Kolektif Yol - Global Ecovillage Network

We are a community of young people who decided to step out from the offerings of big cities and restrictive cultures to embrace a brighter future by prioritizing relationships and trusting one another, despite the isolation in so many layers we see in the world right now.

In the mountains of Ida in North-West, Turkey, we live in a village called Serhat, in a region where the old villagers’ houses are demolished, fruit trees abandoned, conventional and unsustainable ways of farming with lots of chemicals adopted, serious threats to our environment caused by mining companies are present. Yet, this is a place where fountains of water runs free, the mountains have tremendous biodiversity, and the soil is rich. To honor all this, we believe, people need to come together, create, share, nourish well, heal and evolve!

We try to regenerate life here on different levels in this region by holding and acting from a place where our vision of new peace culture – the paradigm shift can emerge. With awareness, we intend to look at our conditionings, weak points, and our so-called identities which pose an obstacle in the way of unity. Holding and creating space for each other as loving witnesses is our key to change.

Our biggest passion is to produce clean, natural, fresh food from the soil. Finding and creating new, alternative ways; fair approaches to the earth and ourselves, we believe, is necessary. One of our intentions is to create an archive – visual materials of collective memory from the stories we witness to share with a wider audience. We try to bring the stories which are shaped by our everyday creativity, production and communication by using different mediums such as music, art, poetry, writing, photography and video-making.

Yet, as we write all these here, we still believe that these sentences aren’t enough to describe what we are and all of our intentions or all the aspects in the flow of life. Exploring is never done!