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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.

The Green Unconference 2021

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For thirteen days, as world leaders, community leaders and climate youth activists met at COP26 in Glasgow to make decisions that affect our common future, We at The Green UnConference gathered daily to listen to each other’s stories.

From the mountains and rivers of the Himalayas to the seas and forests of Palawan, Siargao, Dumaguete, Boracay, and Baler. 

From our metropolises in Manila and New Delhi and Bangalore 

From intentional communities in Crystal Waters, Queensland, Bulacan, Japan, Bangalore, Udaipur, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan

We have seen rivers of gold and silver stars. 

Healing ourselves, our relationships, our projects. 

Weaving together our golden threads of light, spun from passion and purpose, a touch of magic — affirming that at this critical time in the history of humanity and our beautiful planet — we are here for one another, and for Mother Earth.

TGU 2021 truly connected rivers of people, projects to the ocean ecosystem. 

The journey was the destination. It taught us that life is about the little things. 

We are so grateful to co-travel with Binhi Supper Club, Daloy, Ecoversities Alliance, FarmLab, Good Food Community, Green Releaf, Re:Source Labs, Healthyndahan, Inner Moon Well-Being, Isla Medisina, Jabez Perma Research PH Tala, Jail University (TBC), Kayumanggi Organic, New Deli by Kashmir, Permayouth, Project Thrive, ReGEN Nations, Ritual (TBC), Soul Kitchen El Nido, Swaraj University, The Living Library, The Social Enterprises, TI Eco-Village, Weekend Wild Child, and Local Futures 

Together we distilled and displayed what works for our collective wellbeing. 

Our goal was to weave and celebrate learning and unlearning and together reimagine the new map and blueprint of the beautiful world we know is possible if we indulge and converge for radical collaboration. Collaboration begins by knowing our stories and what makes us flow and grow as living systems. We showcased what we need to do to come closer for collaborations and co-create larger connected systems. 

We established that we simultaneously need a culture of inner and outer transformation and transitions to birth the new humanity that takes compassionate care of mother earth and all life on it. 

We focussed our themes similar to the COP26: Regeneration, Agriculture, Energy, Youth, Gender,  Women, Adaptation and Indigenous People, Social Enterprise, Transitions in Education, Transitions in Tech, Nature, Biodiversity, Transport, Travel Cities and Built Environments.

Please visit GENOA FB Page to tune into the Transition Journeys and stay tuned for the TGU 2021 short Film to be launched soon!

The Green Unconference 2021: Transition Journeys

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The year was 2015. The first TGU 2015 gathering was in Manila, Philippines. A simple and soulful act by friends, with Karla and Amena wishing to weave their world for healing and wellness. The seed was sown for TGU 2017 and TGU 2019. A biennial gathering, a celebration of all things green, nurturing life with compassion, courage, consciousness, and collaborations. 

The Green Unconference 2019

Now in this time of the pandemic, we are being called on to transition to a way of life that supports our collective health & wellbeing.  

In this time of climate crisis, we are being called on to transition to living in a way our planet can thrive.  

The Green Unconference 2021 is a gathering of intergenerational earth carers, wisdom keepers, healers, activists, regenerators, regen-preneurs, creatives, reimagining and making change happen to birth the new healed humanity and transition our earth to a beautiful world we all know in our hearts is possible. 

This year’s theme is Transition Journeys, and we are partnering with groups who are already transitioning and inspiring others to transition. 

Official partners are

GENOA -Global Ecovillage Network Oceania & Asia 

Kai Farms

Kids for Kids 

Lokal Lab Siargao

MAD Travel

Our timing and themes coincide with the COP26 Climate Conference October 31-November 12, 2021

We are collaborating with many people and groups all over the Philippines, India, Australia, and beyond. 

Our line-up includes online as well as face-to-face events where they are possible. We are also curating transition travel journeys next year when possible. These journeys will allow immersion in projects and interaction with people and communities that are supporting regeneration at the grassroots. 

TGU is a call for friendship, to regenerate our relationships and live from a place of unified loving awareness in service to the wellness of all life. 

We welcome you to journey with us for the kind of joyful, radical collaboration these times call for. 
We are supporting and energizing a culture of gifting. Registration is free. We welcome participants to gift what their heart desires. Funds raised will go towards supporting the regenerative community projects of partners.

Ecovillage Transition in GENOA

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

On 21st 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

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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. 

ScienZ Method

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 1st). 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:

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

Building Ethnic and Interreligious Harmony in Sri Lanka

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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 21st of April 2021, 2nd 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

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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.

NextGENOA Released their Introduction Video!

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NextGENOA is the youth body of GENOA and is a member of NextGEN. We are a network of young people from Asia & Oceania countries who are committed to caring for the earth by practicing and promoting sustainable living and ecovillage values within and beyond the region.
We invite you to watch this 5-minute video to understand more about why young people are coming together, see what we are doing in different corners of the region, and feel the green youth spirit. This is a product that has been brewing for a long time, some footage and interviews dated back to the EDE Course in Gaia Ashram in 2016. We are happy to introduce our youth ecovillage network in Oceania and Asia to you in this uplifting and colorful way! 

Deep gratitude to Eugenie Dumont who created the video; and also to all our dear friends who provided us with the footage and interviews. Find out more about NextGENOA on their Facebook and Instagram pages.

POSSIBLE FUTURES: Regeneration of the Global South

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During GENOA’s Restore & Re-story Gathering last year, Possible Futures held a session about “Regeneration of the Global South”. In this article, Samantha brought us back to that session and bring awareness to how the Global South has been exploited throughout history. To move forwards, we shall give space for these stories of oppression to be heard and acknowledged rather than denying it. This idea serves as the foundation of Possible Futures’w work. Learn more about the regeneration of the global south by downloading the article file below:

2021-March-Article-Possible-FuturesDownload