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ecovillages

Building Communities and Surviving Together – an Exchange Gathering by GEN Japan

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GEN-Japan held the Second Exchange Gathering Online from March 5th to 6th. Unexpectedly, one week after the beginning of the Russian military offensive in Ukraine, it highlighted the meaning of community building and the importance of unwavering cooperation, as well as networking among these communities. In this online event, about 20 communities and initiatives joined. Each speaker and community strongly announced it to the public and as a result, more than 200  participants participated in the gathering. Through the event, we were able to clearly understand the difference between a world that “tries to move people through violence and violent acts” and a world that understands and cooperates with each other through dialogue and we shall move towards the latter.

One audience member sent us her impression after the event;” I was encouraged by the fact that younger people are starting various initiatives.”Since last year, exchanges and cooperation among the participating eco-villages have begun, and at the same time, young people from urban areas are touring the eco-villages and such a population has been gradually increasing. They are beginning to experience a new way of life while there. On the other hand, there is a movement to learn from each other about the efforts of how they keep building ecovillages.

Tetora Tanizaki, representative of WorldShift Japan, an advisory board of GEN-Japan, suggested that we need to clearly show the innovative way of living in harmony to the public. This year GEN-Japan is having a Gaia Youth Education in March and April as well as GEN-Japan EDE course in April. We are trying to steadily promote the creation of a harmonious society through eco-villages.

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.

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.

Stand for Unity: what is going on in Auroville?

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Written by Auroville residents

Currently, Auroville, an intentional township in South India, is facing an extremely difficult struggle within its community. Some of our forests, watersheds, and homes are being destroyed or subjected to threat due to a contentious interpretation of the town’s development plan. 

On December 4th, the Auroville Town Development Council started bulldozing trees, despite Auroville residents trying to protect the area (See the Timeline of the events to understand better).

Since then, bulldozers have demolished the Youth Center and its surrounding forest has been cut through. Many of our residents involved in peaceful protest against this violent destruction were intimidated with threats of jail and deportation. Auroville Outreach Media, which has served as the community’s link to the press since 1996, was asked to refrain from issuing any statements.

On December 10th, a case was filed with the Indian National Green Tribunal, and a Stay Order was placed on any tree felling and development work. Now our community apprehensively awaits the verdict of this case. 

What is the development about?

The development plan proposed by Auroville town planning authorities includes a perfectly circular “Crown Way” of 16.7 meters. As this road cuts through many ecologically sensitive areas and precious water catchments, residents in the concerned spaces worked with our Town Development Council for months to come up with alternative solutions that would meet the mobility and infrastructure needs while respecting the sensitive environment. These alternative proposals were ignored by the Auroville Town Development Council and bulldozing of the areas began, accompanied by violent handling of protesting Auroville residents.

The established community decision-making processes are being undermined by Auroville’s internal working groups, which goes against the Auroville Foundation Act (1988),  a parliamentary act that recognises the Residents Assembly’s role in decision-making. The development plan is being reinforced through violent authoritarian measures despite the legal base for participatory decision-making.

While the issue is multi-layered and complex, the bottom line is : 
– The protesting residents want to develop Auroville in a sustainable way that respects the natural environment and honours the intensive reforestation work done by so many residents over the past 50 years; see the inspiring effort of Aurovillians to restore a desertified bioregion into a lush forest here.
– The residents want to build Auroville in such a way that our community decision-making processes are upheld, and that residents of Auroville have a voice in the growth of their community.

How to help?

  • We ask that you sign and circulate this Petition within your community and beyond: please sign and ask friends to sign.
  • To learn more about Auroville’s afforestation work see Ever Slow Green: an award-winning documentary film that tells the story of a 50-years-young tropical forest that evolved in Auroville.
  • > Trailer
  • > Full film
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What is Auroville?

Auroville is an intentional township in Tamil Nadu, India. It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa (known as “the Mother”) dreamt to be the place for Human Unity.

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.

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.

Reflections from Edenhope

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This article is originally published in Surrender Now

Picture: Edenhope

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.

Picture: Edenhope

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.

Picture: Sigmund

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.

More from Pi:

Those conversations [with nature] bring about a sense of awakeness that’s not just from the physical point of view. There has to be some sort of ego death that happens when people are asked to listen to other human beings from a really humble level.

It is humbling to listen to the needs of other human beings before the fulfillment of our own desires. In ecovillage, we have the kind of uncomfortable conversations with each other that most people live out their lives trying to avoid. And yet the ‘awakeness’ to other people and aliveness to our own subtle sensations that emerge in the fulfillment of this process marks a qualitative shift in one’s experience of the world.

It is the art of authentic communion, so richly human in its scope and expression, that the dream city and its conveniences have been stifling. An ecovillage is a microcosm of creation, and the human place within it is as creator: of new forms of ingenuity, of greater ferment in ideas, of sheer beauty in the harmony of our relationship with the planet.

Living in ecovillage renews our connection to place, and to our place in the cosmos — creating a culture of place and symbiotically nourishing the earth of that place. The shared efforts of a community are regenerative. If we are seeking an evolutionary pathway to revive this planet, despoiled by dream cities and way of life they offer, then surely ecovillage models a map of the required terrain.

Find out more about Edenhope Nature Reserves

Cover photo credit: Baraa Jalahej

About the Author

Devi, Edenhope Nature Reserve

Originally from Australia, Devi has lived in Vanuatu as
part of the Edenhope project since 2015. Her service
has included the communication, outreach projects
and administration of the Edenhope Foundation. She
is deeply inspired by the exploration of endemic
biodiversity as part of daily life, including immersion
in nature, preparation of natural plant-based foods,
and researching the social issues faced by indigenous
women of Vanuatu. Find more about Edenhope here!

Southern Life Community Participating at the Daomi ‘ao International Contemporary Art Exhibition, China

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The second Doumi ‘ao Contemporary Art Exhibition was commenced on 30th September 2021 in Doumi ‘ao Village, Songyang County, Zhejiang Province. The village is an ancient village rich with cultural gems, with more than 400 years of history. Recently the village resources have gradually lost their vitality and their resources have been underutilized due to the urbanization trend of young people.

The exhibition is part of an ongoing government effort for rural revitalization and protection of culture. The Songyang County government has started to implement the “One Hundred Artists Settled in Songyang Village Plan” in 2018 in an effort to slowly bring abandoned villages back to life. At present, the county has organized the preservation of 142 old houses, 63 houses and formally signed a contract with 60 artists to create a batch of art villages such as Doumi ‘ao Village. The first Doumi ‘ao International Contemporary Art Exhibition in 2019 hit national headlines and made local villagers see the hope of revitalization in their hometown.

Southern Life Community, participated in the exhibition by renovating an old house in Doumi ‘ao Village and transforming it into an exhibition hall. In this exhibition, they show the development history of their community over the past five years and make art installations using objects from their daily life. Other than being an exhibition space, the house will also serve as a working and living space for artists and other community members.

About the Southern Life Community

Southern Life Community is one of the first intentional communities in Mainland China. It is a community based on openness and sharing. We welcome visitors and residents from all over the world to join our way of life and co-create in working teams. We have always been committed to accommodating groups discriminated against by society including women, people with disabilities, farmers, and sexual minorities. We share the common view that we are friends no matter who we are. So our members often do not care about external image, skin color, gender, and other differences. We believe that there is no garbage in the world, only misplaced treasures. In our community, each of us has access to public resources and a vote. Everyone has the right to speak up during and initiate a meeting.

We have a wealth of crafts going on where women play an important role in this work. Men are often engaged in manual labor. However, people are able to freely explore what they want to do in our community. Our daily activities in the community over the years have been to build houses, farm fields, play music, make sculptures, and build bridges between people from all over the world. Through the daily processes of action, understanding and integration happen quietly.

By organizing and planning a large number of art activities every year, we try to make social integration truly happen through art. Through the beauty of art, beautiful moments where there is no difference between people often appear. 

We believe that ecological civilization is the future. Ecological civilization is a civilization that embraces diversity. Nothing is absolutely bad, and every species has its meaning and value of existence, and its value and significance are balanced. With this in mind, we also engaged in ecosystem restoration and research and have restored 200 mu (1333+ square meters) of wetland in a nearby area over the past years. 

Our community is made of new residents who are attracted to the countryside and want to settle here and also local people who have a passion for active social work to build their area. New residents who came have been paying attention to the countryside, they use their experience and understanding of city living and bring new perspectives and different possibilities to the local peoples’ daily life and work. There are also short-term residents who come for volunteering, research and engaging in different projects. Through interaction with different people coming from different backgrounds, local people get a fresh and different view of their daily life. Gradually, local people become more involved co-creation process of our community as organizers and co-sponsors of on-site projects and facilitating gentle integration of new residents with local conditions. With the gradual deepening of the relationship between new residents and local people, the formation of a common goal of sharing life and mutual assistance happens naturally.

The formation of our community will be an experimental sample of new rural communities in China, exploring the values of sharing and altruism, the worldview of peace and goodwill, and the consensus community with scientific and artistic thinking. Hopefully, we can be a long-term inspiration for the transformation of more villages.

Tang Guanhua, Founder of Souther Life Community

Tang Guanhua is the founder of Southern Life Community. He is an artist and an intentional community enthusiast. At one point in his life, he moved from the city to LaoShan mountain with his wife to experiment with self-sufficient lifestyles and built a self-sufficiency laboratory for youth to learn self-sufficient lifestyles. With such experience, he established AnotherLand NGO, the first and only NGO focusing on eco-community development in China. He organized China Intentional Community Summit two times and helped the Chinese people to understand the concept of an intentional community better by refining the term in the Chinese language. He is considered to be the founder of the China Intentional Community movement by the Chinese media. In 2015 he founded Southern Life Community, an experimental intentional community in southern China that attracted thousands of people to come and explore sustainable lifestyles. He has been awarded the China Post-85 Charity Figure Award, Top 10 Public Welfare Project Awards of People’s Daily, nominated for UNDP Equator Prizes, and shortlisted for the UN 2018 Young Champions of the Earth. His artworks have been collected by the Museum of Contemporary art Beijing, Alibaba Foundation, Tamera Peace Research and Educational Center, Federation of Damanhur, and much more.

Revitalizing Gaia Sala, the Heart of Gaia Ashram

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Beginnings

Gaia Ashram is a learning center on Ecovillage Design, Permaculture, and Deep Ecology based on 6 hectares of land that is being regenerated. I, Om Sunisa Jamwiset Deiters the co-founder, remember the date of 13th December 2013 very well when the elders of my village Ban Suai Long in the North East of Thailand, gathered to help us raise the first poles of our Gaia Ashram Sala. It was a sacred ceremony where the elders helped to invoke the ancestor spirits to be present to witness and support the building process. The ceremony was led by the local shaman and symbolic objects like flowers, candles, and incense was placed on the middle pole of the east side and the middle poles of the west side representing the mother pole and the father pole. This ceremony was recommended by my parents who are part of the village elders circle. They have been our strong bridge to connect our Gaia Ashram project with the village and local culture from the beginning.

The Gaia Sala was the first permanent building that was built on the Gaia Ashram land. It was built even before our own house or kitchen. We intended it to be the heart center of the Gaia Ashram community. Gaia Ashram project accepted volunteers from the beginning. Our first volunteers, including ourselves, initially stayed in tents, using bucket toilets, showered in the river, and prepared food beneath the only two trees we had on the land. All the volunteers who came to Gaia during this time helped with the building of the Gaia Sala.

Building the Energy Field of Gaia Ashram & the Sala

One of the important work happening during the building process, apart from the physical building, was energy work or spiritual work. It is our intention as founders to create a beautiful, vibrant, sacred, and spirited place. Physically building alone would not create that. It also needed inner work to deepen our spiritual connection with the land and the building. Every morning and evening before and after the building process I would do a walking meditation around the building site. I would be contemplating on love, gratitude, transformation invoking these qualities and practiced mindful walking. The sala started hosting volunteers, interns, course participants, and visitors in early 2014. In 2016 we hosted our first NextGENOA Ecovillage Design Education course (EDE) and another one in 2018. 

Our energy-building work included volunteers and course participants who joined us in attunement circles when we started and finished any activity and during meal times. It’s a tradition we adopted from Findhorn ecovillage. Through mindfulness practice, rituals, conscious living we constantly express love and gratitude to life, to each other and nature as well as sharing loving kindness to all beings on the land. While the Gaia Sala was being physically built, the energy and spirit of the Sala and Gaia Ashram as a project were also being intentionally built through our consciousness. 

People who stayed at Gaia Ashram would often share their feeling of love and gratitude for something, someone, for nature or for life in general after some time they had spent at Gaia Ashram. I once heard a volunteer express in our weekly check-in circle: 

I can say that I am someone who can be thankful for something but I never felt to express that I am grateful. After being here for a week I feel so grateful. I think I know now what it means being grateful. It also feels so easy to express it.

Gaia Ashram Volunteer

Covid-19 and Termites

At Gaia Ashram, when we have a big issue in the community and it involves a lot of people we would host a resolution circle in the Gaia Ashram Sala. The energetic field of the Sala we build over time helps hold these circles. In the beginning of 2020, after the first Covid-19 wave started spreading, the Gaia Ashram team and volunteers gathered at the sala. We gathered to discuss whether or not to accept more people who inquired to volunteer at Gaia Ashram to have a safe place to stay. It was a hard and quick decision that needed to be made. Everyone was involved in the decision-making process as the decisions made would directly affect everyone. At the end of the circle, everyone felt satisfied with the decision we made and the solutions we found. Looking back at that stressed and intense circle from the eyes of today all of us would agree we made a good decision.

After the first wave passed, most of the Gaia Ashram international residential team, interns and volunteers left Gaia Ashram to go back to their home country. During this time we also had to cancel all our courses. When the second and third wave hit Thailand we also couldn’t take in more people. The Gaia Ashram Sala building was left empty for too long and as a result the Sala was heavily invaded by termites. The termites had invaded the Sala a long time before Covid19 but when most people left Gaia Ashram and nobody stayed at the Sala for a few months, the termites moved in completely.

Eventually, it came to the point where it was not safe to walk on the wooden floor anymore. We decided that we had to remove most of the wood and rebuild. Due to Covid-19 we did not have enough money to spend on rebuilding the sala. We decided to raise the funds through a crowdfunding campaign. I was not so convinced that it would work. I thought everyone was probably having a difficult time with the pandemic and people wouldn’t pay attention to our collapsing Sala. However, my partner and co-founder of Gaia Ashram, Tom Deiters, insisted that we should try. See your crowdfunding campaign on our website.

We got help from our Vietnamese friend and former volunteer who was trained as an architect Trung Pham. Trung helped to design the sala renovation. We did a little ritual asking for support from Mother Earth and All Beings before sending our email to launch the crowdfunding campaign on the 6th of March 2021. To my surprise within 24 hours of the launch of our crowdfunding campaign we already had quite a few responses and donations. Within one week, we received almost 30% of our target funds and we were able to initiate the building process. I was filled with gratitude and appreciation in my heart and mind. Not only did we receive donations, we also received kind words of support and acknowledgment. Many people shared how Gaia Ashram and the work we did over the years had made a positive impact on their lives. Years of service we’ve given along our journey flashbacked and I felt so grateful for every moment and everyone we have met along our journey. I also feel so proud of the Sala that it has hosted and held over 1,000 people since the beginning until the time we have to remove half of it and renovate.  Eventually we reached our original target goal and beyond after four months. The raised amount would help us to complete the construction of the dormitory part. Here is a video of the building progress:

However, after half way of the building and spending most of the budget we have realised that we underestimated the cost of this building. We currently have spent 433,793 THB. We still need to spend 247,900 THB (7884 USD). We have a budget left of 146, 207 THB (4649 USD). That means we are short of about 101,693 THB (3234 USD). The remaining costs we still need to pay are for labour costs, buying materials such as mosquito nets, mattresses, bedding, lights, fans, and plugs for the dormitory upstairs. Also there is still work to be done on the downstairs Sala and the training hall which include a library, office and co-working space at the back of the Sala. We are having to finish our outside floor and intend to integrate tile mosaic artwork representing Mother Earth Spirit. 

Therefore we are asking the universe again for contributions to support the rebuilding process of our Gaia Ashram Sala. It is our aim for Gaia Ashram to continue to be a place of learning to take care of our precious earth for many more years to come and to support the learning journey of thousands more of people. If you feel called to support our mission and would like to support Gaia Ashram learning center click on the Paypal donate now button below or contact us through email gaiaschoolasia@gmail.com to ask for our bank account number.

We are so grateful for all the support received and we wish for Gaia Ashram to continue to provide a place for people to come and learn how we can live in harmony in nature. We aim for our first Permaculture Design Course to be held in December, Covid permitting. Also for those interested in visiting or living with us, we hope to open our non-existing doors soon and you are most welcome to stay with us for however long you want. There are also opportunities to be part of the Gaia Ashram team to help grow the learning center, to work on ecosystem restoration, and to improve our permaculture systems.

“May all the work we do be of benefit to Mother Earth and all her Beings!”

About the Author

Om Sunisa Jamwiset Deiters, Co-Founder & Program Director at Gaia Ashram.

She lived and worked as a facilitator at Wongsanit Ashram, a socially engaged spiritual community for about 9 years, and later at Panya Permaculture project in Thailand. She helped create the Next Generation of Global Ecovillage Network of Asia & Oceania (NextGENOA) and is currently mentoring the young leaders of the network. She has facilitated courses in many countries for NGO workers, young Buddhist activists, international students, and children. She uses participatory teaching methods and her focus is on deep ecology and nature connection. She founded Gaia Ashram with her partner in 2012. Now she divides her time Teaching, managing Gaia Ashram project, and taking care of her kids.

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.