Listed below are the latest funded projects that the Global Ecovillage Network has engaged with. Funding is often the crucial enabling factor in the Network’s ability to carry out projects that further its aims.
Our partners and funding sources are distributed across a wide range of countries and legal entities. The Global Ecovillage Network engages with funding sources and partners through its different local, national, regional and international legal entities to achieve the aims of the network as a whole.
Projects Updates
This month’s Sprouts project opened the space to the wider Community of Practice and held a Regenerative Educators Cross Pollination session, a kind of reunion with our previous collaborators, with a vision to create more future collaborations.
The updates from across the globe were incredibly inspiring. We learned from our partners that:
In Colombia, the Minga work for food sovereignty continues. (A Minga is system of reciprocity where people come together to work towards a beneficial … Read more This month the Ecovillage Resilience community of practice is starting to develop a new tool for all kinds of local communities to understand, track, and nurture their resilience.
The tool will be a mix of what we're learning about resilience from our network and the latest research into attributes of resilience in all kinds of systems. To take a look at some of the background research, explore the resources below. The tool will be ready and available for everyone to use at the start of … Read more We are celebrating the completion of our third Kincentric Leadership retreat!
We welcome you to join us in celebrating the Kincentric Leadership project as 20 new people enter the programme through the third Kincentric Leadership retreat, in Findhorn Ecovillage, Scotland.
A powerful group of changemakers committed to leading from a deep sense of kinship with all life gathered from September 9th to 16th at Findhorn Ecovillage to explore themes and topics related to re-establishing and … Read more Envisioning an alternative future scenario requires a clear understanding of the past and present from both a data-driven perspective as well as within our social and emotional capacities.
When developing strategic pathways forward, the Resilience Community of Practice used the Three Horizon's Approach to write the story of our positive future, exploring the pathways needed to get there. (If you missed our July update you can learn more about the process here!)
Storyboards helped to … Read more We are celebrating the completion of our second Kincentric leadership retreat!
We welcome you to join us in sending the Kincentric Leadership team celebratory love showers after the completion of the second Kincentric Leadership retreat, in Devon, UK.
A powerful group of changemakers committed to leading from a deep sense of kinship with all life gathered from July 14th to July 20th at Sharpham House to explore sound, silence, and deep listening with the more-than-human world.
The … Read more Thinking about Tipping Points: Reflections from the Resilience Project
Are ecovillages ready for navigating crisis? I think some are, because they are already doing it. GEN Ukraine is doing heart-achingly beautiful work extending community and new hope to people in their war-torn country. Many members of GEN Africa are working hard to teach thousands of people how to adapt their livelihoods to rapid changes in climate – even while living through civil war. In GENOA, learning about … Read more Our Resilience Project just had its first Deep Dive session
In the Deep Dive, we shift our focus from the resilience of social-ecological systems to exploring personal and interpersonal resilience, or the ability of each one of us (as well as our social relationships) to cope with shock, challenging feelings, and social dynamics that arise when we face climate change and polycrisis.
What is a Deep Dive?
It's not easy to face radical climate change and polycrisis. To live through, … Read more Building on the experience of the successful Twinning Schools Project project which completed in January 2023, this project prioritises ecological solutions as a concrete next step and implements suitable technologies based on concrete needs in the immediate vicinity of schools. These focus on issues such as food supply, shelter, water, waste, and ecosystem regeneration, while providing transformative and hands-on learning experiences for students and teachers. At the same time, the project … Read more Real utopias to tune in to the rhythms of the EarthAn article by GEN volunteer Rubén reflecting on his year long volunteering experience in Findhorn
Pandemics, the threat of a global nuclear conflict, increasingly frequent disasters related to climate and ecological emergencies... In the times we live in, more and more people, especially young people involved in activism, are suffering from what more and more experts are calling "eco-anxiety".
Before my experience as a GEN ESC volunteer … Read more Once again, we are delighted to honour the very special memory of Hildur Jackson, and to celebrate her legacy by featuring incredible projects around the world, and infusing some resources into some of them.
This year's most outstanding project is Kufunda Village in Zimbabwe!
Kufunda was founded almost 20 years ago as a place of learning, where people could recover their sense of pride, diversity, and capacity in working with their knowledge to create a healthy and vibrant … Read more When I first heard about the Global Ecovillage Network I had no clue the headquarters of GEN International were in Scotland. I did not know at all about the Findhorn Ecovillage spiritual community and GEN’s roots in it. In a way, these two are still a mystery to me. After a year of living and working in the midst of both, I certainly still discover new bits and pieces of their histories every week.
The one thing that struck me before moving from Barcelona to Findhorn was the office’s ritual … Read more Project Summary
Addressing systemic crises will not derive only from international organisations, governments and politicians, they require a greater collective response. Communities, citizens, NGOs and other forms of civil society hold many of the solutions. In a fragmented world, successful cross-sectoral collaboration is key, particularly partnerships that blur the lines between top-down and bottom-up, i.e. partnerships between municipalities and community-led initiatives (CLIs). … Read more Launching in January 2022, GEN facilitated 20 educator collaborators to build a community among them, establish direct 'twin' relationships, and co-create three educational resources: a living showcase and toolkit, a teacher training curriculum, and ecovillage principles design cards for children.
EXPLORE THE RESOURCES
Spanning every region, collaborators brought experience from ecovillage schools, traditional schools, and community projects. GEN stewarded this enquiry to weave the … Read more Completing a 2 year collaboration, we are proud to launch a series of resources aiming to build capacity for blended and transformative learning for socio-ecological transition. These include:
Guides to Blended Learning and Communities of PracticeA competency framework for trainers and community catalystsA Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion methodology
All of which you can find below!
Collaboration Partners
BLAST was a strategic collaboration of transformative educators … Read more We are absolutely thrilled to share with you the 10 finalists of the Hildur Jackson Award! The jury has had a challenging time deliberating, as we have received outstanding 25 applications from 18 countries and across all of the 5 regions. Together with Gaia Trust, GEN developed the Hildur Jackson Award, a €3,000 annual prize that supports and honors projects around the world that demonstrate regenerative best-practices in all dimensions of sustainability. Meet our 10 finalists for the 2021 … Read more A Model for Sustainable Community Building in Scotland
Based in Moray, North East Scotland, the Moray Ecovillage Development Project was the Moray LEADER-Funded transnational learning exchange project between three Showcase Scottish communities and two international ecovillages Kilden (Hurdal, Norway) & Schloss Tonndorf (Germany).
It was delivered by the grant holder Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and supported by delivery partners tsiMORAY. The project was built on a … Read more In mid-November 2021 we will invite 2 ESC volunteers to the Global Ecovillage Network main office in the Findhorn ecovillage in the North of Scotland to participate in our one year long ESC programme. You will be joining GEN at a very exciting time in our evolution as an organisation and will be working closely with passionate and inspirational individuals committed to strengthening connectivity between sustainable communities worldwide.
This year will allow you to gain a deeper understanding … Read more In 2020, the Hildur Jackson Award jury welcomed a record number of 70 applications from across the globe. Celebrating their diversity and commitment to the network, we honoured the top 10 projects, communities, and ecovillages, giving special mention to the top 2, and selected one official 'winner' of the Award.
We caught up with the winner, one year later to find out how their community has continued to shine, how it may have evolved, and how they've beneffited from being featured.
First, a … Read more Visolela Rosa Namises, a national leader, representative of GEN Africa and advocate for women’s rights has been initiating incredible work in Namibia. With the support of River of Life funds in 2020, Visolela was able to work with women from different communities to develop gardens for food security, nutrition and as a way to improve their livelihoods. She conducted 6 workshops and events in the past year, working in 6 villages and 3 schools, reaching over 850 people, including women, youth, … Read more The 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shvat, or Tu B’ishvat, is the day that marks the beginning of a “new year” for trees. This is the time when the earliest-blooming trees in the Land of Israel, perhaps most famously the beautiful almond tree, emerge from their winter sleep.
Tree planting has always been a Jewish tradition. The bible states that "And you shall come to the Land, and you shall plant all kinds of edible trees..." (Leviticus, 19:23). Almost all the forests in modern Israel … Read more Linda Kabaira is a dedicated community worker, who runs projects with SCOPE in Zimbabwe and Zambia with young women and schools, focusing on creating home gardens as a tool for ecological regeneration. Linda received funds through the River of Life in 2016 and 2020.
Working with young women, Linda focuses mostly on growing staple food crops and using permaculture techniques to build soil fertility, manage water and maximize harvests. During 2016 when she received River of Life funds, she … Read more In April 2013, 25 African women joined a four week ‘By Women, For Women’ Ecovillage Design Education (EDE), held by Lua Bashala and Kosha Joubert at Umphakatsi Peace Ecovillage, Mpumalanga, South Africa. The women exchanged and learned about ecological, cultural, social and economic aspects of sustainable community living and designed small projects to increase the resilience of their neighbourhoods. On another level, a deep level of mutual trust was built amongst them as they shared stories … Read more Thoughts and Words by: Ciska van Stuijvenberg, Pascal Gelling, Stalla Mavr, and Fanni Sall
In the middle of October on a forested mountainside in Euskal Herria, in the Spanish state, a group of young people met. They came together in the ecovillage Lakabe to follow a training to become Youth Leaders for EU funded Erasmus+ Youth Exchanges. This training was part of the Yes to Sustainability project, which is an international programme that aims to share knowledge amongst and bring together … Read more Youth SIRCle, or Youth Social Innovation for Resilient Communities,is an EU-funded training and capacity building project for young social entrepreneurs in Scotland, Cameroon, Denmark and Ghana. It is a project largely run by young people for young people. Together we increase our skills in green social innovation and entrepreneurship, finding creative ways to follow our passion, make a living and care for our communities and planet at the same time. Our curriculum is based on work done in a … Read more This November the UN Climate Summit (COP23) will be held in Bonn, Germany, where the imperative will be how to massively scale-up and effectively implement the Paris Climate Agreement. The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) strongly believes that sustainable communities are already making significant contributions to climate change mitigation and adaptation. … Read more The Social Innovation for Resilient Communities (SIRCle) project uses adult education to address one of the most pressing needs of our time - how to marry our love for the planet with our capacity to make a living. An Erasmus+ funded strategic partnership, it involved a diversity of social enterprises, NGOs, cooperatives and academic institutions from Austria (Plenum/Pioneers of Change), Belgium (AEIDL and Still Consulting), Romania (Asociatia Romania in Transizie), Scotland (GEN and the … Read more Using the innovative ILUD methodology www.seedingschools.org and EDEs the project works through schools as entry points to sustainable community development. Community-led resilience plans for 4 schools will be created and implemented. Children, teachers and local communities of Kapete School, Chongwi, Katuba School, Kapuri Mposhi, Nabukuyu School, Monze and Ashley Jewel School, Chilanga will engage with and benefit from the project. The project is scaling up from a Scottish Government funded … Read more Supported by the German Foreign Ministry, the GEN Africa Conference took place during the first week of December 2016 at the Ghana Permaculture Institute. Representatives and delegates from more than 20 countries gathered to share experiences, present their projects and work on the development of the Pan-African Ecovillage Development Programme, promoting initiatives aimed at reducing poverty, restoring the environment, achieving resilience in response to the climate change challenges, and … Read more In November 2016, German Foreign Ministry funding enabled 16 GEN delegates to attend the UNFCCC COP22 event in Marrakech. Attended by world leaders and thousands of changemakers working on climate and environmental issues, COP22 was the perfect convergence by which gain exposure for GEN’s programmes. At the forefront of our delegation was the launch of our Pan-African Ecovillage Development Programme (PAEDP) which is putting communities at the centre of the development processes across the … Read more SCIPP is a 2 year EU Erasmus+ funded strategic partnership between several GEN networks. The aim of the project was to develop and scale up an Ecovillage Incubator made up of a workshops, a written guide, mentoring and an online platform with resources,nks, examples and tools for both projects and trainers engaged with supporting communities to grow . Thus, CLIPS was born - the Community Learning Incubator Programme for Sustainability.
Read more about CLIPS, browse resources and engage in the … Read more Also known as Bridgedale360, ySI4R was a 2 year EU funded programme with the aim of inspiring youth toward sustainable living and active citizenship - it was completed Jan 2017 and is awaiting the final report/verdict from the EU. GEN International was a one of 7 partner projects. The final outcome of the project has been the www.Bridgedale360.org online toolbox. Bridgedale360 is built upon the Gaia Education sustainability mandala with the 4 dimensions growing out into 16 modules, each … Read more In the north of the West Bank, a small traditional village named Farkha is set to become the first ecovillage in Palestine. With support of the German Foreign Ministry, in May 2016 GEN offered the second part of an Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) course for around 30 participants, aimed at further inspiring and supporting this village towards being fully self-sustainable, focusing its efforts increasingly on organic farming, renewable energy, composting, and welcoming further trainings for … Read more IT Solutions to Climate Change is a project aimed at providing tools, information, and inspiration to empower people to adopt more sustainable living solutions. Project objectives include building a brand new website for www.ecovillage.org, featuring a page about ecovillage responses to climate change, connecting to the largest intentional community database on the planet, and constructing communications tools to serve the network and to inform the public. … Read more Thanks to support from the German Foreign Ministry, GEN in partnership with Better World Cameroon successfully ran a 25 days Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) for 25 youths and stakeholders in Cameroon and abroad. This Training had the following outputs:
Climate related issues to the 54 villages of Bafut and support for them in the creation of a community resilience plan towards its 2020 vision to transition into an Ecovillages.
25 young people built new skills in social entrepreneurship … Read more Cool Villages Cool Lives supports work in GENs target areas of Ecovillage Development/ Transition, Consultancy, and the research of 100 showcase ecovillages around the world. Beneficiaries are GEN members and trainers, researchers and the general public. Outputs are:
An ecovillage impact assessment tool tested on 30 ecovillages, related to the SDGs and indexes like Carbon Footprint, Gross National Happiness, and Happy Planet
The identification of 100 showcase ecovillages around the … Read moreRegenerative Educators Cross Pollinate Updates from the Community of Practice
Community Resilience Tools What can ecovillages nurture today to be more resilient tomorrow?
Kincentric Leadership October Updates Celebrating the Findhorn Ecovillage Retreat; More than Human Community
Envisioning the Future with Ecovillage Resilience +2.5°
Kincentric Leadership August Updates Celebrating the Devon Retreat; Sound, Silence and deep listening with the more than human world
Thinking about Tipping Points 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.
Ecovillage Resilience Project Dives Deep Our Resilience Project just had its first Deep Dive session. In the Deep Dive, we shift our focus from the resilience of social-ecological systems to exploring personal and interpersonal resilience, or the ability of each one of us (as well as our social relationships) to cope with shock, challenging feelings, and social dynamics that arise when we face climate change and polycrisis.
Youth in Action – Sprouts for the Future Transformative learning experiences for pupils, educators and school communities in the field of ecological regeneration
European Solidarity Corps
Hildur Jackson Award Finalists 2022
The European Solidarity Corps
Ecovillage Transition in Action An EU funded collaboration to scale up ecovillage solutions
Twinning Regenerative Educators
BLAST – New Resources for Transformative Learning Blended Adult Learning for the Socio-Ecological Transition
Help us choose the Hildur Jackson Award 2021 winner! Inspiration From This Year's Most Impactful Ecovillage Projects and Solutions
Moray Ecovillage Development
ESC Opportunity with the Global Ecovillage Network in Findhorn, Scotland
A Year After Winning the Hildur Jackson Award Highlights from T.I. Ecovillage in India
Leading through Action A River of Life Story
Tu B’Shvat Celebration on Kibbutz Gezer: The Jewish Holiday of the Trees
Creating healthy, resilient food systems A River of Life story
Emergence of the ‘River of Life’ in GEN Brief history
Training for Youth Leaders in Ecovillages An update from the NextGEN Europe project - Yes to Sustainability
Youth Social Innovation for Resilient Communities
Climate Resilience and Community in Africa
SIRCle Social Innovation for Resilient Communities
Zambia Greening Schools
GEN Africa Conference 2016
COP22 – Pan-African Ecovillage Development Programme
SCIPP Sustainable Communities Incubator Partnership Programme
Youth Led Societal Innovation for Resilience (ySI4R) AKA Bridgedale360
EDE Palestine 2016
IT Solutions to Climate Change
EDE Cameroon 2016
Cool Villages Cool Lives
