The Council of Elders represents the founders of the GEN movement and ex-officio members. These are people who have been accompanying GEN for many years, and who share their experience from a long term perspective on GEN’s work and mission in the world.
MARTI is a writer, journalist, photographer, and social-environmental activist. She was on the GEN Board for more than a decade, first as a Wisdom Keeper and later as chair of the GEN International Advisory Council. She is currently part of the GEN Elders group and the GEN United Nations Working Group. She was also on the first board of the EDE, which is now GAIA Education. She was part of the initial team that created the EDE curriculum.
MARTI has received a Rolex citation for her work on the … View profile
(Alejandra) Liora Adler, is an ecosocial community actionist, facilitator, event organizer, photographer and dancer. Raised in the era of the 1960’s social movements in the USA, she came to understand that protest alone was inadequate for making substantive societal changes. Consequently, throughout the 1970’s and 80’s she explored intentional community as a means to create a basis for culture that provides both for physical needs and the basic human need to belong to an intimate, purposef… View profile
Alberto Ruz Buenfil, born in Mexico City, 1945, has dedicated the last forty years to study, create, promote and serve as an international networker, and been a front line pioneer, veteran and historian from the intentional communities, ecovillage and bioregionalist movements in Central and South America. He is the co-founder of Huehuecóyotl ecovillage in Mexico (1982) and the Caravana Arcoris por la Paz, 1996. Alberto was the focalizer for Ecovillage Network of America (ENA) in South America b… View profile
I have been an ecovillager and world-changer since 2000, when I gave up my institutional job as a biologist, moving from the mainstream to the alternative world, following my dreams for a better world. I wish for a world which is more sustainable, more equal and with more justice for everyone, taking care of land and people, and sharing fairly.
Since that time, I have been weaving the Colombian ecovillage network, called RENACE, for six years, and since 2012 have been creating CASA, the Counc… View profile
Founder of the Ecovillage Training Center in Tennessee, past president of Global Ecovillage Network and author of 16 books on history, ecology and the future, including Climate in Crisis (1990), The Biochar Solution (2010) and The Paris Agreement (2015). He has been a resident of The Farm community in Summertown, Tennessee since 1972. He holds degrees in political science, law and permaculture, and certifications in emergency medicine, horsemastership and forest management. He was co-recipient o… View profile
Founding member and resident of Ecovillage Torri Superiore (Ventimiglia), that since 1989 has transformed the beautiful abandoned medieval village into the home of an intentional community, a training and research center, and an eco-guesthouse. In 1999/2004 Lucilla has served as the GEN Europe secretary and CEO with mandate for Middle East and Africa, as GEN Chairperson and as UN delegate. Since 2001 she studies and applies meeting facilitation, decision making methods and management of consens… View profile
Joss Brooks grew up in the Australian state of Tasmania, a place full of wild natural beauty and came to Auroville in 1970 after living in Europe and Africa. He joined the early pioneering efforts in land restoration at Auroville and founded the Pitchandikulam community in 1973 which is now a vibrant 60 acre forest with 800 species of plants in the grasslands, a nursery and an ethno-medicinal forest. In 2002, he embarked on environmental education to the villages by setting up Nadukuppam Environ… View profile
Born in Barcelona (1960) where I studied graphic design, photography, film, comics and finally videography and audiovisual communication and exercised as video artist for several years.
In 2001 I started a sustainable settlement project called the Base, in northern Catalonia where I built the first straw bale house to be inhabited in the Iberian Peninsula.
Through the eco building I entered the world of ecovillages and communities where I designed and released the Karavan Project, an itiner… View profile
Giovanni Ciarlo is past-president of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) Board of Directors and cofounder of the Ecoaldea Huehuecoyotl in Tepoztlan, Mexico, an ecovillage based on principles of sustainability through the arts and ecology. He is a founding member of Ecovillage Network of the Americas (ENA). He is also an educator, sustainability consultant, musician, and change agent. He served as a faculty member of the Sustainable Businesses and Communities MA program at Goddard College where h… View profile
John Croft is co-founder of the Gaia Foundation of Western Australia. He has worked in area community development and education in Australia, English speaking Africa, Geneva, Paris, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, has taught at a number of Universities and has worked as a consultant in community building and environment action practice with non-government organisations. Through his work the Dragon Dreaming method has been introduced from Sri Lanka to Brazil and from Ghana to Finland. John has ru… View profile
Roger Doudna, PhD, is a 40+ year resident of the Findhorn Community where he has been a ‘producer’ of 9 international conferences and of the Findhorn Foundation Fellowship, comprising a network of a hundred plus educators and activists. He also built the first permanent home at
Findhorn, created and and superintends the Universal Hall Hot Tub there. Roger also serves as Chair of the Park Ecovillage Trust (PET) whose particular remit is the pursuit of carbon neutrality. View profile
Dr. Robert Gilman is one of the founders of GEN and co-author of the 1991 report, Eco-Villages and Sustainable Communities that lead to the creation of GEN. A former astrophysicist, he decided in the mid-70s that “the stars could wait, but the planet couldn’t.” He co-founded Context Institute and its In Context journal. He's been a sustainability thought leader, Citizen Diplomat and City Council Member. Today he leads Context Institute's Bright Future program. View profile
Boniface Subrata Gomes was born in Bangladesh and founded a social development organization named ‘Bangladesh Association for Sustainable Development’ (BASD) in 1991. He studied in the Seminary and was engaged with different national and international social and welfare organizations. He got Permaculture training in Sri Lanka and Ecovillage Design training in Crystal Water, Australia. With his active initiative his organization has been working to develop 52 Ecovillages in the southern part … View profile
Daniel is an educator, social entrepreneur, and communitarian whose mission in life is to support the development of sustainable communities and local solutions to global warming. After living at the Findhorn Foundation in northern Scotland and completing his Ph.D. in community-based education the early 90s, Daniel founded Living Routes, which partnered with the University of Massachusetts Amherst to run study abroad programs based in ecovillages around the world. He also helped found Gaia Educa… View profile
Linda participated in the founding years of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and Ecovillage Network of the Americas (ENA). Linda served on the ENA Council 1999-2011, the GEN Board of Directors 2003-2013, and was also GEN Treasurer during that time. She joined fellow Regional coordinators to strengthen global communications as GEN Liaisons. She served as Administrative Focalizer for GEN Information Services, representing Regional networking and constituent user needs. Linda continues on the GE… View profile
Prof. Declan Kennedy is an Irish Architect, Urban Planner, Mediator, and Permaculture Designer, teaching and practicing urban design and permaculture, landscape, renewable energy and agricultural planning, coupled with holistic healing strategies.
He is also Co-founder (1985) of Ecovillage Lebensgarten Steyerberg, near Hanover, Germany and has worked on various advisory projects for an ecological Europe. He is Founding Chairman of GEN (1995).
Declan’s life-long preoccupation with permacultur… View profile
Max has a background in Mechanical and Civil Engineering Design. Since 1981 he has been teaching Permaculture Courses and is a co-designer of ecovillages like Crystal Waters and Kookaburra Park in Australia. He was a founding member of GEN and was the chairman of the Global Ecovillage Network Oceania & Asia (GENOA) chair for 14 years. These days he and his wife Trudi are mostly focusing on beekeeping, candle making and farming/gardening. Max volunteers regularly in Cambodia. In 2000 he was … View profile
Helena Norberg-Hodge is pioneer of the worldwide localisation movement, and recipient of the Goi Peace prize and the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’. She is the producer of the award-winning The Economics of Happiness and author of Ancient Futures. She is the founder of Local Futures and The International Alliance for Localization, and a founding member of the International Forum on Globalisation and The Global Ecovillage Network. View profile
Dr. Ousmane Pame is an educator and a community leader. He worked as the resident Academic Director of Living Routes at the Dakar Earth Rights Ecovillage Institute. He is the director of academic programme in ecovillages which engage international and local students on rural community projects. Since 1997, Dr Pame has been actively involved in community development projects in Senegal (capacity building, permaculture, agroforestry, fish farming, drinking water, nutrition and food processing prog… View profile
Jane works in sustainable development using an empowerment and engaged spirituality approach. She lives in Findhorn Ecovillage and has taught on Ecovillage Design Education courses in Findhorn, Sieben Linden, Myanmar and Thailand including Chinese groups. Jane supports all stages of the project cycle as needs based consultant for community, sustainable education and rights based projects in Asia and Africa. Jane has taught the Work that Reconnects for many years and more recently transition to… View profile
John was project director for the Findhorn Ecovillage for over twenty years and served as part of the GEN founding group and for the first several years as a member of the GEN board. It was during the trip to Australia for the 1996 board meeting that he met his future wife, eventually moving there permanently in 2003. While he had a break from direct ecovillage work for a few years he’s now working as project director for the Narara Ecovillage in New South Wales near Sydney, now in it’s firs… View profile
Marian Zeitlin planned her work in ecovillages in the US in 1994, and first came to Senegal, West Africa, in ‘96, as a co-organizer of the 3rd International Eco-Cities and Ecovillages Conference. She stayed on with local Conference members to co-create Senegal’s Ecovillage movement. Called EcoYoff, they joined GEN in 2001 to creating a Living & Learning Center, from which there grew an NGO, named CRESP, working with Yoff’s Village Association, APECSY. Senegal’s President took on the … View profile
