We greet the fifth month of the year with a process of deep listening - to the many voices calling for change, to those of you who are active and engaged, and to those who steward this beautiful network.
Now, we want to hear your voice! Included in this month's newsletter are several opportunities to engage with the network, inviting you to bring your ideas and unique contributions. Read on to find a reason to celebrate, a taste of what it is like to be a part of GENOA, an opportunity to receive a free subscription to Communities magazine, and much more. If you enjoy our monthly newsletter and would like to support the work we do at GEN, please consider making a donation. Contributions of all amounts are cherished.
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Kincentric Leadership Project
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Sound & Silence: Deep Listening with the More-than-Human World
We are excited to announce that we are now accepting the next round of applications for the Kincentric Leadership programme, and our Devon, UK retreat this July! This retreat is an entry point to an 18 month programme where you’ll be part of a pioneering international community of leaders exploring how kinship with all life can become a leadership principle embedded into a wide range of contexts. The Devon retreat focuses on deep listening with the more than human world as a fundamental principle of kincentrism.
Listening is simple but it isn’t easy. The forces of materialism are always there, pulling us towards wanting something, or into a disembodied online world with its thousand distractions. To listen to Earth and all her creatures also means to hear their grief and suffering, and to face our own complicity. Listening means to pass beyond those barriers, to quiet ourselves, to tame our chattering and overly rational minds. Listening brings us back to what is real. It is the beginning of healing, a prerequisite to reconciliation. It’s what makes authentic relationship possible. Respectfully seeking out the voices of the marginalised, both human and more than human, can also help us integrate justice for people - particularly people of colour - and justice for Earth. Join us in Devon, UK this July as we liberate ourselves from a conditioned view of the world.
“To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language”
- Robin Wall Kimmerer
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Ecovillage Resilience Project
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This month, the theme we are exploring in the Ecovillage Resilience Project is tipping points – places where a changing climate could push parts of the Earth system into abrupt or irreversible change. The effects of such change would be far-reaching, cascading through ecological, social and economic systems at multiple scales, and potentially triggering other tipping points on the way.
Contemplating these topics is bleak - but being in community helps. Building capacity for navigating climate catastrophe means paying close attention to the resilience of our social-ecological systems - how we organise and set up as communities and societies and what needs to change for us to be able to sustain, adapt and transform. It also involves our relational and inner resilience - how able we are to navigate our own emotions and reactions, build social cohesion, and care for each other in widening circles.
As Clarissa Pinkola Estés says:
"Mis estimados queridos, My Esteemed Ones."
Do not lose heart, we were made for these times.
🌱 If you want to see more about what we are learning and doing related to tipping points, please visit our public and living Resilience Project archives!
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ReGEN4All: Ecovillages & Refugees Colloquium
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The ReGEN4All project works to make the knowledge gained within and through ecovillages more accessible both for research and policy decisions on sustainable lifestyles and living environments.
Join us for the first colloquium of the ReGEN4All project! In this event, Rosemary Morrow (Permaculture for Refugees - P4R), Iryna Kazakova (Green Road project - GEN Ukraine), and Camilla Nielson-Englyst (Hallingelille Ecovillage - Danish Ecovillage Network) will discuss the topic of Ecovillages and Refugees, sharing their work and life experience. Together, we will explore the questions; How can one bring Permaculture design and Ecovillage practices to refugee camps? How is the experience of hosting refugees in ecovillages OR being a refugee in an Ecovillage? What about conducting academic research on these topics?
Participants are warmly welcome to engage in the conversation. You can register for this free event by clicking the button below.
Date: May 23 2023
Time: 10 AM UTC (Check your time zone at worldtimebuddy.com)
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Youth in Action - Sprouts for the Future
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As we enthusiastically jump into the 4th month of the Youth in Action- Sprouts for the Future project, the Community of Practice partners have gotten to know each other, sensed into their local communities’ needs, and are now grounded in the process. We facilitated the Map of Regeneration exercise with school communities and were attuned to the results.
Our next steps are to develop action plans and weave in local mentors to guide the students, teachers, parents, and school community to manifest their dream projects. We will see engagement and capacity building on the following focus areas:
🌱 Waste management, composting, and soil building through a community engagement festival at Garden School in Montenegro.
🌱 A space for the community to gather to host camps, workshops, and events for the surrounding community at Self-Directed Learning Centre in South Africa.
🌱 Biodiversity restoration on the 11-acre campus, including planting native species with a focus on pollinators and medicinals at Springhouse Community School in the USA.
🌱 A green roof installed as part of a larger infrastructure project at Suay Long Eco School, guided by Gaia Ashram who is part of the school community.
🌱 A garden project led by a biotechnologist, herbalist, homeopath, botanist, ecologist, and naturopathic doctor, that will multiply the abundance already present within the territory and connect with the local economy at Uba Qynza in Colombia.
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Your contribution to the Global Ecovillage Network supports our mission to innovate, catalyze, educate and advocate in global partnership with ecovillages and all those dedicated to the shift to a regenerative world. Your donation is a vital contribution to our international community.
Thank you for your support!
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GEN's Communities of Practice (CoP) Continues!
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Our next Global Community of Practice call will be held on May 9th at 13-15h UTC!
This is the space for members of the GEN network who want to exchange, learn and co-create with each other. Bring a specific topic on regeneration or initiative related to living in ecovillages that you would like to discuss or receive support on. This could include discussions about Sociocracy, Ecovillage Education, GEN UN Advocacy, Ecosystem Restoration, Climate Resiliency, Natural Building, Prosocial, or almost anything. The space is open to co-creation and we look forward to welcoming you into our Global Community of Practice.
Register below to join us and please share this with your community!
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Representatives from LØS and GEN Ukraine receive the CISU award
The Danish Ecovillage Network, LØS, has been selected to receive the CISU Initiative Award recognising outstanding organisations in Denmark which create awareness of development work.
CISU (the Danish civil society organisation) selected LØS to receive the award for its commitment to helping displaced Ukrainians. You can learn more about this work in the documentary film The Green Road: A home away from home.
LØS and GEN Ukraine will use the funds to support children’s summer camps. To learn more about how ecovillages in Ukraine have mobilised to support displaced people through the Green Road, and to donate to their ongoing vital work, visit our Ukraine news hub. You can also visit GEN Ukraine’s homepage. We warmly congratulate LØS and GEN Ukraine for the much-deserved award!
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Seyoung, a member of NextGENOA and NextGEN Korea, has a gift for us! Seyoung's is a story that must be shared to spark hope in a generation that needs to be aware of an alternative to what they anxiously see ahead. Her book, The Nomadic Kitchen, compiles Seyoung’s travels and philosophies and introduces vegetarian recipes that feature in each chapter. A lot of the stories are about cuisine and culture in different ecovillages that she travelled to.
📖 Download the first chapter of Seyoung’s book in English
🕸️ Support the continued work of translating this project to English by donating to Seyoung’s GoFunMe
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We are delighted to announce that we have 30 one-year digital subscriptions to Communties Magazine to offer to new subscribers. Founded in 1972, Communities magazine is the primary resource for information, stories, and ideas about intentional communities—including urban co-ops, cohousing groups, ecovillages, and rural communes. Since 2019, Communities has been published by the Global Ecovillage Network - United States (GEN-US), who have generously offered to share their abundance of knowledge with the global network.
We will award these subscriptions to the first 30 ecovillages who show us that they have updated their listing on ecovillage.org/projects in 2023. To receive a one-year digital subscription (only valid for new subscribers), send an email with a screenshot of your updated listing to taisa.mattos@ecovillage.org along with your name, email, country, and ecovillage. Your subscription will come with access to 50+ years of Communities magazine editions containing countless resources, tools, and insights. Thank you Communities magazine team for this generous offering!
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May your power be with you
Join Sociocracy for All’s Annual Global Sociocracy Conference TODAY and tomorrow, May 4th and 5th 2023, and learn from experts & implementors. Those organizing with sociocracy know how to align their actions while owning our power. When we learn how to organize ourselves and work together towards a common goal, we can achieve more than we ever could on our own.
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How and why to write radical People Care policies?
Join our friends at ECOLISE in exploring why social change organisations should write value based people care (HR) policies, and how to do that. In this event we'll present the new ECOLISE People Care Manual and you'll get hands on expert guidance from People Support Co-op.
Co-hosted by Pauliina Helle and People Support Co-op & inspired by RadHR.
When: 8 May, 18-19,30h CEST
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The International Communal Studies Association is delighted to issue the Call For Papers for the upcoming virtual conference to take place in January 2024. The conference, themed Building communities for global social change will be organized around two equally important parts: Academic/scholarly contributions and non-academic contributions focusing on community practice. Learn what categories will be features and apply by clicking the button below!
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