Building Bridges : The Ubuntu Center’s Journey to Empowerment with Margarita Zethelius

Introduction

Welcome back to Community Resilience, a podcast created in collaboration with the Ecovillage Resilience 2.5 Degree Project, facilitated by the Global Ecovillage Network. I’m your host, Eva Goldfarb, inviting you to gather around the fire as we explore resilience, adaptation, and transformation in our time of deepening polycrisis. Today, we travel to the Colombian Caribbean to speak with one of the pillars of our movement, Margarita Zethelias.

Margarita is an activist, a creator of life-changing experiences that spark the desire to learn, unlearn, and relearn. She is a biologist with an MSc in Conservation and Rural Development, and the founder and co-director of the Falun Natural Reserve in the Andean region, as well as the Ubuntu Center for Experimentation and Training in Sustainability in the Rosario Islands of Colombia. I am excited to welcome her to our show today and share with you her inspiring story.

Interview

Eva: Welcome, Margarita. It is so nice to have you here today. I wanted to begin by asking you to share a bit of your story with us. Who is Margarita, and what brought you here today? Well, thank you. 

Margarita: First, thank you for the invitation. I resonate a lot with what brought me here today. Now, I have been attuning with gratefulness and reciprocity very strong recently, and one of the things that I feel more grateful and blessed in my life is to be able to belong to this wider network, to belong to this family that we are in the Andean region. So, I really come with that energy today and these days. I think at some point, every person, every being in this world can be part of this network, and one of the things is to find a plug-in, no? I think for me that is, I always, when I talk with people all around the world, I try to transmit that to, for them to feel that we are part of something that is bigger, and it has been very beautiful to have the opportunity to travel to other ecovillages, communities, and find my soul in home. So, this started, I think, when I started to get in love with nature with my grandfather, who was a visionary. His name was Zvezdetelius, and he was a visionary, and he had a farm that later we found as a reserve in the Andean region. So, he was so interested in co-evolution, in how nature gives, how much we can learn from it, for example, in Latin America, to create our own path to thrive, as we said in Gen. So, later I was struggling between anthropology and biology to study, and I decided to study biology, but always feeling that I wanted to know more about cultures as well. And while studying biology, I was very into science, knowing that a group of friends were kidnapped. You know, maybe many of you know that in Colombia we have a strong history of violence, a very difficult situation for many people, especially in the rural areas. So, a group of biologists and students were kidnapped, and during that time, it was just a couple of days, but I felt that something very strong grow inside of me, like a fire to really understand what was that about, you know, why we need to have these situations. And then, when our friends came to the university and they start telling us the stories, it was very strong to know how the social issues that we have all around the world play a crucial role in conservation, and the needs of the people in rural areas that respond to the needs in the urban areas are such a systemic challenge that we have. So, for me, we started working a lot, studying and working with communities, and working a lot about education, you know, how we can learn from each other, how we can have more contextualized education in the rural areas. Normally, in Latin America, our public education is very, very limited. We were studying and having the opportunity to visit forests or the deserts, or just to be able to interact with the schools that give a different perspective, a joy also, and also start working with games, start doing toys about endangered species. And then, suddenly, also in the Colombian network, we have a very big Colombian and strong Colombian network that is also part of a very beautiful process that was a rainbow caravan that started in Mexico and then started inspiring people all around Latin America. So, we got in contact with them, we learned about ecovillages, we learned about permaculture, organic agriculture, and we incorporated that in our programs. At some point, I decided to stop doing things and study, and went to a couple of years of finding scholarships and support, and I had the opportunity to travel to the United States, to Berkeley, to study natural resources management, a short course, and then start really feeling that this global family is a reality. I was looking for a scholarship to do the Master’s degree in Rural Development and Conservation and Rural Development, and I didn’t have the tickets to reach to the UK. And then, I got this information to apply for a scholarship to do an EDE in Sieben Linden in Germany, and I was so excited, and I did the application, and I was invited to the Germany embassy in Bogotá, and I went, and I won the scholarship, and it was just amazing. It was a month, and it was a strong effort, especially of Kosha Joubert, to bring people from the south to the EDEs and to the ecovillages, and to bring more the voice of the south, especially from Africa, but also from Latin America. And what I learned in that EDE, in that month, was much more strong and deep and life-changing than the whole year and a half that I did in a normal university. I learned a lot as well, but I also could relate to how important and how powerful and how life-transforming the experiences that we have in ecovillages are. I just fell in love with it and started working on it. This was 2012, and for me, we continue just like a river flowing.

Eva: Thank you so much for sharing. I think the EDE is a wonderful entrance door for a lot of people. This was the way I really deepened my relationship with the network as well. So, I’m very curious, since 2012, how did this experience of the EDE in Europe really transform your world? Today, you’re living in ecovillage Ubuntu, and I would love to hear more about how you came into contact with this project, if you were there at the very beginning, and what that journey has looked like. 

Margarita: In the ecovillages, we have like three main members. Now, we have the intentional communities that are kind of what we have more in the north, that a group of people wants to live together. Then, we have more the urban initiatives, eco-neighborhoods or caravans. And then, we have the traditional communities. So, I have been always very interested in these traditional communities’ lives and how they see the things. I see so many challenges in our western, to name it somehow, ways of development of life and happiness. Since I studied biology, I went to lands and seas, that is the Rosario Islands, and I started working with the traditional communities that are Afro-descendants, mainly Black community, inside a national park. So, you have this combination. You have a natural national park, and then you have traditional communities, and that’s very common in all the world. Now, it’s where you have the traditional communities or indigenous communities. Normally, they have taken care of nature, and that’s why there are parks there. Now, there is a big need to change that pattern that says that in the national parks, we should prohibit to do things. Well, why we just stop and see what is that these traditional people have done in these lands, and why they still exist. So, that was part of my bigger questions, and I started working there with this group of friends, doing environmental education, doing programs of ecotourism, developing the first steps of community ecotourism. This was 25 years ago. So, every time I learned something, every time, if I learned about permaculture, I wanted to go to the communities that I have worked with and share about what was I learning. It took me some years to finish my undergraduate because I was coming back and forward from the communities that I have the opportunity to work with. I continue, continue, continue with these communities, especially with the communities of the islands. When I was going to do my thesis for the masters, I was planning to go to Africa, but the project didn’t work, and I thought, well, we need so much research in Colombia. Let’s go to Colombia and do the research. So, I contacted the leaders of the community, and they said, great, let’s do the research. So, I started doing my master’s degree research. It was about the perception of people about climate change and conservation, and the relation to the projects that they have been working with. So, how much effect the projects, the programs have in the people’s perceptions about adaptation to climate change and conservation. And so, I got to know much more the community because I was doing interviews in each house with each person. It was beautiful. It was more, I come from biology, and this was more in humanities. Now, it was more this part of research that is very beautiful and very engaging. And then, I fell in love with my husband that is from the island, Isla de la Rosa, and in that time, they won a very big struggle of collective land recognition. They were going to be kicked out by the government, arguing that this land is “avaldillo” in Spanish, no one land, but this was named no one land for people that didn’t realize that they were fishermen, they were a community, never know. We have a new constitution in 1991 that recognized the minorities. So, they were using the legal frame to be recognized. And finally, in 2014, they gained the recognition and they gained the land. Now, with my husband, who also was very interested in ecovillages, and we were inspired by the opportunity to be in Kenya with the global ecovillage movement there, GenAfrica. So, we brought some of the values and the principles for them. And in the islands, there was “trash land”, where all the trash is food. And this land was part of the collective land. And my husband says, well, if we talk that much, we give workshops all around. If we are going to really revitalize the place and talk about resilience, what about if we change this? So, we went to this place that was the “trash land” and start cleaning it and start having interviews with institutions. And finally, not finally, because this is still in process, we create the Ubuntu Center. So, it’s for experimentation and training in sustainability. The story is how to transform a “trash land” into a vibrant place that helps to inspire. So, we are experimenting and we are creating it. So, we started as an educational center, but we were part also of the ecotourism project. And now, we are receiving tourists and visitors from all around the world. And it’s a place for the community to gather, for the community to share, to learn, but also for visitors to share with us. 

Eva: That is a very impressive and inspiring story. Thank you so much. In English, they’re called landfills, but I think “trash land” is a much more accurate name. Through this process of working with communities and converting the landfill to an education center, I am very curious to hear about the moments that stood out. In the resilience project, you did a timeline, which a lot of projects have enjoyed reflecting upon, but any moments of joy, any common threads that were really big pillars for your community or big moments of hardship, anything you would like to share that kind of has woven its way across this creation of Ubuntu? 

Margarita: Well, you have just seen a head jumping in now. That is my daughter. And this is one of the biggest inspirations that we have. Before her, we used to travel a lot, to move a lot. And when we got finally pregnant of our little Coral, we decided to settle. And I think that’s part of the beauties of this journey. And I think, as I’m sharing here with lots of people, it’s just to trust in the different moments of your life. If there is something that is calling you to travel, calling you to visit, to explore, follow it. Maybe I should go a little bit farther and say that when I started working with the Global Ecovillage Network, because Kosha Joubert what’s leading it, and in each of the process that we made, we give a space to attune, to really offer what we were doing to the main purposes of care, connecting, really connecting. And I think that is a big part of this. For example, the community of Tamera makes a very deep work on it and really identify where your decisions come from. So if you want to nest and to start something new, do it. If you want to travel around, do it, really connecting with this purpose, this deep purpose. So that is what Coral means for us in Ubuntu. So we decided to stay and to really create there and make an example there. That is a big joy. And then when we decide to open our house to visitors, to have an economic revenue that allows us to be more stable and more calm and to do the things that we want to do, then receiving people from all around the world to our house, I was a little bit scared, but it has been just beautiful. Now, I will say that 99% of the people that comes here, they feel so inspired by what we are doing. They appreciate. So it hasn’t been easy because on the islands and many places in the world that are so beautiful, we have a big wave of massive tourism, especially in the Caribbean or other places. So we have this tension between conservation and between the sustainability, economic sustainability of it. So we have big amounts of people coming and people wanting to, I don’t know, party and not very conscious about it. Tourism businesses see a big amount of people coming as the best revenue. So we are trying and pushing to show that tourism that is nature tourism or whether it’s an ethnic tourism, ecotourism based on communities, it has much more benefits in the long term. So every time we have an experience, so we are in this tension between big challenges and now climate change. We just declared two days ago the climate emergency for the islands because our mangroves have been destroyed by high tides. We have a very beautiful place called the Enchanted Lagoon who has a bioluminescence effect just on the side of Ubuntu and it’s going to disappear if we don’t make a protection, if we don’t support the mangroves to continue to be there. And again, this tension between conservation or humans as separate of nature is a very big challenge because if we don’t intervene in this sense, it’s going to be destroyed. So we have a struggle with national parks, even with the Ministry of Environment, who we would like to have as partners now, but we have a legal frame that says that in this type of parks, you can make an intervention. And he said, well, we need it now. We are in a time of regeneration to be resilient. So that it has been part of the project as well. Now how we go deep into these realizations of these reflections in terms of making interventions to be more resilient and to give a space to the other beings of our lives, our territories. And what we call, we call territory and maritori. So it’s not just the earth, but the water that is around all of us. So I discover as well in a lot of the ancestral wisdom, the relation with water and how powerful it was to have salt water there and the connection with the rivers. So when we talk a lot about bioregional lens, not to think about our ecovillages or our projects as an island, as we are in an island, but in a very regional scale, because everything that we do somewhere is going to affect another place. I think 15 years ago, we did a big event in Bogota, which is the capital of Colombia, up on the mountains with people from the island telling the people in the mountains that everything that happens in the mountains is going to end up in the ocean. Everything that we put on the rivers, everything that is going to be taken to our coral reefs, to our mangroves. And if we think about the realization that the world’s a being, as Gaia, the coral reefs and the mangroves are kind of our kidneys. They are so important to process minerals and to also release oxygen. So I think I become like a storyteller that has been an inspiration in Ubuntu as well. We also have the house, Teranga House, that comes from Senegal. It’s a wall of wood that was also stitched to us by the African network. It means hospitality and abundance. When we talk about villages, it’s not the thing where we’re going to live with the minimum. And Kosha also mentioned something that is the luxurious simplicity. It’s abundance for everyone, it’s hospitality, and it’s to live good lives.

Eva: Thank you so much. Yes, thank you also for bringing your storytelling here and sharing a lot of your cultural connections to other regions. I think that’s absolutely beautiful. There are a few things you have mentioned that I’m wanting to deep dive in and I’m trying to prioritize them. In the past few minutes, you have shared about how your family has welcomed a lot of travelers. I know we might have a lot of listeners who are new to the movement and wanting to connect. I wanted to invite you to share a bit how people can connect with your project and if you’re still welcoming travelers. I’ll start there. 

Margarita: Well, now we are using these platforms that are just all around the world and I see a beautiful transformation of them. We receive people in, for example, in booking.com. We put a very specific description of what we are and who we are. We started with a very broad and we want really people to feel a little bit what they are going to find. And also that’s part of the information that we are sharing with other places that are managing tourism now. There is really a lot of people out there wanting to have experiences like this one. We are working with a friend from France who has solidarity. In Gen, we are exploring as well how to be more creative and innovate to receive people all around our members around the world. To visit us is easy. It’s very close to a big city. We just need to connect in the links that we are going to find there. From here, we want to invite people to go to places that are not so well known. There are beautiful ecovillages in faraway places that don’t have this amount of tourists coming. We are kind of a window. One of our next projects will be to open a store with products from these ecovillages that are making or communities that are struggling to have an economic revenue for their products that are not well paid. In the region, we have very vulnerable communities and we want our visitors to know about them, to be able to buy the products that they produce, to be able even to visit them for the ones who have programs for visitors. This is a process now and we are very open to volunteers or to people who want to work with us in this. We have a dream to do a sailing trip. For us, it was so important, as I mentioned it at the beginning, the rainbow caravan from the Latin American network. We had a dream of a caravan in Africa. We have this dream, Casa Africa. We have a beautiful project called From Ubuntu to Kapwa, exploring this change between the global south. We have a dream to have a trip from Latin America to Africa, like coming back and healing, healing also the slavery story and recovering the traditions. This is part of what we do in Ubuntu as well, like ceremonies, bringing wisdom keepers, elders to share. Anyone who feels inspired by this, who has a sailing boat, in a couple of years, we could make a beautiful experience coming back to Africa, sailing with beautiful stories and then have a caravan inside Africa visiting our friends and then bringing them to Latin America and all the world around the world. Yeah.

Eva: Thank you so much. Let’s hope the podcast spirits are listening. One other thing you talked about that I thought would be helpful to deep dive into another one of our audiences is you talked about these legal negotiations with international parks and how it has been an ongoing struggle to really be able to intervene and regenerate the land. And I’m wondering if you have any simple advice for someone who might be in a similar situation. 

Margarita: We work a lot with, for example, the mother earth rights or nature rights now. Legal frames are not my passion, but really they are moving public policy and it’s so important to deep into that. Well, we have that tool, the nature rights that is having much more support all around the world. We have a declaration of rivers, have a declaration of special lands and the evolution of legal frames. So in Colombia, we have beautiful legal frames, but then you have contradiction between them. But if you have lawyers, friends, lawyers, and that could support you, there is always going to be something that you can work with. In law, it’s very good always to have references. So if you can refer to this or refer to that, we have partners, we have members of the network that are working on that. My advice will be always to also to be part of a network and to be able to share your questions or to share your concerns. It’s going to be something that is going to have at least one answer. And then in Colombia, for example, this world of politics is something that sometimes in ecovillages we don’t want to see or we don’t want to get involved with, but I encourage people to at least support spiritually the governments that are making good things in terms of or have proposals of taking care of life, of water. Our current government is leading discussions around biodiversity. We’re going to have a COP, I think in October this year, and we want to increase the voice of this movement in this type of spaces, not just to maybe have some support, but also to inspire others, to really inspire people that it’s possible that maybe you don’t see it in your neighborhood, but it’s happening in another city, it’s happening in other places in the world with people that have suffered a lot, people that are vulnerable, that have overcome that. So we have many stories, beautiful stories in the ecovillage movement showcase villages that can teach us a lot and can inspire and support in the challenges that we could have.

Eva: Beautiful. Let’s dive in there a little bit more and start to get specific about the Resilience Project, which has brought us together today. I’m curious, how has it been to spend the past year in the Resilience Project? 

Margarita: Well, I, again, I come to the gratefulness. It’s just so beautiful that we are able to gain interest in this kind of things, an interest that can be framed in what we call participatory action research that helps us to move inside the communities, but also help us to systematize and to share what we are doing and our accomplishments and challenges. So it has been an honor first. I’m very excited of what we things or elements of the project that have brought you the most pride or excitement to share with the wider world. I used to give classes in the Catalonia University of Sustainability, and we were one of the things that I like to do the most in the first classes with the students was to ask them about their past and to make a family tree. So it’s really to recognize our history. So when we started in the Resilience Project with a timeline, recognizing what has been important in the story of each of the communities, I just felt, well, this is resonating completely with what I have been digesting as processes that can transform, that can create new realities. And it comes from recognizing our history and then come with new eyes. It has been also very challenging because when you look at in detail the situation of the world, the big climate situations of many communities, it’s quite strong. I tend to be very dramatic, I feel, and to hold a lot of all of that world pain. And then we make a village world, I gain somehow like a new power and a new hope. But then to revisit those pain spaces and now knowing more about the Joanna Macy work, the work that reconnects with a different set, to go there and find the strength to move from it to action. I think that is one of the great contributions that we can do with these type of projects as the Resilience Project. And then to look at the scenarios, to really have tools to visualize different realities, different futures. There is a beautiful exercise like the visit of the future regenerations. Now, what do you have done now? Because when we think a lot of things in the future, we kind of forget about the present, this game kind of, of being conscious of the past and visiting the past and stories and the history of it. And then looking at the future, what do you want to see in the future? And then in the present and said, okay, how can I put this together and give a space, for example, to the rituals, to small rituals that we said. One of the harvest has been, we’ll invite, we have the challenge in many of these communities that people don’t come to the meetings or the workshops. And they just say, well, let’s make a party. Let’s make a potluck. Let’s say invite for a dinner. And then just the food as well has so much resonance. And then you can tell a story of how these came here and how these fish came here. What is the importance of these fish? Everything can have a meaning and the opportunity. Everything can have a meaning, and the opportunity also to systematize again. In Latin America, especially, we don’t have a culture of systematizing in comparison to other cultures, and it’s sad because we lost a lot of processes, so to be able to systematize this as a methodology that is an innovation, and it goes not just in your mind but in your other dimensions, that is one of the biggest contributions also of GAIA education, GEN, the EDEs, to bring that, to give voice to that and put that in practice. And now we are seeing, I don’t know, things like these type of processes in United Nations spaces, we have participating COPs of climate change for many years, bringing these spaces. I remember, Kosha, you were answering one question is, if you will say one tool, one advice to change the current situation of crisis, this poli-crisis that you have. It was a very big event in London, and she said, well, love, no? They were like, well, it’s not that complicated, no? Well, it is, but at the end, we want to be loved, we give love to our children, we would give love to our friends, we can give love to our plants, we can give love to our land, but how to cultivate love, how to regenerate love is also part of the big challenges that we have. And then that also manifests in public policy, in decision-making, in companies, in governments.

Eva: You have any answers to that big question, how do we cultivate love? 

Margarita: Well, I was reading an article of a Buddhist monk, and it says that love is kind of muscle as well, no? You need to train it as happiness. Well, there is a lot of debate about what happiness is or what love means, but I feel at the end, for me, love is, and I learned that from my grandfather, to enjoy, to be inspired and surprised by the beauty of nature and humans as part of nature, where you see, again, a co-evolution of a little bee with this orchid and how they managed to create these amazing structures and pollinization, and then to be able to have the opportunity to receive the water in the waterfall and enjoy it. So for me, one of our biggest aims is to be able to support that many people have these experiences, that people have the opportunity to have clean water, to have good food, to have good friendships, to heal, no? Reciprocity is a new word that I learned in English, and that’s one of the biggest problems of Western society. We accumulate, accumulate, accumulate. It’s a ghost of the fear of losing something, but really when you give, you receive, no? And I also learned that very strongly in the ecovillage movement. So when we make peace, and also with traditional communities in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta with the Mamos, we even make payment with a ceremony that is called pagamento. When you give to the earth in your thoughts and with special materials, I recognize what you have given to me, and I want to acknowledge that and to honor that. That brings, that comes with blessings and gratefulness. So also I was with gifts, I was very now to give a, this is so commercial, but then when you reframe it and learn about gifts, it’s something very beautiful. With the food, to give thanks to the food each time you sit and just to think just for seconds, no? What does that mean? What all the process that need to happen to have this food, to have this meeting happening, this interview, so many things, no? To be able to have the people hearing, thank you, thank you for giving you the space and time to hear these stories, to hear us, and thank yourself to give you space to deep into this, no? To find new ways, creative ways, loving ways of living together and relating to each other and the rest of the world and the universe.

Eva: Thank you very much for putting it like that. I fully resonate with gratitude and reciprocity being core pillars of love. Thank you. Earlier you touched upon the dimensions of the EDE and I just want to frame this quickly for listeners. The EDE works on four dimensions of sustainability, which we are really trying to transition to regeneration combined by a common thread, which is integral design and that everything is connected. In past interviews, I have been really asking specifically, yes, go through each dimension of sustainability, which is social, economic, ecologic, and cultural. I found that everyone does it very naturally. I’ve already picked up on you really weaving in all of these dimensions into this interview. I just wanted to thank you for that. 

Margarita: I remember that one of the things that we are working in the Ubuntu to Kapwa project is how much we can incorporate the approaches from the global South to these dimensions. One of the things that we have discovered that we know is that everything is interconnected. Then to play a little bit with the mandala and to have the support of more voices coming from the grassroots communities to incorporate indicators. A very important part of the mandala is that we have worked very, very hard for many years. What are those indicators of sustainability or resilience or as you want to name it? The project of resilience has given us some important information to incorporate in the mandala. The mandala also informs the resilience indicators or attributes. This is something that for any person that has a house or a project can use these indicators. The indicators are not just to feel bad because you haven’t accomplished this, but it’s also a tool to inspire us. Many times what I have found is that people take bad decisions because they don’t know about the alternatives. Now they don’t know about other possibilities. It’s not just about indicators for our projects, but also it’s a pedagogical tool to explore what are the possibilities that we have and possibilities that people are already putting in place in other places in the world.

Eva: Thank you very much. You mentioned a bit about your community engaging with the resilience project through these potlucks and meals. I’m hoping to hear a bit more about this. How have you been engaging with Ubuntu? Have you been engaging with Casa Latina and even Casa Colombia throughout your process and learnings of this project? 

Margarita: Our community is a traditional community. We don’t have many cultural references as the ones as the international communities sometimes have, so we create our own references. One of the things that we use a lot in the Latin American culture is minga or mano cambiada, that is calling the community for a communitarian work. This is something that we have been revitalizing. Again, for me, it’s also translating not from English to Spanish, but also translating the academical jargon to a more digestive concept to the community. What we do with my husband is also to take advantage of events that happen naturally. We have, for example, a discussion about the use of the beach, one of the beaches that is called the free beach, La Playa Libre. We said, well, great, let’s make a breakfast with all the young people there and the guides and everyone and talk about this conflict and talk about the future. This was part of one of the activities of the project that was visioning. We put together these needs, what we call tipping points also, create this nice breakfast for the young people in the beach. If I call them for a workshop about visioning, they wouldn’t come. They said, well, let’s talk about the problems we’re having in the beach, how to solve them, and what does that mean for our future. It’s really to be very flexible. Then we have other public with the leaders, also because we have very specific situations in the community and giving the space to them. This is not a community that tends to write a lot or to draw, but we have like pencils and papers. If you want to draw, if you don’t want to talk, but you want to, and it’s amazing how they start out. There is some apathy now, but then they have a color and start drawing something and then you see them drawing the house and the trees and they want the boat. For me, we can start exploring it more. It has been a learning from us as well, as much as we work, even songs. We brought our dear elder Daira Quinones from the Pacific to do part of the artistic expression of resilience. It’s just so beautiful to see. She is also a small peasant, so she talks about growing plantain. Then she sings a song about the law, 70 law, that is the one that recognize the traditional wisdom. These kids in the school, this is another strategy to work with the school to help the teachers in their subjects of ethnicity, but also to support a project. Then she is singing about the law and she’s talking about the plantains. Then some of the young people start creating their own songs. We hope to continue this process of creation, how art plays such a crucial role in incorporating what we call embodying, embodying this process of honoring, listening, learning. Now we are in that part. The project of resilience has given us lots of tools and opportunities to work on this, and creates more questions and create new needs of moving forward. In this community, especially, we found something very painful. This is a story of that coming from the slavery, the capacity of dreaming and planning was caught up. Because when you’re a slave, you don’t plan anything. You just follow orders. For me, in one of the sessions, this was shared by one of the participants. I was crying because it was a realization that why is it so difficult to plan? Why is it so difficult? When you plan, that’s the way, for example, public policy understands. You need to plan, you need to give me this and a one-year action plan, and then you say, well, if you have been caught that opportunity of dreaming or that spaces of dreaming and co-creating, that needs to be healed.That’s part of what we’re doing. It’s recovering the right, the right of dreaming and creating the future and not reproducing colonial systems. But again, it’s a tension because that’s also how we do things. We make projects and we plan the projects and we make budgets. But also, on the other hand, and again, we come where that force comes from. If that comes from a healthy place or a healing place, things are going to flow much easier. It’s a process that we are all together in. One of the beautiful projects that the Global Ecovillage Network has is also the River of Life project that also connects women supporting women as a way of reciprocity and abundance. That’s also part of the healing process that we are part of as a global network.

Eva: Thank you very much. I don’t know if you want to touch at all, if you have brought the wisdom of the Resilience Project beyond your community and into your region and country or international. Otherwise, I will move forward into some more specific questions about Ubuntu’s practices.

Margarita: I’m moving the flag of how much we can share this. I’m talking with our leaders, with Anna, with Trudy, with Alison, because I really would like to share this and put it in a language that could be heard by politicians, decision makers, in order to support these communities as well. We are in the process right now. For example, we want to bring it to the COP in Colombia, biodiversity. But again, I’m tuning in to see where to put that energy, the biggest energy in. We have different events in Latin America, in the world. We have the Gen Europe Gathering this year also in Sweden, where we hope to have a word. We have developed a specific course with all these learnings that you can click at the end. It’s a virtual course. Another interesting thing that we have been doing is that we know about the power of courses that are face-to-face, but we also know that there is a need to have virtual courses that allowed more people to participate or people who are not able to travel. We are co-creating this course, a virtual course, and then we hope to have more face-to-face courses or face-to-face opportunities for the people who want to dive into this and to apply. In Latin America, we have a big dream of ecovillage development program that is really incorporating what we have said about the dimensions of sustainability, the indicators of resilience into supporting current projects and supporting the incubation of new projects, the incubation of new communities and the support to the traditional communities. This project is part of all of those dreams and visions that we have in Colombia and Latin America and in the world. 

Eva: I’m also curious what practices or you say your traditional community is not so much based on systems or Latin American community are not so much based on systems, but what practices you have for dealing with upcoming climate and social disturbances and if anything has emerged from this project.

Margarita: I wouldn’t say there are no other systems. It’s a different type of systemic conception or what we could call the worldview. Definitely being the embodying of connection is one of the biggest tools and we know that in our traditional community we have lost that and we are reconnecting with that and these projects and the practices and the events that we do help to do that. One of the things that also helped us to do that is the recovery of ceremonies and that comes with the support of our wisdom keepers or the elders to really hear them and to really embrace the opportunity to work in the spiritual dimension. So we have a whole set of possibilities more in this spiritual dimension and then well regarding water, regarding fire, regarding the altars, thinking about the altars that have them present, about medicinal plants. We have the opportunity to be with Titus of Amazon and the respect to these plants is a big issue that we could talk about for a long time but just to be brief we have a whole dimension there. Then we have a whole approach that it has to do with non-violent communication and conflict management that are crucial in these communities that have suffered so much violence, displacement, war. It’s very very important and then we have what I will call the appropriate technologies. For us has been very important to be able to have solar panels. We aim to have a desalination process. We are having a very high prices of water. Even in Bogotá now there are cuts because the embalses, the places where we storage the water are very very low. So things that we knew that were going to happen but as a collective we deny. Now as the transition town mentioned we are like addict to a system that is completely obsolete but now we have these stories that we can tell and it’s real. We are in a crisis of water so desalination, recovery of the soil. We have now syntropic agricultural workshops all around, agroecology. So those are more specific things that we want to incorporate in the resilience to increase the resilience of our community and other communities. But for us and then because we are on an island and we have been living with lack of many things we are an example. We are an example of the use of water. We use very very little water. The use of electricity and now for us is to increase the well-being of the community continue with these principles. But then you have things as sea rise or high tides global warming that is creating a coral bleaching that is kind of completely out of our hands. So what we can do is tell the story and hope that these words will reach policy makers and business people that could create a different approach to production to consumption. But we know about the power of community and we know about the power of community in terms of that nobody believes that the government will give the land to the community 20 years ago. Now this is one of the most precious land in the whole world. We have a monopoly game in Colombia where we have some special places in Colombia. You know the monopoly that you build houses and then when you cross you need to pay. So the Rosario Islands were the fastest. So nobody believed that the community a community of poor black people was going to gain this struggle and they won. So my husband who was one of the main dealers that’s what he says no believe in your dreams believe in the vision connect with people learn be humble be grateful love what you do and tell the story and share your dreams. We know the communities come here because many communities are selling their lands. We have that in many places in the world because they don’t think they can make a living from it because there are bigger businesses. And what we have to tell is that a small community a very humble community especially women on the community have developed these businesses their ecotourism places is possible and we are here. 

Eva: Thank you so much for sharing your story Margarita. I think it is through these stories of inspiration and hope that we we can continue and build more resilience in our communities and in our individual to really hold on to our dream. So in your opinion what is one important lesson that ecovillages can teach the world? invite you to maybe just share one of the first things that comes to your mind.

Margarita: I think there is a this word is quite very repetitive but is so true know that in a study will be la unión hace la fuerza that the union creates the force and there is another word that is very nice that is the village is not an aim is a process. So we need to trust that it’s a process and there is not such a perfect process. Sometimes communities get very disempowered or because they couldn’t make one thing or because they end up fighting or it is perfect you know it is perfect in terms of everything is a learning but in the other hand we have developed many tools and courses and experiences for people who wants to create a community that can learn from our failures and learn from our accomplishments. From a very practical level the union make the force I don’t know if you say that as well in English and in the practical level just to inquire about these tools that we have create that could save you money and time to maybe jump some of the obstacles and have new challenges but be part of the network. I think we have made an effort to tell the world this story and to incorporate this especially in Europe has been very successful in that and we can learn from that. So each of our regions have a beauty and have experience and we can support each other and that is an amazing thing that we are so different we are sharing a common aim for communities thriving and the world thriving. 

Eva: Now zooming out just a bit farther thinking of our human structures globally how can shifting these structures make us more resilient and able to cope as a species? 

Margarita: Now that you mention it that way I was thinking in the structures now and then I felt because we have lots of tension in the communities with like round flat structures and then more pyramid structures and we play with it and we suffer and now that you mentioned and I feel about I think it’s not a change in the structure that we need it’s a change in our minds because we have natural leaders we have natural followers maybe it’s a game between the structures now we have these spiral dynamics that also show us how we are changing and how we are adapting but in the reality if you are connected and you allowed yourself as a being and as a collective to tune in and say what would be the good step or the positive step to follow now it doesn’t matter the structure really no because you will respond to a specific configuration of people or beings in that moment what can be the most contribution in each moment and I leave that a lot when I dive between traditional communities and intentional communities for example or when I need to talk with politicians one of the things that I have realized is I have been invited in a couple of politic arenas for example a council and that structure is crazy it’s like a kindergarten at least in Colombia it’s just like I can’t believe how people can take decisions in those situations for me that is an impossible environment but I acknowledge and admire people who can do it and I will support it in any way I can so I send good energy to our current government because my way of being at least in this moment wouldn’t manage that but we recognize it so again in terms of the structures it’s like a plane and one of the biggest things will be to incorporate in the structure the other beings now that we humans are not the ones the only ones taking decisions or or the only ones who need to be heard we need to hear the trees the water the forest and the traditional communities and the indigenous communities have a lot to say around that so maybe that will be one thing around structures that I could highlight 

Eva: I think you also just touched very nicely on my last question which comes back to the individual you talked about how to kind of shift our human structures we need to align and become more adaptable as an individual I’m wondering if you have any tools or advice to share with the individuals listening to this podcast on how they can build their personal resilience and help the shift. 

Margarita: we have been sharing about it in the project of ecovillage resilience and one of the things that arise a lot has to do with time we live in a world with high speed now so to just give ourselves a little bit of time of just breathing just breathing and many traditional communities talk about breathing but we kind of forget about it just breathing and say okay what’s happening you know and then if you can if you can you have the opportunity just to go to nature to walk to take your shoes off to hug your daughter or just to consciously give yourself a rest in your whole system and to discharge and to feel connected so I think that’s one of the because when you you allowed yourself to relax and to breathe and to bring oxygen to your to your body and then feel the connection that you have just think about other people all around the world that are doing a spiritual work and get their support now for me that it has been one of the biggest tools that we have you know and then think again and that’s one of the contributions maybe of the now that there is not a perfect solution that a step could be safe enough to try good enough to try don’t be afraid of trying and connected to your main purposes so very simple breathe and then practice things to connect to and then again when you’re having a meeting with your team or you’re starting a project or you’re starting your day just give yourself a little bit of time to offer it to connect to the best intentions to the positive to the constructive part of it and if you’re able to join traditional ceremony you’re able to another thing I would say very practical is to grow something to grow something to grow a tomato just to have something in your house or in your environment that is organically growing and that’s very important because you see the changes so you see and if it dies it’s okay you plant another one but I think we if we gain again the capacity of connecting with natural cycles we can release a lot of the tension and be more resilient and be more flexible and more adaptable.

Eva: Yeah I think that’s a wonderful invitation to leave everyone with to really slow down to the natural cycles and breathe and observe the growth and change around you. Thank you so much for joining us today Margarita.  It’s been a pleasure.

Margarita: Thank you thank you for the invitation and I send a big big hug from these lands and these seas to everyone who’s listening to us and to everyone who’s already in the Ecovillage movement and to everyone who’s going to be part of our movement our global family. We are very very proud that we are able to offer these opportunities for all of us and we hope we continue doing our job and our offer to the world. 

Outroduction

Join us again next week as we continue the conversation over what it means to be resilient in our time of deepening polycrisis.

While you wait for the next episode of Community Resilience we invite you to explore more about the Ecovillage Resilience 2.5 Degree Project by visiting us online at ecovillage.org/resilience.