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Economy

Financial Literacy for Communities Webinar: Exploring Needs and Co-creating Resources 

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Have you and your community been experiencing challenges when it comes to financing fundamentals and good financial management?

We at GENOA share this nervousness and recognise this gap in financial education in our system. We aspire to find a way to support regenerative communities and projects to be stronger in the economic dimension, starting with building financial acumen and creating financial literacy for all in our network. 

Join us to have a stimulating conversation around finance with the vision of creating Financially Intelligent Ecovillages and Regenerative Communities.  We want to hear from you, your needs, your strengths and your experience with finance to explore creating learning resources that could meet the needs of communities to become enterprising, prosperous, and abundant.

Accompanying us in this call is Anil Lamba – a renowned speaker and trainer in Finance Management with his mission of bringing financial intelligence for free to at least a billion people. Dr. Lamba has written several books and over 1500 articles. His books, Romancing the Balance Sheet, Flirting with Stocks, Eye on the Bottom Line, and Financial Affairs of the Common Man are making waves. You can read more about Anil here: https://anillamba.com/about-us/ 

This is an invitation to collaborate with Dr.Lamba to train 1 billion people, with 1 million volunteers to co-create a Financially Intelligent World. Join the movement of making money flow where it is needed the most. 

This is not a talk, it is a sharing space where we hear from each other and explore patterns, commonalities, and leverage points in this seemingly hard and difficult topic of financial literacy. 

Regardless of your background, if you have had some experience working with finance in a project or in your community, join us with an open mind and willingness to share.

You can now watch the recording of the call here

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

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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. 

TI is designed with permaculture zones

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.