Bafut Ecovillage

Global Ecovillage Network logo with Earth and eco-friendly design.
  • Communities

About the Communities

  • Established
  • English
  • Ecological
  • Rural

Founding year

  • 2002

What we do

Bafut Ecovillage was founded in 2013 as a place for identifying, nurturing, and equipping Africa’s future leaders with experiences, insights, and tools of partnerships so that African-led solutions are developed as a response to the global crisis. Our team’s principles of upscaling our village to a peace village are based on the understanding that a new framework is needed to rebuild structures of global environmental ethics based on openness, transparency, and interconnectedness and using Permaculture networks to enhance peer-to-peer learning and cross-border collaborations. Working with a selected group of partners, leading academics, and accomplished community leaders in the global north, we have built the capacity of young change-makers who are co-creating adapted technologies and marketing communications solutions. www.betterworld-cameroon.com
Then the war broke out in 2017 and has taken its toll in countless ways. Among the casualties, nature; climate change (desertification, deforestation, pollution).
Bafut Ecovillage won the Gaia Trust Excellence Award as the most inspiring project of GENAfrica in 2015 for turning the tragedy Cameroon’s civil crisis into youth projects saving children from hunger and giving women a voice in land use. We’re now working on the African continent through GEN Africa & NextGEN in developing the Ecovillage Development Program, and running youth exchange, peace/reconciliation, improving natural resource management with local councils involving issues of gender balance.
After the civil war broke out in 2017 we established a project-based learning and networking desk office in Tamera, Southern Portugal with the aim to profile ourselves with like-minded organizations in Europe to give visibility and discoverability in the digital global community to our African Kitchen Revolution Project.
Our European desk is for goodwill organizations to create twin projects and build networks on marketing communications solutions.

  • Purpose
  • Ecological
  • Languages
  • English
  • French
  • Community type
  • Ecovillage
  • Land-Based Communities
  • Activities
  • Permaculture

Commemorative dates

  • January 1, 2002
  • Started living together

Video

  • Open to new members
  • Open to visitors
Total
30

How to join

Someone joining our community should simply fill the volunteer form on our website and we will grant him an interview with expectations and needs.
Our offers are open to like-minded individuals, Permaculture enthusiasts, Artists, Natural building technicians, Food security experts, Social Entrepreneurs, goodwill organizations, University graduates, Gap year students, Interns, retired experts, woofers, tourists, Investors, Tour operators, Fundraisers, and musicians. Through a matrix of co-creation network weaving, we hope to be able to deliver online as well as onsite workshops to enhance creativity, send a message to the Ambazonian refugees, IDPs and the half a million youth taking dangerous routes of immigration, that Better World Cameroon cares about them.
We will be able to educate and inform youth & women about the crisis and change their consciousness on appropriate responses.
We will be able to encourage other peace & human rights organizations working on similar issues to take a similar stand.
Though experiencing a set-back with our Symposium, we believe we can continue preparations on-line. Though our work is recognized as important in Africa as it ignites active citizenry, civic duty, and volunteerism at the community levels, we face several challenges:
Given that we are generally not funded as donors and funders cannot identify us in any of their networking circles we believe that the opportunity to be present on this GEN platform will guide us to goodwill relations building with new possibilities with global charities.
We invite well-wishers to work with us in grassroots projects in Africa involving holistic sustainable development.
Support is needed to develop efforts in Regenerative Education tools, restoration studies of the Bafut Ecovillage devastated by the on-going political crisis, upgrade our training of trainer’s programs, and create a pool of consultants on African wisdom.

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Our Community Members

Location

  • Cameroon

Promoted Needs and Offers

  • Events
10 years ago

Yo Mujer, Yo Ecologico, Yo Gaia

Taller Vivencial de Ecologia Profunda para Mujeres Un fin de semana para Reconectarnos con nuestro Poder, la Naturaleza y la Red de la Vida Vivimos en tiempos desafiantes, con crisis en nuestros ecosistemas, economias y sociedades que están afectando a toda la vida del planeta. Para muchas personas esto puede ser angustioso y abrumador; tal vez no sepan como reaccionar. En este taller vamos a explorar como son nuestras respuestas al estado actual en que se encuentra el mundo; de un modo que nos ayude a despertar y acceder a la motivación, creatividad, fuerza y solidaridad necesarias para la transición a una cultura humana sostenible. Juntas haremos un recorrido que nos llevará a espacios en los que podamos reconocer en que maneras, nosotras como mujeres, sentimos los peligros que hay en estas crisis, experimientando sus efectos y visualizando y co-creando nuestro futuro. El sonido nos acompañara en este viaje y jugaremos con nuestras voces y tambores, para expresar nuestros sentires, nuestros deseos y nuestras esperanzas. Estas prácticas pueden reconectarnos con nuestro poder, el poder CON la Tierra, en lugar de Sobre la Tierra, lo cual es algo que las mujeres desde la antigüedad han sabido y entendido. Vivir en plenitud es conectar con nosotras mismas como partes activas de la Red de la Vida. Las mujeres siempre han sido activas en los movimientos sociales y medioambientales: en la Guerra Civil española, las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo en Argentina, en el Reino Unido ha existido un campamento antinuclear con unicamente mujeres por 20 años. Y más recientemente oimos las voces emergentes del Sur como Vandana Shiva y Wangari Maathai en campañas por la soberania alimentaria y los derechos de acceso a los recursos locales para la población local. Estas prácticas que realizaremos, han sido desarrolladas y utilizadas desde hace más de 40 años y están basadas en el trabajo de Joanna Macy, ecofilósofa, activista, estudiosa y profesora de la teoria de sistem
  • Events
5 years ago

EDE France 2021 | Écovillage Sainte Camelle

We had to wait 2021, against all odds, to see the very first French EDE. How come it was only the 1st? Why never before? Well, we know why. FHF. This is why making an EDE in France was a tough challenge to take on. And yes, we did it! The group of participants we had for this EDE was so diverse that no clan emerged. It is quite usual that people gather by affinity in small groups but here, the entire group stuck together no matter what. The glue was really strong. Some personalities were more extraverted of course, but with a real care for other’s presence and voice. To the extent to become a real counter-power: if we made any facilitation mistake, if we failed to propose in the most careful way and if it felt like we were imposing anything, we would be immediately in trouble. We knew it came from a childhood school trauma for these people, who were very open about it. It was an amazing journey to navigate the facilitation process with such awareness. This context led to something incredible during week two: a very quiet voice, Pauline, protested against the fact that they had agreed to community agreements on the first day but now, she said, they had to review them by themselves and check if it reflects who they really are. We, as EDE crew members, opened a space in the program for them to take the time to do it. They used Sociometry, a tool taught to them before, to assess the agreements. They counted in percentage who agreed or not for each topic. They even discussed about the structure of the program and finally approved it. It was a very beautiful real-life example of self-empowerment. One of the most iconic moment of this EDE was the Derdian roleplay in which they completely immersed themselves for three hours. The participants playing the indigenous Derdians went in the forest and created another set of social rules to add to the existing 10 social rules, making it even harder for the engineers to understand them. Howeve
  • Events
11 years ago

Liderar la Transición

Lo femenino del mundo, de las personas. De Mujeres y Hombres. La Transición que nuestro mundo sueña, necesita de una reformulación clara de los liderazgos. Reinventarse el liderazgo devolviéndolo a su lugar: ser una función de la eficiencia de los procesos colectivos; y dejando de lado los liderazgos basados en la acumulación de privilegios, en la desigualdad y en la dominación. Cuando lo Femenino ocupa el espacio de lo publico, trae consigo la realidad no visible; coloca en lo social los interrogantes necesarios para que lo social deje de estar fraccionado entre Publico/Privado, y pueda ser acogido como el Todo que es. Lo femenino en su esencia, despojado de los condicionamientos impuestos, libre de ser y expresar su potencial en un mundo que busca caminos hacia la inclusión, la escucha, la equivalencia, el empoderamiento de los seres y colectividades que cuidan de la Vida. Traer al espacio de lo Publico , lo invisibilizado: las mujeres, los pueblos olvidados, la propia Tierra, la parte oprimida de la humanidad; es una forma de integrar las necesidades de las personas , del planeta, de la humanidad como identidad . Esta propuesta quiere ser un espacio para abrir las puertas e indagar juntas sobre el papel de estos liderazgos en los procesos de cambio. Como son esos nuevos liderazgos? Como es encarnar estas posiciones en colectividades y organizaciones? Como viven el proceso las mujeres que están desarrollando estos nuevos liderazgos? Y las que no. Como se sienten los hombres ante los liderazgos de las mujeres? Y los que encarnan estos nuevos modelos de liderazgo. Buscar respuestas….temporales tal vez. Ofrecernos espacios para el debate, la indagación, profundizar, explorar. El Programa: (Provisional, sujeto a cambios) Viernes 9 por la tarde: Llegadas, instalarnos, visitar Arterra. 20.00: Cena y Presentaciones. 21.30: Cine y Debate. Sábado 10 : 9.00: Desayuno 10.00- 13.30 Taller: Liderazgo y Poder. 13.45:

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