Report - CASA Brazil

Through a round of introductions among participants and potential collaborators in the network, we started the activities planned for the Third National Meeting of CASA Brazil. For everyone starting to weave this network together, we introduced Sociocracy as a tool of governance for the Brazilian Council to facilitate a more dynamic and effective decision-making process by group consent. We used the handbooks and materials from the ECCO 2015 – the second meeting of CASA Latina – as support material.

We honor the history of the origin of ecovillages and related sustainable settlements that gave birth to the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), Gaia Trust, Gaia Education, the Ecovillage Network of the Americas (ENA) and then to all Latin America movements that converged as CASA; as well as all the tools used by them as Cosmology, Permaculture, Agroecology, Dragon Dreaming, green building, and sociocracy, among many.

During the meeting we recognized the difficulty in consolidating CASA Brazil because of the size of the country. The concern was placed on the agenda as a challenge to overcome in 2016, with a new generation of collaborators and friends of the newly created “kitchen” (as we call our Operational Circle) as the new structure of the Board of CASA Brazil.

For that, we redefine our vision, mission objectives and we set goals for the first half of 2016, in a sociocratic way. We made sociocratic elections/nominations to choose the leaders and representatives of the five operational circles Brazil house: Administration and Finance, Alliance Communication Network Structure and Project management.

In addition to nominate links with CASA Latina, we nominate councilors and regional councilors. To support us, the Council CASA Brazil is being formed by a pair of councilors in each of the five regions: North, Northeast, South, Southeast and Midwest. More than the regional, we have the thematic representatives of Eco-nomadism and two Guardians Vision also help make the new structure.

We recall that the National Meeting of Alternative Communities (ENCA) is conducted annually and we look forward to converge individuals, communities, initiatives and movements through sustainability. We proposed, therefore, that meetings in person in CASA Brazil would switch to be made during the ENCA. Presented and accepted as a regional member and member of the ABRASCA (Brazilian Association of Alternative Communities), CASA Brazil can propose and participate in consensus and consent of the association, thus consolidating ties of mutual support.