as a GENOA delegate.

GENOA Participation

As part of the GEN delegation, representing Oceania and Asia, I helped share our GEN partnership for ecovillage development in an indigenous community affected by Super Typhoon Haima/ Lawin in the Philippines from 2017-2020 through Green Releaf’s Regenerative Transitions program. Our story served as a case study in our interactive presentation for the Capacity Building Hub on “Using Participatory Approaches to Design Robust, Community-Led Climate Action” together with Anna Kovasna and Taisa Mattos. You can watch the presentation here.

GEN partnered with Gaia Education at the COP26 Gender Day for the exhibit “Women, Power and Entrepreneurship in the Climate Change Age“. The day-long exhibition was curated by Gaia Education, Artists Project Earth (APE), Global Ecovillage Network and LUSH UK – in partnership with women from the Federation of Tribal Women of Orissa, THREAD, Bangladesh Association for Sustainable Development, L’Arcolaio Cooperativa Sociale, Saterê Mawê Craftswomen Association and many other communities. You can read more about it here. 

As GENOA representative to the UNDP Conscious Food Systems Alliance (CoFSA), I helped co-facilitate a Climate Emotions session together with other CoFSA members, One Resilient Earth and the Institute for Advanced Sustainable Studies. You can read my story here. 

It was also meaningful to be able to share about my reflections and learnings from working with climate vulnerable indigenous and displaced communities through an interview by the Pocket Project through its CEO, GEN International’s former Executive Director Kosha Joubert as part of its Trauma Informed Climate Leadership events at the COP26. You can access the recording here along with other speakers from the network including May East of Gaia Education, Sonita Mbah, and Sabine Lichtenfels. 

To generate support for scaling our prototype for REGEN-Nations Whole Systems Co-Learning Journey and Regenerative Design Lab for GENOA, I participated in relevant side events that could provide updated information and possible ways to channel resources to the project. 

After the COP26, I was invited by the Philippine Misereor Partnership, the conveners of the Rights of Nature movement in the country to share about my insights for their session on “What Now After the COP26?” Preparing for this talk helped me put into words what I recommend as ways we go forward beyond COP26. You can watch the video here. 

As we face the aftermath of supertyphoon Rai / Odette in the Philippines leaving almost a million people displaced and almost 400 dead, I think about a deeper meaning of climate vulnerability and how it can differ from climate ambition. Now on my 5th COP, I reflected deeper on the role of regenerative leadership after realizing over time that there already exists so many solutions but how we make these solutions work depend greatly on our inner condition of the leader and the worldview s/he has that influences the design of a system. For me, a reframe on “climate vulnerability” is to truly lead with empathy and authenticity in our leadership versus the shadow of the term “climate ambition”. The latter has the danger of falling into lofty goals that may lose integrity when words can’t be fulfilled into actions given that many agreements and statements are made during climate conferences yet the real actions and delivery are slow or may not be completed at all. Many climate vulnerable nations like mine and the region have witnessed these failures of agreements and commitments over time and we need to show up fully in ways that could bring regenerative leadership in our design for resilience and regeneration. We hope one of the ways we can offer this to the region is through the leadership component of REGEN-Nations coming up with its 2nd cycle in 2022. Click here to learn more and to sign up. You can also support the program’s fundraising efforts by donating or sharing this campaign. 

About the Author

Sarah Queblatin. GEN Regional Representative & Ambassador, The Philippines

Sarah is a regenerative design strategist weaving collective experiences in peacebuilding, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) conservation, environmental education, and humanitarian assistance for 15 years. She designs inclusive ecosystems of collaboration through innovation labs and learning journeys to transform the narrative of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) into Design for Resilience and Regeneration. She is trained in Ecovillage Design and Ecosystem Restoration Design and holds a merit diploma and advanced certificate in Permaculture Design. Prior to founding Green Releaf Initiative in the Philippines, Sarah has worked with GEN as a representative to the UN Climate Conferences, served as a global trustee, regional council member, and currently, as a wisdom keeper for GENOA. Sarah also helped incubate GEN’s EmerGENcies Program and GENOA’s REGEN Nations. With a background in ecopsychology and transformative artmaking, she applies a trauma-informed understanding of resilience in her work with climate and conflict vulnerable communities in Asia and the Pacific region.

Foodscape Pages: Soulful Conversations on the Ecology and Culture of Food

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If you care about food and how it is grown, about the soil and people who help to restore it – the path leads you to Foodscape Pages! 

Foodscape Pages is a community-driven platform for publications and gatherings that inspire meaningful conversations and new perspectives around the ecology and culture of food. Through the lens and medium of food, we hold space for personal stories of lived experiences and for direct connections with practitioners on the ground.

As more and more people in Singapore and neighbouring countries are getting interested in gardening, growing their own edibles, and learning more about our food systems, they look for knowledge and a community of experience. However, a lot of information available online is not always applicable to our context; sometimes it’s the climate condition (a lot of information is from places with temperate climate), and sometimes it’s the socio-cultural and political circumstance in which one can begin to grow some of our own edibles. Foodscape Pages came about to bring up the voices of practitioners who have the experience and skills on the ground, but may not always be active in sharing their stories online. The intention is the sharing of local and bioregional knowledge, and to connect people interested to dive deeper into the conversations around food and our food systems.

What seeds we are planting

Foodscape Pages dreams to connect people who are interested in the ecology and culture of food in our bioregion, as well as to nurture more eco-literacy of regular folks, especially urbanites who are not connected with our food sources, to become more aware of our relationships with food, and how that affects the well-being of the individual, the community, the society and the planet. It is our hope to cultivate and nurture a space for increasing both external awareness of what’s going on out there, and relating it back to how we live our individual lives and make our choices through deepening inner awareness.

Foodscape Pages works towards this dream through bringing together different pieces of knowledge and publishing the theme-based journazine “The Sauce – on food, community and inspirations”. The first issue focused on Soil, highlighting initiatives like the Soil Regeneration Project and Community Composting, and inviting perspectives from practitioners to share their personal stories in Singapore and the region. This publication got distributed with over a hundred hard copies, with selected articles available online for the wider public.The second issue of The Sauce was dedicated to Seeds. As Foodscape Pages intends to be a community-driven platform  we held an open call for contributions, invited practitioners to share their views, and organised a 3-part community creative writing workshop to co-create content for this issue. Part of this Sauce included interviews with practitioners from Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and The Philippines, creating a space for all to begin thinking about interconnections in our bioregion.

We want to build the capacity of our community and share skills and knowledge freely, so that people can continue to be inspired to learn and grow together, and bring that to more people. 

As we work together, we intentionally hold a space of care through regular check-ins and actively practicing kindness, empathy, trust and gratitude through active listening and authentic sharing. One of our priorities is a relationship with members of Foodscape Pages wider community. We are exploring how to use language with care and cultivate supporting ways of being.

How it grows

The initiative was conceived by Vivian, Sixian and Huiying with the Foodscape Collective as a key partner to form an ecosystem around the vision of a fair and circular food system for all. Now it is growing through partnership and relations! Each of the Sauce editions brought us close with other change-makers in the region –  with Kontinentalist to create a seed map and share our research around the importance of seeds; with independent developers and designers from ThoughtWorks for creating a new website with better features; with a developper and illustrator receiving partial funding from CreativesAtWork and Blue3Asia for making our work even better; and with many more.We have received contributions from close to 30 contributors, either through writing, sharing their stories, illustrating or contributing their design and developer skills. You can read more about the community of Foodscape Pages on this page.

To date, without any funding except through community crowdsourcing, we have published our first journazine in print, in the process of publishing the second issue on our new online platform, organise in-person gatherings that bring people together to be creative and deepen our knowledge and literacy around our relationships with food. Throughout this time we learnt how to be adaptive and agile during these volatile times of a global pandemic, to find different and creative ways to connect on a human scale and trust that by deepening the influence and impact we can have in even a small number of people, it can create a ripple of impact through these engagements.

One of the good practices we discovered is to have regular check-ins for anchoring the connections on a human level, one that is based on trust, respect, understanding, interdependence and interconnection. This provides resilience especially during challenging times.

It has been amazing to see how people come together to co-create and find ways to be together in challenging times. Community support is one of the key enabling factors that has been keeping this vision of creating and maintaining the continuing growth and work of Foodscape Pages. 

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Go to www.foodscapepages.org to discover our materials, meet the community and connect with Foodscape Pages! You can also follow us on Facebook and tell your friends who are curious about growing and eating healthy food and living in connection with nature.  

Journeying Full Circle

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The Story By Trudy Juriansz, former GENOA coordinator and GEN Networking Director,
and co-initiator of ReGEN-Nations learning program.

As I reflect back on my nine years with GENOA, I feel a sense of peace as I have come full circle with this beautiful network and organisation. I had no idea when I met the GENOA community in 2012 in Sri Lanka, that I would embark on a deep spiritual journey that would test all my boundaries of friendship, work and collaboration. I have unlearned and learned so immensely that I will never be the same person again, as I have grown and evolved to be more conscious and embracing. I have had the honour to have met, lived and worked with, and developed friendships with so many inspiring people, communities, organisations and projects from all over Asia and Oceania, and beyond. I pay my respects to all my teachers, elders and wisdom keepers, who have guided me in this journey. 

My journey in GENOA evolved from learning and understanding networks and organisations, to building a solid foundation and core team – our virtual ecovillage, while integrating insights and learnings into my personal life and character building.

Building a Resilient Web

A key question that came up for GENOA during the period of 2015-2017 was how do we ensure the web of a network is strong, knowing that the network exists with or without you, that you as an organisation, is simply a node in the network; and our role is to help make that web visible so exchange and cross-pollination can happen with ease and so resilience in the web can become stronger.

To answer this question, one of the most significant learnings was understanding the difference between a network and an organisation. I was guided by Chris Gibbings (former GENOA Vice-president and IT Support) who helped me see that the network already exists, independent of GENOA. The network is not owned, or even created, by our organisation. Before GENOA or GEN existed, there were ecovillages and other regenerative organisations and projects and they were already connecting with each other or others in various ways. GENOA as an organisation (or community) engages in the network as a participant and helps to enable the network further. So we had to find out what our niche was within the ecosystem or network, so we could feel fulfilled in carrying out our mission. We discovered that our niche was to hold space and bring people together, to support and care for ecovillages and eco-projects on the ground, and to enable the dissemination of information, knowledge and skills as widely as possible. In the last four  years, 2018-2021, GENOA as a network has grown steadily, gathering energy and support from individuals, communities, organisations, projects and other networks.

Another significant change we made in 2014 was to transition from a hierarchical structure to a network based system, moving away from the traditional president/vice president positions, to a more horizontal governance structure that enabled working circles and the workload to be spread out. We made this decision in 2014 and didn’t realise how hard it would be.

GENOA went through a period of panarchy for a period of about three years. Panarchy is a natural process in nature, and therefore part of the natural movement of any organisation as it goes through a significant period of reassessment and change. GENOA was in a place of confusion, conflict, reflection, learning, inner growth and restructuring. Since then, GENOA has become stronger and more resilient, and able to provide authentic support to the network in our region. 

We also realised that the network’s energy or participation was low in 2015, so we focused on facilitating spaces for people to engage with each other and GENOA as the organisation. We found that as engagement increased, participation also increased and as people felt comfortable and secure, they were able to contribute more, in line with their passions and energy.  We held Emergence Convergences, which were gatherings of hearts and minds from multiple disciplines, in various locations in Asia and the Pacific, between 2016 to 2018. One of the success factors with these convergences was that we held space for people to come together, supporting dialogue in order to be able to see what would emerge. Dialogue without an agenda or set outcomes, allowed for creativity to flow and authentic communication and sharing to happen, which in turn, led to multiple collaborative projects to emerge, across various nations.

GENOA learned the art of collaboration and how to become part of a meta-network supporting other like-minded networks, communities and organisations, that could lean on one another when times get tough or if there was stagnation. We learned that you could join in with other networks and organisations, and piggy back off each other until you felt strong again and could stand on your own. And most of all, learning that we didn’t have to start from scratch or to build something new all the time, but could build where others left off and that we could stand on the shoulders of those that came before us.

Our Virtual Ecovillage

When former President Michiyo Furuhashi stepped out of her role at the end of 2014, she asked me to take care of GENOA. I have never felt such a sense of duty. Being of Sri Lankan origin, this is a quality that comes from my culture and family, to be dutiful, responsible and accountable. I also felt honoured to work with amazing people and communities from our region, to share and to learn together. So realising that GENOA is an organisation whose role is to support the healthy growth of networking between ecovillages in Asia Oceania region, we embraced that we are also a virtual ecovillage whose community members are the people who step forward to do the work to make GENOA function. As such, community building processes amongst GENOA’s volunteers/staff are as important as the mission of GENOA. As they say, “It takes a community to support a network”. And as a GENOA contributor, Pi Villaraza, once said to me, we need to learn how to become a global village, a community of 7 billion people, who care and support each other.

The art of forming a virtual ecovillage takes time, patience and perseverance. It also requires a level of simplification and efficiency, so energy can be conserved and used in more appropriate ways. Since in GENOA we are spread apart geographically, we worked on developing efficient internal systems so we could work and collaborate across time zones and cultures. In all our organisation and network meetings, we always started with an attunement or mediation, to bring us all to the present moment of being together, appreciating our space and to allow for the work that was ahead of us. We always checked in at both personal and work levels, so we could support each other through times of stress and upheaval and also as a way to celebrate and appreciate the good times. 

Another important part of becoming more efficient and accountable in GENOA, we became very conscious of our budget, choosing to limit spending funds on international travel just purely to attend conferences and gatherings. Instead, we stretched our budget between the period of 2015 to 2018, partnering with like-minded organisations and communities to co-host the Emergence Convergences and supporting a small team in the organisation to carry out the critical functions and the engagement of the network. We discovered that being mindful of how we use our funds, we could get maximum benefit with the most impact. 

There are always challenges that arise from being a virtual community, so having a compass to guide us was invaluable. As a network in 2014, GENOA determined seven key values – Integrity, Diversity, Trust, Service, Participation, Evolving, Oneness – that would be our compass in the coming years. This helped me immensely, as I would always come back to my center when I felt off track, to these values and why I was doing this work. I also learned the value of stillness, to take a breather from all the events and outward presence of the organisation in order to reflect internally and clean our inner house, so we could process, identify gaps in our systems and community, and be ready for all the outer work and outreach later. 

Another important aspect of being a virtual ecovillage is compassionate communication. We realised quickly during our period of panarchy, that working online with people from different cultures, time zones and languages, was not just challenging, but could bring tension and conflicts. So we developed a set of compassionate communication guidelines to support our team to work more effectively and harmoniously together.

Garden of Inner Resilience

Working with GENOA over the years has helped me become more resilient in the face of challenges, disturbances and chaos. I have learned to accept situations the way they are and to let go, and not be attached to an outcome. By being able to let go, I was able to dive deep into several projects and events for GENOA, not being afraid, but excited to experiment and see where the path would take us. I learned that standing strong in a sea of turbulence, bringing consistency and integrity to the center would eventually bring people back and together again. 

I have learned not to take anything personally, even though it is still a hard practice, it is so valuable to know and understand that everyone has their own traumas and triggers and most of the time, when there is a tension, conflict or outburst, they are not intentionally out to hurt you. So it has helped me to hold space for others, keeping love and care in my heart, and not internalising their pain. My inner resilience has helped me to stay creative, flexible, collaborative and be adaptive in the face of a changing environment and the drastic shifts of ‘business as usual’.

I have learned to trust deeply in GENOA as a network and an organisation, and also in myself.  GENOA is a space for people to come together, to participate and contribute at whatever level feels comfortable. It is a community of beautiful souls who work tirelessly to regenerate our human connections and our ecological systems, through education, events and storytelling. I have learned the strength of friendships and how they can be resilient in times of turmoil and the importance of reciprocity and having people who love and care for you, to work with everyday. 

GENOA has been a garden of possibilities, and like all gardens, it takes patience, attention and consistency. When I left GENOA earlier this year, I felt I was walking away from an abundant garden that is producing delicious fruits for everyone to be able to savour and enjoy. I feel so much joy and gratitude in my heart to know that this garden is held with love and care. May GENOA continue to grow and flourish for many more years to come.

About the Author

Trudy Juriansz, Australia/Sri Lanka
Trudy is a key contributor in bridging together communities, organisations and individuals in Asia and Oceania. She is currently working with Permaculture for Refugees and an indigenous community in Queensland, Australia. She was GEN’s Networking Director, GENOA coordinator for several years and co-initiated the ReGEN-Nations learning program. Trudy is an accredited trainer of Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) and Analog Forestry (a design science for ecosystem restoration). In addition, she has studied, practiced and taught permaculture and deep ecology for many years. She has been the head of a democratic school in Thailand for migrants and refugees, managed a sustainability education centre in Sri Lanka, and facilitated a variety of workshops across Asia and Oceania, for communities, youth and women. Originally from Sri Lanka, Trudy has lived in several traditional villages and communities, and visited many ecovillages around the world.

Covid Restrictions in Eco-Neighborhood

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This article is originally published in robinallison.co.nz

Earthsong Neighborhood (pic: Robin Allison)

There is a common assumption that all of Earthsong became a “bubble” during the Covid lockdowns, but we are much too diverse for that. We have residents who continued to work in face-to-face essential services, and older people with health vulnerabilities. We have toddlers who would rush up to everyone if given the chance, and adults with differing approaches to distancing and mask-wearing. We have many who are vaccinated, and others who are hesitant or have actively chosen not to get vaccinated. So like other Auckland households, Earthsong households largely maintained their own bubbles, although our proximity made it easy for single households to bubble-up or grandparents to join with their children and grandchildren. It is easy to talk with neighbours on the path at a distance, to do the shopping for an older neighbour, to keep in touch enough to know when a neighbour is needing support. There is always the sense of belonging and security of being surrounded (at a distance) by people we know and have a relationship with.

And although the diversity of views and approaches to Covid does cause friction and conflict at times, the key difference is that we talk about it together, with the intention of assuming good intent, of a diversity of views being welcome, and with a curiosity to understand the views of others. All of our regular meetings have shifted on-line while physical distancing is required, and we have had four on-line “circles” over the last 3 months specifically to share our perspectives about Covid and how we can include differing approaches while being respectful of the needs of all. We haven’t solved it, but at least we are in dialogue, a more creative space from which we can navigate this new territory.

Our common house has been closed for 3 months now except for the shared laundry, and we have a lot to sort out before common meals resume. But at least it is summer, and we can take full advantage of the common green for picnics and outside gatherings. I can’t imagine how it is for those in separate suburban houses, but even without having full access to our shared spaces, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.

What is your personal or community’s response in this COVID times?

This article is written by Robin Allison, founder of the Earthsong Eco-Neighborhood in New Zealand.

Robin Allison’s book Cohousing for Life is currently on discount. Purchase her book here.

Ahimsagram: Wellness is Our Birthright!

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Ahimsagram is a social enterprise, primarily working towards sharing about wellness; inspiring, wholesome plant-based food systems. It is supporting people in transforming their kitchens by giving them the knowledge about the ‘why’ of healthy foods and sharing the skills to actually bring it into their day-to-day lives with ease and joy. On one side we are offering online learning programs for people from all over the world and locally we are also running a cafe that serves wholesome plant-based foods and we also deliver healthy sweets and bakery products throughout the country. Our products are largely organic as we believe that our individual choices have an impact on the health of the planet. 

In its vision, Ahimsagram sees that our actions have far-reaching consequences on the health of the planet as well as our own. Thus it has chosen to create a business that brings deeper understanding and practice of health in our lives. 

The Genesis

In order to understand our work, it will be meaningful to know the story about what led to the creation of Ahimsagram! Shammi, who has been the founder, had been living in Mumbai and working as a cinematographer when he developed breathing issues. Instead of jumping on the regular solution of taking inhalers, he went into looking for the reasons for the disease and others who believed in the magical power of the body and its capacity to heal. He came across people working on self-healing and also the work of ‘The Health Awareness Center’ (THAC) in Mumbai which made him see that diseases are an outcome of what inputs we give to the body (which could be food, sunlight, air, rest, exercise, etc) and live while respecting the laws of nature. For healing, we need to work on what we are putting into our system and be aware of its consequences. He thus began his journey into conscious foods and moved to a plant-based diet using ways of preparing the food that caused the least damage to its nutrients and to make sure that it was easy for the body to digest it. This helped him eliminate the toxins from the body and take care of his physical wellbeing. 

Soon he realized that physical well-being is connected to emotional well being and he got attracted to Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Seeing great value in it he also began sharing it as traveled across the country and sometimes abroad too. He saw the beauty in building a world where we can listen to each other and find ways to meet our needs, instead of living in a space of right/wrong and punishment reward. 

  • Baked potato with vegan cream sauce
  • Grain free burger
  • Gluten-free vegan brownies

Being a community person he has been connected to various sustainable living community initiatives where it became important to understand how to govern in these groups with a sense of collaboration. This attracted him to self-management systems like Sociocracy and Holacracy and he wanted to create an organization that would share NVC and also be governed with collaborative systems, in effect a Teal enterprise. That was the time he created Ahimsagram about five years ago, primarily as a laboratory for practicing and building collaborative processes. While all this was going on he had been working and experimenting with wholesome plant-based foods at a personal level for more than a decade. 

After having developed the knowledge about collaborative systems Ahimsagram moved to turn his learnings and build food as a business, so they built a vegan and organic cafe space and ran it with Holacracy while integrating NVC in its day-to-day practice at Ahimsagram. In this part, Shammi had Lyla FreeChild Join as a co-creator and has taken charge of the food business. She is passionate about leading a life of wellness and has been an avid learner and enjoys researching about living a life that is aligned to natural laws. 

The Cafe

Is one of their gifts to the community and has offered healthy food to people. Their food is made while retaining the nutrients so they steam their veggies, don’t use any aluminum or Teflon vessels, have sufficient raw options, its vegan and largely organic. No white sugar or wheat. 

Due to lockdowns, they were operating in the online delivery space more but once again they are relaunching the cafe by providing healthy meals. 

The Team

In most cafes and food establishments you see more men, and that too in leading positions. Ahimsagram has consciously had women team members who are learning new things each day not just about food but about relating to each other, expressing themselves, and are more able to bring up the challenges that arise while working with each other and process them. The capacity to listen to each other is enhanced here and so is the capacity to empathize with each other and that too when there is a disconnect with another person. 

Ahimsagram team

Besides, the team is also aware of mental health challenges and people here try to become aware of their triggers. They have discussions about such issues and look at ways of taking up power and having the ability to speak up honestly even if it may create conflict. There is no shame around conflicts and the space has processes around conflict transformation. 

Year-long training program to transform your kitchens!

Lately, Ahimsagram decided to coach people in transforming their food practices and re-design their kitchen and food systems, by way of a year-long online course ‘Embracing Wellness’. It is meant to support wellness seekers to learn to create delicious nourishing food, have more energy and vitality by empowering themselves with knowledge & skills of living with the laws of nature so they can experience vibrant health.

The knowledge that Ahimsagram has picked up over more than a decade will be offered in bite-size modules through an online year-long program, with sharing of the vision, theory, DIY sessions, and coaching so people can be empowered to actually change their food systems and practices. This way they can offer their learnings to people beyond borders using videos, audio, text, and webinars, etc. If anyone is interested to know more about this course they can sign up here. 

Lyla is leading this part of the program and it has touched many people’s lives by transforming their kitchen and promise to extend this to whoever is seeking this knowledge in their life from any part of the world. This is going to scale up Ahimsagram’s impact. 

Eco Friendly 

The way you do anything, that’s the way you do everything! So Ahimsagram is also working on the sustainability aspect and has minimized the role of plastic in their online deliveries, which took them a long time before they could delve into sending their food across the country. They have at times also designed 100 percent plastic-free packaging with recycled papers and send Diwali sweets to people all over the country. It was highly appreciated for their health part and the care and sustainable practices in its packaging. They make their own bio enzyme, compost their organic waste, and have their own small kitchen garden in whatever small patch of land it has. 

  • Food garden
  • Planting seeds

Community Work

It has inspired people by them walking their talk and encouraging and supporting them in building their organic gardens. Wherever Ahimsagram is situated it enjoys connecting with the neighbors and sharing their ideas that touch the community there. They have also worked towards building green ecosystems by planting trees with diversity to make space for the natural habitat of birds and animals. It has also been part of a movement for saving a forest patch being turned into an industrial zone and has been part of the initiative to mobilize the community for it. While doing its business it has also adopted and cared for the street dogs and worked with people who are into animal care. 

  • Making roadside forests with local community
  • Street dogs caimpaign
  • Sharing trees with neighbors
  • People’s movement on forest protection

The Ahimsagram Foundation

Lately, Ahimsagram has branched off and created a non-profit organization – Ahimsagram Foundation – which is working on two primary areas. 1) It wants to make their work with food accessible to people across all sections of the society so they plan to establish community kitchens and train people into healthy cooking so as to turn existing food spaces to serve wellness inspiring foods, and 2) they see that we need to work on making our habitats ecologically designed and are working on building green eco-zones around their city to make it more conducive to other beings and also providing clean air to the people of the cities. 

Ahimsagram as a Teal organization

If the world would move to higher consciousness, how would our organizations or businesses look like? Yes, with all the diverse organization design work that Ahimsagram is doing, it is a ‘Teal’ organization or one that has a governance system where the team members experience dignity and autonomy towards their work and also at the same time operate effectively and interdependently with others while moving forward to meet the purpose of the organization. This takes effort and it is not easy, but with the right processes and practice, an organization can become a more evolved organization. 

Also, there needs to be a space where each role filler can bring up their tension and process with their team members who are impacted by their work. Besides, this approach tensions as a normal occurrence and as an opportunity for growth and evolution. 

Impact

Ahimsagram has inspired many people to bring healthy food into their lives with their courses, it has provided opportunities for people to come and learn about building collaborative organizations or made them aware of their communication and shared NVC, thereby encouraging them to share their honesty while holding care for the people around them, inspired many into sustainable living. It has served healthy food to the people in their city and even offered it online across the country. 

One of the key learnings that Ahimsagram has had is that there needs to be training or sensitization around mental health issues or making the team trauma-informed if we expect the team to work with care and effectiveness. 

  • Gluten-free vegan cookies
  • Breakfast bowl
  • Carbide free papayas
  • Farmer’s market
  • Soap making workshop

Learn more about Ahimsagram

About the Author

Shammi Nanda. Ahimsagram, India

Shammi grew up in Jaipur in a neighborhood where he could go and eat in any house, which give him a strong sense of valuing the community. He has been engaging in community initiatives since childhood which has now become his profession by creating a business that operates to bring wellness to the lives of the community members through healthy food. 

At present, he has founded a social enterprise, Ahimsagram, and wants to show the world that business can work with high integrity and collaboration while promoting the health of individuals and that of the planet.  He along with Lyla Freechild has also created a nonprofit that would show the world that sustainable community initiatives can be effectively organized.