articles

Covid Restrictions in Eco-Neighborhood

December 1, 2021 by Luvian Iskandar

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!

November 29, 2021 by Luvian Iskandar

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Reflections from Edenhope

November 26, 2021 by Luvian Iskandar

This article is originally published in Surrender Now

An ecovillage is a microcosm of creation; for those who live in it and share in its way of life, it becomes a world unto itself, in which the whole order of existence is related from part to whole. By definition, an ecovillage is a group of people committed to living together as a community, relating sustainably with their natural environment. It is by no means a radical proposition, for the concept simply refers to people creating their culture through place — which has been practiced in varied and innumerable forms for as long as our species has been designated as such.

I have been living in ecovillages, in Australia and Vanuatu, for almost eight years. The life story I have been sharing over the last month is, in one sense, a testimony to the process of adaptation that takes place when one can no longer live functionally as a part of ordinary society and starts actively seeking a sustainable alternative. The story is about other important things too — adventure and awakening, the will to authenticity — but for today I will explore the concept of ecovillage as a place to live purposefully and sustainably, and what that means for the planet.

The corollary relevance of this, I should say, comes from the fact that I’ve recently overhauled the website of our ecovillage in Vanuatu, which includes an invitation for people to visit once the borders are open in 2022. And also that a delegation from the Global Ecovillage Network recently attended COP26 to advocate the ecovillage model of regenerative development as a strategy for climate change adaptation and resilience.

Yet for people to exist in such a way that does not harm the earth requires significant transformations to take place, both within the individual and in the structure and scope of human communities. Having lived this out, to some extent, I wanted to share something about what these transformations look like. My friend Pi had this to say1:

There is this process that happens when people shift over from city to ecovillage and a lot of people don’t really make it, if we’re honest about things. This is what we’ve observed over the years. There’s a reason why we’re not really backed in with crowds.
The process of [adaptation] that does take place can be described through energy management principles. It is both something that can be willed or something that happens outside of our control. The greatest shift would be [away from] energy consumption, or energy competition — which is the norm in the cities — and moving into energy conservation in an ecovillage setting.

As one brought up in a (so-called) developed country and reared on the spoils of a globalized economy, when I started living close to nature it felt like returning to sanity following a protracted hallucination. The dream cities of this world are so captivating to the senses that one almost considers them real, but sooner or later the truth settles in that there is no possible way for life to continue on this planet by adhering to the model of civilization as it currently stands.

When a grown-up individual has been wired for on-demand, immediate satisfaction of his or her needs or desires — be they food, sex, or recognition/prestige — that person will not find their place in a community of people seeking a regenerative way of life. In the dream city, you are doing that world a service each time you honour an impulse to gratify yourself at the expense of the planet. You are keeping the economy going. You are keeping people gainfully employed in the work of exploiting you.

This is not so in the world of ecovillage and ecovillage projects, for the regenerative way of life is not an economically-driven model. It is a culture of giving and receiving according to one’s unique attributes. One’s role in an ecovillage is determined by what one offers to it; accordingly, in order to live as part of an ecovillage, an individual recalibrates their needs and values to align with the vision, context and culture of the place they have chosen.

The sense of self, in an ecovillage setting, expands to include the whole community and the myriad requirements to keep it operational. One must do as the microbes do: perform different and essential functions for the ongoing maintenance of life, and contribute — through succession — to a balanced ecosystem that supports the future generation.

Succession, in communities, is a fact of life. In the evolution of being, ideas and aspirations that work replace those which have become unwieldy through over-expression. On a community scale, that which is regenerative and sustainable inevitably eclipses that which damages and corrupts; adaptations take place, over time, to preserve the culture of place. This is part of the individual’s process as well. As Pi has said:

I don’t feel it stops with energy conservation. I feel it brings about a kind of healing when we no longer need to utilise so much of our psychic energies, our mental faculties, our physical wellbeing to survival issues.
When we start to conserve, a conversion happens. We start to simplify, then our body starts to find access to what heals — enzymes, hormones, neurotransmitters that used to be in stress mode [become available] to undergo some healing process.
From a social dynamic, when the mind is freed up, people can go into actual energy conversations, conversations not just with other human beings, but conversations with nature, spirit, history.

Biodiversity drives the human ecology towards regenerative practices, just as it drives natural ecosystems towards higher forms of life. Regenerative practices — individual and collective — require the ability to do different things: in an ecovillage, when a thing breaks you either learn how to repair it or utilize its components to improve something else. When you run out of something, you go without. If you fancy food that is not here, you improvise with what’s available and come up with something new.

The invitation is always to be more creative and more skillful with how we make use of the time, energy, and resources of the ecovillage, in order to keep the place thriving and productive. This requires, of the individual, an adaptation to be happy with what is here, rather than desirous of what is not; to adapt, in fact, one’s set of personal needs to the limitations of what is here right now.

The extent that one can survive without the conveniences of the dream city is equivocal, therefore, to one’s level of adaptiveness to a set of resources limited by locality. This does not mean, necessarily, that we have to do everything ourselves in an ecovillage or that we can only eat from the land, but it does mean that we have to learn how to make optimal use of our unique attributes and whatever else we find at hand to serve the community that, in turn, serves us.

In ecovillage we do as the microbes do: find our niche ability and adapt it towards sustaining the ecology of place, the culture we are co-creating. This level of adaptiveness to do different things in service of our immediate environment cultivates the way of life. Here adaptation is a constant and continuous process, for the power and proximity of nature disrupts whatever mechanical or fixed patterns we seek to impose through our structures of thought and habit.

Ecovillage Transition in GENOA

September 30, 2021 by Luvian Iskandar

This article is a short summary of the GENOA community call written by Roky Biswas and Thao Kin

On 21^st September 2021, GENOA conducted its monthly community call for restoration and transformation of the earth as a global ecovillage. The topic of this month is Ecovillage Transition – transforming existing communities into regenerative communities. At the beginning of the sharing and discussion Amena Bal – GENOA Network steward & Fundraising Coordinator – led the whole group into a meditative spiritual prayer. After that, Thao Kin – GENOA Networking coordinator – described the purpose of this call where she emphasized that a lot of the work in the Oceania & Asia region are with existing communities; supporting and working with how the communities can be more regenerative. Anna Kovasna from GEN International took us through a tour of the Ecovillage Impact Assessment which is now officially launched, every community and project with a profile on GEN website can now take this impact assessment either as individual or collective.

The focus of this call was to learn from the practices of Ecovillage Transition around the region. We welcomed Thalea Tane – Aotearoa New Zealand, Hiroko Katayama – GEN Japan, Hai Chao Wang – Sunshine Ecovillage Network, China, Karen Wang – Sunshine Ecovillage Network, GEN China, Tanya Mottl – Narara Ecovillage, GEN Australia – five-speaker from four different countries have shared their experience about the regenerative activities in their communities.

Marrying the ecovillage map of regeneration with the local/indigenous wisdom

Thalea Tane from Aotearoa/New Zealand, shared about her research and experience on ecovillage, she showed how to incorporate the concepts, tools, ideas from GEN to communities in Aotearoa. She said, “In our traditional communities, they already have this regenerative sense.” She is a tutor for sustainable living courses, builder of earth brick homes, facilitator of workshops, developer of people and communities. The Universal Maori Principles – Mana, Tapu, Mauri, Kaitiakitanga – are the same principles that the GEN cards have. When she uses the Ecovillage cards, it speaks volumes to her people as it resonates with the Maori principles. They have the belief system that we are the guardians of their landscape – the land, the rocks, the trees, the animals, etc. in their surrounding environment. One of the things that they have realized in Maori culture is that we need to re-indigenize ourselves and the community. People need to go back to the principles passed down by our ancestors and these principles are no different than the GEN principles. She has been incorporating the GEN playing cards for her community, this made the community feel that they are one with GEN.

Modeling a new world that we can live in

C:\Users\us\Dropbox\202109 GENOA Call新しいフォルダー\10-0.jpg

Hiroko Katayama from As One Community shared that Japan has a capitalistic economy and people do not have much interest in environmental or ecovillage issues. In Japan, her community has been networking with different communities and ecovillages. GEN Japan works on networking to connect, raising awareness, education and supporting domestic initiatives around the country. They have also been trying to engage young people in the ecovillage activities and teaching the ecovillage concept.

Communities like As One Suzuka are experimenting and creating a model to showcase a “new world” – showing how eco-communities are the gateway of the next civilization. They are interacting with mainstream society through trade, selling goods, education programs, workshops and other activities. The As One Community has developed the ScienZ Method for living together – learn more about ScienZ Method here.

Demonstrating and educating the ecovillage lifestyle

Haichao Wang is the co-founder of Sunshine ecovillage in China. Together with Karen Wang, he shared a very motivating experience from his ecovillage concept and practice. In 2015, Sunshine Ecovillage ran the first international ecovillage forum in China. This is the first time the ecovillage network was introduced to China. Now there are already more than 100 aspiring ecovillages in China. People living in the cities are slowly realizing that they need green life. While city people would like to bring their city life back to villages, Haichao and his team bring the ecovillage concept to them to show that there are different ways of development. They wanted to demonstrate what eco-living really looks like by the life in their ecovillage. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the community created online programs for people to learn about ecovillages.

This ecovillage has about 20 ecovillage-related online courses and workshops on permaculture. The community organized a eco-person gathering activity every new year (Jan 1^st). In this gathering the community awarded one person who has outstanding contribution to the regeneration of China for the ecovillage transition. With the high rate of urbanization, the Chinese government is trying to promote rural revitalization. The Ecovillage team in China are building a model ecovillage (like Sunshine Ecovillage) for people to see and learn from.

Envisioning with the aboriginal community

Tanya Mottl shared how GEN Australia has been engaging with the Jumbun Community to look at the way that the community wanted to come back to their traditional values and not depend on the government so much. They held a 3-day workshop which led to envisioning and strategizing with the local community. A key initiative they are undertaking is a truth-talking circle. The message that came out is strong and clear: we have the power to change this. GEN Australia is also supporting Permayouth working with the local school in Jumbun. They have created the ecovillage design cards to be culturally appropriate to the community. The Jumbun Community shared that the ecovillage cards align with their community values. What they’d like to work on is to engage their youth in the regeneration of the community.

The rich sharing from representatives around the network has sparked interest in all of us. It is important to realize that the process of Ecovillage Transition is very much context-dependent, we can utilize the sharing from our network, with the guidance of the Map of Regeneration and adapt it to our local context. As shared from the group discussion, building ecovillages is challenging in many countries and people who are living in urban areas would like to seek ways to live regeneratively where they are as well. This gives us the opportunity to explore how members of the ecovillage network can engage the urban sector and communicate eco-living to more people in different contexts.

For more information, you can watch the replay of this call on youtube here.

Below are some resources to dive deeper and explore other Ecovillage Transition work in the region:

Ecovillage Transition in Bhutan – Lhundup Dukpa
Ecovillage Transition Scaling Up Community Led Change Processes
Women Transforming Traditional Villages into Ecovillages in India
GENOA Ecovillage Development Program Brochure which was done for a GEN’s project in 2018
Video Ecovillage Development Program – GEN

We’d like to take this opportunity to introduce and invite you to take the Skills and Capacities Mapping, this will help us to understand and map the abundant skills and expertise of people within the GENOA network. With the results of the survey, GENOA will build future connections, projects, and consultancy services, which in turn will strengthen resilience for each member and also the network as a whole.

To stay updated with our events and news, please subscribe to our newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/gxtA65

Cover picture credit: GEN Japan

How to Add your Project or Community to the GEN Website: A Step-by-Step Guide

September 6, 2021 by Thao Kin

If you’re an ecovillage community or project that’s looking to list your project on the GEN Ecovillage Map and Database, we have prepared a step-by-step guide on how to do so. Please follow the instructions below:

Step 1: Register your personal account on ecovillage.org

Go to ecovillage.org

Click “login”

If you already have an account – enter your details, if not – create a new one.
This can be a personal account or the account of the community. However we advise you to create a common account so that the community can always access it even when there is a change in members

Step 2: Add your project

We want to register the ecovillage/community as a project in the GEN database. In order to do so, you need to log in your account (that you’ve created above), then go to https://ecovillage.org/projects/ and choose “Add ecovillage” as the photo below

Step 3 – Add details

After clicking on Add ecovillage, you should see the screen like this, where you can add all the detailed information about your ecovillage/community (the more detailed the better)

Step 4: Finish and wait for approval

After you are done with this step, the website will take you to the next step. After your registration is done, the GEN team will check your information before publishing it. Once your profile is published, it should look like this example, under the tab Ecovillage

From then on, you can always come back and update your info when needed.

Congratulations on adding your community or project to our website! We are looking forward to having you listed on our website so our growing audience could easily find your community and projects. We hope this will foster more collaborations and interaction between people that are engaging in ecovillages and regeneration!

Building Ethnic and Interreligious Harmony in Sri Lanka

August 27, 2021 by Luvian Iskandar

Story of cpbr; Home for Diversity

We are an organization that evolves as a community working and existing to spread the vibes of humanity in self, community, and universal levels from an island of South Asia named Sri Lanka. In this land of the earth while we experience nature’s offerings of resources and fertility we experience the wounds, pollution, and polarization which were results of acts of humans such as youth uprisings, 30 years of civil war, ethnoreligious conflicts, and Easter Sunday Attack. There were times such as Tsunami, floods, and droughts in which we tested nature. Amidst this context, we were on the journey of contributing to human and ecological well-being together with our initiatives in the last 19 years.

We are rooting on the values of power-sharing and interdependency and believing, practicing, and promoting conflict transformation through diverse approaches in order to build co-existence and contribute towards justice and equality and have primarily focused on five target groups- Interfaith religious leaders, community leaders, women, young women, and youth. In the journey of engaging in interfaith coexistence, peacebuilding, reconciliation, healing, and connecting related activities 2019 became a crucial year since as the whole world we too met COVID 19 pandemic.

The thoughts of pessimism created positive energy to face the real-life crisis of pandemic while perceiving it as a natural conflict. As Practionaires and believers of conflict transformation, we as a community tried to transform the situation through diverse experiments and exploration in the process.

It is about how a peacebuilding organization that had worked using traditional approaches transformed to initiate our journey in the digital era…….

Journey of Healing and Connecting

In the mission of finding lost connections between communities through diverse methodologies and models, Center for peacebuilding and reconciliation, cpbr along with its three wings embarked on an initiative called “Religious Leaders, Community Leaders,Women and Youth as Healers and Community Bridge Makers”.

Heal the Past and Build the Future

JOY OF WITNESSING HUMAN CAPACITY TO SURRENDER

On the morning of 21^stof April 2021, 2^nd Commemoration Day (of Easter Sunday Attack 2019) no one thought it would be a historical moment in APINĀM life.

But it was….

Islam Religious leaders kneel down in front of Christian religious leaders to ask forgiveness. Tears were falling, sobbing and weeping proved that behind robes Nabi was alive. Strong men proved they are symbols of strong fatherhood being vulnerable when it was needed most.

All humans who were there to witness two years-long deep pain and guiltiness in Islam leaders’ hearts were in heavy hearts, full of tears.

It was a moment of DEEP SILENCE sprouted from SURRENDERING.

JOY OF WITNESSING HUMILITY IN ITS MAXIMUM

“If I, Therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”
Jesus Christ

Following Jesus’ footprints to forgive doing the ritual of foot washing. It was a moment of experiencing humanity in its fullest existence.

THE JOY OF SEEING ONE ANOTHER IN DEEP LOVE

Jesus was alive in the hearts of all Christian clergy when the Islam religious leaders were asking for apology.

Humanhood sprouted …

Holding the other so tightly.

Humanity bloomed who were witnessing the human capacity to surrender and to open the arms to wrap the other with deep compassion and love.

It was just simple LOVE.

Heal Oneself; Heal the Other; Heal the Nature

Woman as Faith Keepers of Healing and Connecting

There are limitations in accessing resources, knowledge, and skills for Women in developing countries, especially in patriarchal societies.

The pandemic made this situation worse and cornered women to an invisible corner since everything became digital and online …

In this state WOMAN together with cpbr created safer spaces for women to access knowledge, skills and healing spaces through creative and strategic interventions to access internet facilities. Addressing the generational gap brought sons, daughters, young siblings, and neighbors into the training space to support and teach to access cyberspace.

Homes became workshop locations

Gardens became healing spaces

Kitchens became starting place of social entrepreneurship

everything happened connecting in cyberspace…

They started to learn mute and unmute in zoom spaces are very significant moves since they were heard and listened to by many …

Conflict bloomed another flower

Women started to learn how to use their smartphone to access knowledge, skills and to connect with the other for a purpose. Some are determined to buy a smartphone. Some started to use their children’s phones or computers. The connection between mothers and children became more meaningful because now their mothers can understand the digital world.

Moment of giving a meaning to power-sharing and interdependency.

INTERFAITH CAFE: Online space for youth to meet each other

Interfaith café is an online/virtual dialogue space to meet our friends, brothers, and sisters of a fellow community to initiate a conversation about diverse faiths…

We meet to initiate readings about our own faith and fellow faiths

We meet our own community to find the meanings and connect with those meanings

We meet our fellow communities to find the connections and core

We meet to reflect the distance we have between the true meaning and our life.

We meet a community to find the connection we have lost as humans with nature.

Online Coaching and Mentoring Design was the Innovation

“What is your personal vision for life”

“What is your vision for your community /Sri Lanka? World?”

“What is your vision for Earth”

This is how we started the process of personal coaching and mentoring. It was not an easy task from the facilitator’s end. Instead of group coaching, spending time with close to 100 individuals for 2 to 3 hours with one person was not easy when it happened in cyberspace.
When I was moving with the quest of aligning myself from different social structured roles to a self-healed soul filled with compassion and love, I witnessed that the mentoring and coaching session supported myself for a self-discovered, self-aligned and self-healed individual. The journey which I am now started from that day. Now I choose to live in love, where I feel so light.
Amhar Ahamed, Kattankudy, SANGYOG Core Member

I always want to support and help my community overcome their issues and problems. Until I have been in a conversation with the facilitator in this session, I was only looking at problems, not analyzing and understanding them deeply. I realized that that’s where I stagnated and this realization brings much hope and light in my heart.
Thevika, WOMAN Core Member Perivaneelavani.

I have been with cpbr for the last 10 years but online mentoring and Coaching sessions are the spaces which created space to have one on one conversation with facilitator and resource people which give specific deep concern for each participant. During these sessions supported me to release the blockages I had in my personal, social, political, cultural and spiritual spheres
As Sheik. M.B.M. Firthous Naleemi, APINĀM Co-Leader – Batticaloa, Chairman Bismi Institute, Consultant Peace and Harmony Unit Jamiul afreen Grand Jumma Mosque, and Member Co-existence Unit Jammiyathulama Kattankudy.

Physical Field Meetings Turned to Online One-on-One Coaching Sessions

For years and years, we used to visit our focus groups to support them to grow in psychological and spiritual levels in order to initiate community, regional, and national level transformative actions. Sitting in a circle keeping an artistic expression as a centerpiece in the middle passing a talking piece, we build bonds in personal as well as group levels. Visiting participant’s homes, religious places, and special places they want to take us having diverse reasons to cultivate deeper love and care on a personal as well as community level. We BECAME ONE OF THEM. Experiencing the life of the other enriched our lives keeping LOVE as the center of our relationships.

Peacebuilding is about the quality of the relationship you maintain with oneself, others, and one’s environment /nature. As a team who strongly practiced physical interactions in order to build authentic and truthful relationships, we were in a shock and denial phase when COVID hit Sri Lanka.

During the pandemic time, the cpbr team has also adapted to a new working system and culture of home-based office. Building a remote working system that fosters transparency and accountability, and implementing it was swift due to the small size of the team.

CORONA & US online workshop series

Conversation with ONESELF:

How am I doing in this pandemic period?

Conversation with the OTHER

Let’s wear CORONA’s shoes now… Imagine you are the virus… What do you have to say to HUMANS?

How your faith is interpreting this situation, what are the skills it promoting to face pandemics and transform the crisis to experience something positive

In these spaces, diverse dialogues have bloomed to initiate a transformative journey

COVID and SELF-SUFFICIENT ECONOMY

“If the whole world comes to a level of lock down. Are we going to starve and die? What would we do if that is the situation?

What are our key needs?

What is the difference between needs, wants and desires? Shall we make the lists and budgets?

Can we grow our food?

Can we make our soap?

Can we save our clothes focusing only on what we need, not what we desire?

Can we make our own sanitary needs?

Our own milk, eggs and other proteins.

Our own fish. small lake or pond for lake fish.

We call it a self-sufficient economy.

FAITH and PANDEMICS

What does your faith say about pandemics? How do you interpret this pandemic according to your faith?

How did your spiritual leader face this kind of situation?

What is the knowledge, skills, and tools you can find in your faith?

Do we have the resources to face the situation and transform it to bring humanity?

Can we face this situation?

Developing our minds through knowledge, creativity, and innovation

Utilizing all resources, we have to address our basic needs

Following faith-based and traditional practices, rituals, food habits along with modern medical support and guidelines.

Strengthening our spiritual and moral capacities to face hard situations wisely and lightly.

Can we take COVID as a messenger of nature or God (for Abraham traditions) to REFLECT on what went wrong in HUMAN CIVILISATION?

Can we take this as an opportunity to redesign our life in order to contribute to ecological and human wellbeing?

Can we take this as an opportunity to surrender to nature keeping aside collective and individual human egos?

Can we take this as a moment to reverse the wheel or start a new cycle keeping INTERDEPENDENCE and DIVERSITY at the core of the cycle?

With women, community leaders, youth and religious leaders, and their family members we were able to complete 64 number of facilitated workshops in order to open a new path to be conflict transformation practitioners in real-life situations.

“We were looking at CORONA as an enemy. We never saw it as a messenger of nature or God. Because we never take a moment to reflect how our religions interpret pandemics. We never reflected how our Spiritual leader reacted to such situations. We are also trapped into the interpretations given by popular culture dominated by the media. The Quran says pandemics are on earth to say that we humans behave wrongly. It is a message to STOP and REFLECT. Listen to God. Fix or transform what is wrong in our behavior. This is an eye-opening moment for us to redesign our lives to innovate new lifestyles which contribute for human and ecological well-being”
Al Alim. Zahair Moulavi
Islam Ulama & Teacher
APINĀM Core Member – Sammanthurai

“We felt stagnated and lost. The pandemic has brought us to a difficult situation in which the country’s context as well as what is happening around us is also becoming so difficult. This workshop of Covid and Us brought a novel way of looking at COVID 19 pandemic and the context which brings much hope in hearts.”
Barathy
SANYOG Peer Group Member Mullaitivu

“After COVID emerged our lifestyles changed a lot and we were panicking about the financial instability we are going to face. We had a lot of time to only blame the government, system and officials thinking that they are the reason for the emergence of this disease. But after this workshop i feel ashamed of myself since i and my family are also a reason for COVID and we have also got a good opportunity to use our free time fruitfully”
Chandra Ratnayake
WOMAN Core Member – Nochchiyagama

ONLINE SYMPOSIUM Series

As human civilization, we have reached an era of complexity; we made everything complicated; we collapsed our natural way of existing. In this collapsing process, we have made huge destruction to Nature … Finally, we lost our happiness and life.

What is the result we all have and face in psychological, spiritual, communal, and human crises? All species of Sapiens are in crisis!

In order to understand this crisis and the bio. psycho, social and spiritual interpretation behind this crisis.

cpbr together with its wings initiated Online Symposiums Series as pinnacle moments of the initiative;

**APINĀM initiated a discourse with its peer 150 religious leaders’ community from diverse faith groups on the theme of** “**Heal the Soul, Soil, Mind & Body**“

**WOMAN initiated a discourse with its peer 130 women from diverse faith, ethnic, social, and cultural backgrounds on the theme of**
“**RISING WOMAN**“

**SANGYOG initiated a journey named YATRA with its 120 peers from diverse faith, ethnic, social and cultural background on the theme of “Life & Happiness**“

It’s a very good analysis of the needful movement of micro to holistic understanding of man, social and environmental to find healing in the world. If there should be a holistic healing, it should begin with religion. Therefore, religions should Centre their religious values on the original teachings of their founders. Love heals man, society and environment. Let’s be messengers of love!!!!
Rev. Fr. Pius Kennedy Fernando
APINAM Community Member

Love is my foundation & Knowledge is my capital – Prophet Mohammed
It is a moment to rconnect with this saying …
Akram Junaid Moulavi
APINAM Community Member

Thank You Yatra Team for such a wonderful session. Let me Say this is one of the most terrific training I have attended. To keep the motivation on the notes which you have shared is on my desk so daily I have a glance of the same and hope it helps me to keep the momentum.
Faahim Ismail
SANYOG Youth Community Member

It has been a month since one of our closest relatives died due to Covid. At this moment I am in bed since I have been infected by covid and have been struggling a lot. I was in the session continuously for the last four hours. It is healing and it brought much healing to me. Thank you so much. I believe that only medicines cannot bring healing for us in this context.
Fathima Massiya
WOMAN Community Member

We are trapped and stagnated. I am not a person who resides inside home. I walk on the roads to support people, people who suffer from diseases and prisons to serve them. Now I am inside, I cannot see any humans. We are in a context in which we do not know where we are and where we go… in this lost situation this symposium brought an eye-opening session on happiness … hope and light that we can find happiness whatever the context if we seek ……….
Sister Alexia
WOMAN Community Member

While we were focusing our experimental and explorative online-based activities whenever we got opportunities to meet in the pandemic context, we never missed meeting each other to do our workshops and activities. The image gallery contains the moments of love and humanity we experienced.

In the most complicated era of the world

we believed in mother nature,

We surrendered to her

We listen to her

Therefore we could move the pebbles of transformative, healing, and connecting pathway while bringing creative approaches in the online spaces

We are:

Religious Leaders who Believe that Religions for Humanity

Youth who believes in a future nourished by happiness and humanity

Women who believe in healed and connected future

Young Women who envision a harmonized community

Our family members, friends, communities are walking along with cpbr team and facilitators pool

We are a Web of Humans journeying together to;

Heal Oneself……..

Heal the Other ………

Heal the Nature………..

Be connected with us in the journey of healing:

Sangyog: Facebook, Youtube

APINĀM: Facebook, Youtube

WOMAN: Facebook, Youtube

Picture credits: All images from this article is from the Center for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation, Sri Lanka

About the Author

Dishani Jayaweera. Center for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation, Sri Lanka

Dishani believes peacebuilding is a mission based on interdependence and understanding of the power dynamics of relationships. Learning, Un-learning, Evolving, and Growing is the formula of her life. Reflecting, Re-Interpreting, Re-designing, Re-Creating, Re-producing and Re-cycling is the way to heal the world and build a new future that works for all. Dishani and her life partner, Prof. Jayantha Seneviratne, founded the Center for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation in 2002. Today she serves as Program Designer / Strategist and Trainer /Facilitator of the Center for Peace Building and Reconciliation, (CPBR), Sri Lanka. They collaboratively explore the role faith leaders, women, and youth can play in social change processes, healing, and connecting communities.

Through her work with CPBR, Dishani saw that with an organization with almost 300 male religious leaders and with the dominance normally afforded to men in a patriarchal society, it was necessary to create a safer space for women to come together to interpret the world as they see and experience it. In 2013, Dishani co-founded “WOMAN” to create spaces and places to harness the spiritual and material capacity and will of woman from a multitude of faiths and backgrounds to foster peace in a spirit of interconnectedness and earth-connectedness.

Dishani received the Peacemaker in Action award by Tanenbaum (USA) in 2012 and became the 2nd runner-up of the Annual ‘Coexist Prize’ by Coexist Foundation (UK) in the same year. Together with the co-founder of CPBR, Professor Jayantha Senevirathne, she also received the Niwano Peace Award for 2015 for the outstanding contribution CPBR has made to peacebuilding work in Sri Lanka. But for Dishani, her biggest award is the trust and friendships she has built with diverse communities around Sri Lanka and beyond.

Center for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation. Sri Lanka

Centre for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation is a home-grown organization located in Sri Lanka and based in the city Colombo which was founded in 2002 by Dishani Jayaweera Peacebuilder and conflict transformation Practitioner who has over 20 years of experience locally and internationally and Professor Jayantha Seneviratne who introduced peace and conflict resolution as a subject to the tertiary education system in Sri Lanka. For nearly 19 years cpbr has been engaging in interfaith coexistence, peacebuilding, reconciliation, healing, and connecting related activities such as learning & learning designed processes, capacity & knowledge building workshops and trainings, interfaith & intra-faith dialogues, exhibitions, and creative spaces for dialogues, interfaith & intra-faith community, regional & national activities, forums, symposiums, and skill development programs). While rooting on the values of Power-sharing and interdependency CPBR has been promoting conflict transformation through diverse approaches in order to build co-existence and contribute towards justice and equality while focusing on five target groups- Interfaith religious leaders, community leaders, women, young women, and youth.

Celebrating the Gifts of EDE (Ecovillage Design Education) and Culture of Regeneration

July 31, 2021 by Luvian Iskandar

4-D Framework for Integrative Whole Systems Design for Sustainability (*image: Gaia Education*)

Why dream and design and do through GEN Map of Regeneration and 4D mandala of Design for Sustainability from Gaia Education?

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Reiner Maria Rilke

Living and loving my questions, celebrating the completion of participating in the first e-learning EDE course. Pre-Covid, EDE’s were often held in physical locations around the world for a month, by trainers certified by Gaia Education. This was a 41/2 months online program- an international, intergenerational extravaganza of interactions and resources, a mosaic of experiences integrating inner and outer journeys through all dimensions of sustainability and regeneration. Weaving whole systems – in essence, encouraging us to be anchored in the worldview of our inter-beingness, a powerful tool for transformation of consciousness.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams
Eleanor Roosevelt

It all begins with a dream, tapping into the power of Dragon Dreaming- inviting you to take a deep breath, breathing with the breath of GAIA, being supported by the unconditional love of gravity and mother Gaia- close your eyes and connect to all your senses, breathing in the energies of the sun, the moon and all elements – now- as you experience stillness and silence tune into your dream- drumming in your heart, invite your dragons to dance and dream the win win win possibilities –

Are you living your dream or wishing to make it come alive?
Are you hearing a call for people and planetary wellness and
being guided to serve society in a purposeful way?

A Portal – EDE is a portal to open many doors to new ways of thinking and doing regeneratively- a perfect platform to explore and experiment with regenerative cultures, an invitation to create meaningful projects that will slowly shift us into self-development, community growth and maybe even align us with thriving through climate change by improving the health of existing systems.

This course honored the sociotones and gave me an opportunity to understand and apply ‘edgework’ principles – following the flow, honoring synchronicity, playing to the law of three – 1) activation 2) resistance 3) reconciling. It encouraged bisociation, thinking with integral approach and moving with spiral dynamics.

Trauma and Transformation – we were encouraged to honor, hold and heal traumas, making us recognise individual, ancestral, and collective trauma, facilitating resilience through resources of reconnection to nature and remembering our inner superpowers of presence and relationality.

Learn by doing – dedicated facilitators Macaco and Taisa created a safe and sacred space for us to lead from authentic emergent self, listening deeply to inner and outer worlds and allowing weaving of friendships and collaborative projects.

Applying my gifts to this project based learning in my design group where we are dreaming and birthing the advocacy of SSH – ‘Safe Sacred Havens’ – a soul- ution for supporting the vulnerable, especially those getting displaced by climate change disasters. SSH aspires to be a voice and womb for the vulnerable – creating lasting belonging as one family of humanity.

The edgework projects of May East and Green Releaf of Sarah Queblatin and my own process of project design with my heart centered group, has ignited a compassionate relationship with the refugee crisis – connecting me to the Kakuma Camp in Kenya through the presence of an inspiring peer Kadjosi. I am now activated to join his dream for refugee camps to transition into ecovillage living, giving the EmergGENcies and RefuGEN program new energy to rise up and support the impending refugee crisis. At the end of 2020 we had 82.4 million displaced people and the prediction for 2050 is 1.2 billion.

I am now asking – “how can the GEN community support prevention, preparedness, mitigation and,or response and recovery from this crisis? “

Creating Community – this learning journey began with the first simple step – creating community in every cell of ourselves and honoring diversity. People coming together in a shared inclusive way – learning to govern with sociocratic lens and diverse worldviews, holding everything and everyone like essential fractals in the mandala of life, each one with intrinsic value, truth and beauty, aspiring to create a peaceful life together.

A Design Thinking Program – providing tools to think and design life and environment regeneratively through permaculture, harmonising inner and outer ecology to economy, fertilise the soil of life for peace, health and abundance. Encouraging us to know more about the value of composting toilets, biochar, and Terra Petra soil for carbon sequestering.

Designed to cultivate imagination and contemplate on questions:

What are my inner and outer resources?

What is my personal impact? Could it be reduced somehow?

How do I manage waste?

How can I support regenerative agriculture and build food security?

Where does my food and water come from?

How can I help in carbon sequestering- to lower atmospheric carbon levels from 415 ppm to 270 ppm?

Am I realigning and reinhabiting for regeneration?

What economic models serve well-being, sharing, gifting,fairness, equality and happiness?

Can we live in a money-free economy?

How do we transition from global to national, bioregional to local Gaian economies and Gaian institutions?

Are we collectively exploring complexity and finding creative sou-lutions where the spirit is at the center for thriving communities and ecological balance?

Systemic Change – EDE helps create an ecosystem for supporting evolutionary approaches to education for planetary and personal transformation, helping each other harness the power of collective wisdom – metaphorically like ants coming together to make an ant hill ecosystem- individually we are not as activated and effective but when we work together in community collaboration like a human hive, we are able to tap into a wider web of wisdom, network of ideas, and our combined courage and strength.

Heart Opening- the cultural dimension was weaved into the whole course. Participants were invited to share their creativity and culture. We had fun dancing and meditating together, sharing our passion for photography and documentary making, embodying flow with elements while diving into more serious topics like the Earth Charter and SDGs in ecovillages and their application, understanding, assessment and achievement in different regions and why GEN and Gaia Education use it as a bridge between different stakeholders of our planet to work towards the 5 P’s – Planet, People, Prosperity, Partnerships and Peace.

5 Ps of Sustainable Development Goals (*Image: UN*)

Cherishing my role as a volunteer and GEN ambassador, now an active member of the Network Steward Circle from GENOA, I am recognising and endorsing the EDE as integral to understanding the ecosystem of ecovillages and to learn from those that have dedicated themselves to this participatory process for decades.

TI Ecovillage Bangalore India is the home of Amena Bal. Inspired by GEN and EDE, TI dreaming of becoming smarter and more regenerative

Remembering the ‘ Autobiography in Five Chapters By Sogyal Rinpoche from the ‘The Tibetian Book of Living and Dying shared by Ina Meyer Stoll who facilitated personal and social transformation

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost…
I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fell in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in…it’s a habit.
My eyes are open;
I know where I am;
It’s my fault.
I get out immediately.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
I walk down another street.
Sogyal Rinpoche from the The Tibetian Book of Living and Dying

EDE is a walk down another street!

Showering gratitude energies and love on the cherished facilitators, shining stalwarts paving regenerative pathways with persistence, perseverance, and possibility – helping us remember how to care for and be in service to GAIA.

Keep a lookout for the next online EDE to engage with master trainers, co- dreamers that will become friends and project communities, setting sail into the ‘Great Turning’ celebrating the change by creating win-win-win futures!

More info

https://learn.ecovillage.org/course/ecovillage-design-education/

https://www.gaiaeducation.org/about/learning-outcomes/

https://www.conectaecossocial.com/

About the Author

Amena Bal. TI Ecovillage, India

Amena joined the GENOA Council and GEN NSC to serve Mother Earth and to be an active voice for wellness and oneness in our world. As a permaculturist, living in TI Ecovillage in South India, she is on a mission to spread the ecovillage movement and share regenerative living through the path of loving-kindness and integral ecosystem sensing and designing.

A spiritualist and devoted energy healer, her main purpose is to heal and compassionately harmonise communities with their environments. Working with land, youth and women is very close to her heart. As a member of Bangalore Birth Network and Birth Light UK, her dream is to create Birth Homes in nature that empower families to remember their connection to nature and sacred birthing. Her life is dedicated to connecting and working with communities and projects that are creating circles of a new healed humanity living happily in beautiful balance with Gaia.

How Can We Create a Society and Economy, in Which We Can Live as Human Beings?

July 31, 2021 by Luvian Iskandar

Article from GEN-Japan EDE, July 2021

It’s true for everyone, but especially for those in their 20s and 30s, the future of society is a real issue.

Recently, more and more people have been heard to say, “If we, the common people, stop capitalism altogether,” or “The economic system of capitalism is causing global problems” (Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy, Kohei Saitoh). But even so, people will only be lost if they are unclear about a realistic alternative vision of society.

In July, GEN Japan decided to take a step further and explore this issue in their EDE.

“In order to realize the society that I wish for, where everyone can live their own lives, I believe that by freeing ourselves from the frame of thinking of ourselves as having our own skills, our own homes, our own girlfriends, etc., we can greatly expand our possibilities for living.”
Taichi. Participant, 24 years-old

” Such as a warm society without hierarchy. I want to think more about my future”
Tamaki. Participant, 19 years-old

It was most gratifying for me to see the younger people begin to realize this.

“It is a great experience for me to feel that the community nurtures people.”
Azusa. Participant, 34 years-old

The July GEN-Japan EDE was held from July 17 (Sat.) to 19 (Mon.) at As One Suzuka Community. To make it easier for the general public to participate, an innovative way has been devised and approved. That is programmed to meet the requirements for five months of three days and one month of four days residential learning, instead of a continuous four-week program.

Recently, humanity as a whole needs to be able to envision and visualize the image of the next society after capitalism. GEN, an international eco-village network, and Gaia Education have been working since 1995 with the aim of proposing a new vision of society in which people can live in reality with peace of mind in an easy-to-understand manner.

In order to realize the society of the future, the programs are designed to depict a comprehensive change in the four dimensions (worldview, society, economy, and environment).

In July, the focus was on the social area, “Building a community that respects each individual” and “New leadership and decision making“, and the economic area, “Transitioning from globalism to a sustainable economy“.

To avoid generalizations and slippage, the participants first looked back at their own footsteps to this point in their lives, and while facing themselves, they drew and listened to each other’s life maps to date.

Everyone in this room could feel that everyone wants to live a truly happy life.

As we listened to each other, there seemed to be something that came naturally to us when we talked about a society for people. Then, participants wondered what happiness truly meant, and their interest turned in the direction of their true wish, which they had never stepped into before.

‘A company for people, an organization for people, a society for people’

On the second day, we started exploring by listening to the actual operations of the As One Community, Takuya Kishigami from Suzuka Farm Co., Ltd., Shoichiro Yoshioka from Ofukuro-san Bento. On the final morning, Satomi Yoshioka of Oburo-san Bento, Takuki Okada, an academy student at the farm, and Masako Ogura, who plays the role of a “grandmother” at a voluntary childcare center, shared their lives and work in the community.

Society is alive, and there is a “place and place to go” for people who are just as they are.

I was glad to know that the words of one of the participants, that she hoped that each of us would be able to find our own place and place of work. This was a common wish in the hearts of every participant. It gave us hope that we have the potential to grow to any height as human beings depending on our environment. In the circle of EDE participants, as we talked and listened to each other, we seemed to notice the changes in each other and to realize that this is one society.

Impressions from EDE Participants

I was happy to feel that I could share some of the elements that have influenced the “now” of the person sitting in front of me, such as their memories, experiences, and emotions.
Tamaki. Participant, 19 years old

It was interesting to see how the image of each participant in my mind changed. (Atsuko 60s)
Atsuko. Participant, 60 years old

It was great to hear directly from the people who actually live there. Their stories and the way they talk are not always clear and crisp. But there are so many things I can feel from them.
Unamed. Participant

This time, I participated while thinking a little about my future. A society without hierarchy, a society connected to oneself and to others. I thought I should think about it slowly and positively.
Risako. Participant, 24 years old

The theme that was interesting to me this time was “ownership”. By liberating the scope of “my” possessions, we can use more things, meet more people, and be of service to more people. I felt that there are many things that I feel like I own, such as my own things, my own skills, and my own partner. I strongly felt it is impossible that a society as a whole should not be a collection of “someone else’s things,” but something that we can all work together to create. I want to be in a state of “shared” rather than “give and take”.
Taichi. Participant, 24 years old

About the Author

Hiroko Katayama, GEN-Japan Executive Director

Hiroko Katayama is the Executive Director of GEN-Japan, an established non-profit organization since 2016. She has been actively working in building trust and network among people and organizations that have purpose along the line of social and environmental regeneration for five years. Sensing into the current context and wishing for a clear vision to a regenerative future, she and her team have been planning and facilitating this online event since last fall, and achieving it with a lot of support.

What is a Community of Practice (CoP)?

July 31, 2021 by Luvian Iskandar

As a wide and diverse network of communities and individuals, Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) holds a rich treasure of knowledge and experience amongst its members. To create more space for cross-learning within the network, sharing best practices, and refining our regenerative cultures, we – the team in GEN and GENOA – plan to develop the model of “Community of Practices” (CoPs). Before inviting network members to join these CoPs, we would like to share with you what we mean by it. This article aims to do just that, and stay tuned to receive more information from the GENOA team about CoPs.

What is Community of Practice (CoP)?

Community of Practices – CoPs are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. (Wenger-Trayner, 2020)

Core dimensions

A community of practice defines itself along three dimensions, that mutually influence each other and should be kept in balance.

Domain

This is the area of shared interest, topic or issue that the community cares about. The domain needs to be negotiated with the stakeholders of the CoP and evolves alongside the context and community.

Community

This is a group of people who build personal relationships and learn together through discussions, activities and regular interactions. Enough common ground and diversity makes for richer learning, more interesting relationships and increased creativity. Community members can take on different roles to maintain and nurture the CoP, all communities change in structure as they grow. In a community of practice, the focus extends beyond the needs of the group. There is an intentional commitment to advance the field of practice, and to share those discoveries with a wider audience. A CoP often makes their resources and knowledge widely available especially to those doing related work.

Practice

This is the body of knowledge, methods, skills, stories and tools being developed. The practice covers frameworks, and documentation of ideas, experiences, lessons learned.

Communities develop their practice through a variety of methods, including problem-solving, requests for information, seeking the experiences of others, reusing assets, coordination and synergy, discussing developments, visiting other members, mapping knowledge, and identifying gaps. Successful practice building goes hand in hand with community building.

The functions of a CoP may be any one or more of the following :

Connect people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to interact, either as frequently or at all.
Provide a shared context for people – particularly peers – to communicate and share information, stories, and personal experiences in a way that builds understanding and insight.
Enable dialogue between people who come together to explore new possibilities, solve challenging problems, and create new, mutually beneficial opportunities.
Stimulate learning by serving as a vehicle for authentic communication, mentoring, coaching, and self-reflection.
Capture and share existing knowledge to help people improve their practice by providing a forum to identify solutions to common problems and a process to collect and evaluate best practices.
Introduce collaborative processes to groups and organisations as well as between organisations to encourage the free flow of ideas and exchange of information.
Provide a space for experimentation that can be self-organised and decentralised.
Generate new knowledge to help people transform their practice to accommodate changes in needs and technologies.
Break down silos and create shared value.

Community of Practice is being applied popularly in organizations, companies, communities and networks. For example, you can find CoP on Holacracy, on NVC – Nonviolent Communication, Reinventing Organization and others.

As you’ve seen, Community of Practices are rooted in the willingness to join, to share, and to learn together as a network. Therefore, anyone can look into starting a community of practice and fuel it with passion, openness, and a moderate level of coordination.

In GENOA (Global Ecovillage Network in Oceania and Asia), we intend to develop a Community of Practice on Fundraising as a learning hub to explore ways to sustain the network and bring resilience to the community movement in the region. The information about Community of Practice on Fundraising will be communicated to you in the coming weeks. Once the experience with this first CoP sinks in, we will look into developing CoP in other topics – we are open to hear any suggestions from the network as well.

Let’s pave a way to learn and evolve together!

References:

http://www.communityofpractice.ca/background/what-is-a-community-of-practice/

https://library.educause.edu/-/media/files/library/2005/1/nli0531-pdf.pdf

https://adaptmethodology.com/communities-of-practice-best-practices/

About the Author

Thao Kin. Networking Coordinator, GENOA

Thao Ngo, often called by her friends and colleagues as Kin, is a learner and educator from Vietnam. Kin is passionate about ecology and is on a long exciting quest of her life learning from and caring for Mother Earth. Kin has been a member of NextGENOA since 2016 and joined the GENOA Office team in mid-2020. In addition to her active role in GENOA and NextGENOA, Kin works with non-governmental organizations in Vietnam in organizing and facilitating training on ecological education and eco-lifestyle. Kin believes in the power of reconnection and re-enchanting the world. She is learning to be a Deep Ecology facilitator and trainer.

Cover Image by: Hanna Kim, CC BY-SA 4.0

Eco Village Voice Issue #3 – a year in the making!

July 31, 2021 by Luvian Iskandar

This article is written by Michael Ney from Eco Village Voice, Australia

Soon after moving to Crystal Waters Ecovillage, Qld, Australia, I was asked to produce a documentary. Watch here – https://bit.ly/cwdoco01 – I was so inspired to spread the ideals of “ecovillages” that Eco Village Voice was born. Whilst I wish for a team behind this operation it has been mostly up to me – digital media producer, photo-journalist, filmmaker… but of course I couldn’t do it without our fantastic writers too.

Global Ecovillage Network was always a bright light. GAIA education and FIC and others have been inspirational too… I can only hope to grow into such an organisation. With big plans, we launched in November 2019 with an Ecovillage Film Festival, followed by Issue 1 of the magazine in January 2020. The website sprang into life with videos and our first podcasts. Months later Issue 2 arrived, plus a major webinar. Permaculture was always a primary focus… and we are blessed here with many leading lights such as Morag Gamble, Robin Clayfield, and Steve Cran.

As the pandemic arrived in early 2020, I found myself spiralling into my own first long term health dilemma; not COVID related but I was unable to continue – until recently. Thankfully, I managed to keep social media and newsletters going, but had to stop work on other production. I had no idea it was to be a year before the next issue!

We share the wisdom of “eco” community living, permaculture and regeneration; that is widening now to spiritual views too. Many free preview magazine excerpts of Eco Village Voice magazine promotes organisations globally and provide networking opportunities. This serves our advertisers to get noticed beyond our paid membership audience. We encourage collaboration and share ecovillage stories, events, products and services. The visually rich style of our magazine will always feature nature with inspirational pages and community messages.

I am personally heartened to read “GENOA explores a new paradigm of holistic sustainability – meditation, yoga and mindfulness“… Lately, I’ve felt urged to also spread this important intention. As an aside… one of the most exciting events, even if it is somewhat “out there”, is a recent global meditation initiative called “Fire the Grid“. I’ll explore this further in the next editorial. It is a welcome antidote to the despair and waning hope that seems to be taking hold in the world. I’ve always believed our planet itself is a living entity, and now more information is coming to light.

“Each one of us is an energy being. We, as energy beings, are attached to a huge hexagonal grid that surrounds and works throughout the planet. In the planetary grid, each one of us has our own hexagon surrounding us. At any given moment, we are either feeding our hexagon with light (high frequency state) or we drawing light from it (low frequency state). Every choice and every action we take affects the planetary grid. Collectively, WE determine the future of our planet.”
Hear the story of Samoiya Shelley Yates, Initiator of Fire the Grid – https://youtu.be/Jqkr84IXkHo and this “Fire the Grid” update – https://youtu.be/RXEjrTOjZQE

Whilst it is so good to be developing healthy communities, working with the earth – and permaculture offers many solutions – we must not lose sight of our spiritual nature. Indeed, harkening back to the genesis of Findhorn, even the nature spirits play their part too. So, Eco Village Voice also explores a wholistic world view. Feedback welcome. Please email me if you’d like to get involved in our production side too – editor@ecovillagevoice.com

Funds from all new Eco Village Voice members go into our ongoing tree planting campaign – with donations to EcoForce Global <https://www.ecoforceglobal.com/>, TreeSisters <https://treesisters.org/> and also Carbon Positive Australia <https://carbonpositiveaustralia.org.au/>.

The future is looking bright again so we welcome you to join us at: https://www.ecovillagevoice.com – To receive everything on offer, our membership is only $5USD per month. Save $10 a year with the $50 USD annual membership… includes the magazine, podcasts, webinars, video channel, and monthly newsletters.

About the Author

Michael Ney. Editor, Eco Village Voice

Michael Ney is a digital media producer, editor/publisher of Eco Village Voice, photographer and filmmaker. In 2018, he produced a 90 minute documentary about Crystal Waters Permaculture EcoVillage. Michael first worked in many theatres in Sydney, Australia, and after several years moved into television production. He later ran his own commercial photography and audio-visual company “Midnite Stills”. When computers arrived in late 1980’s he opened a pioneering multimedia company “Virtual Realm Xchange” for CD-ROM and web projects for The University of Sydney and many others. In 2001, Michael refocused on his first love – filmmaking – and his production company “Sensory Image” combined documentary and commercial work. In 2014, Michael rebranded as “Eagle Spirit Media” and now focuses on cultural creatives, sustainability, eco publishing as well as elearning content. – https://ecovillagevoice.com/eaglespiritmedia

articles

Covid Restrictions in Eco-Neighborhood

Reflections from Edenhope

Ecovillage Transition in GENOA

How to Add your Project or Community to the GEN Website: A Step-by-Step Guide

How Can We Create a Society and Economy, in Which We Can Live as Human Beings?

What is a Community of Practice (CoP)?

Eco Village Voice Issue #3 – a year in the making!

Be a Friend of GENOA

Join our Newsletter

Volunteer with GENOA

Who we are

What we do

NextGENOA

Our Vision

articles

Top Footer

Footer

Who we are

What we do

NextGENOA

Our Vision