“This gathering of human and non-human beings has never happened before and will never happen again.” – Charles Eisenstein, GEN Online Summit.
As GEN celebrated our 25th year in 2020, and all the contributions that lead us here, no one could imagine the uncertainty the world would face. While gathering the stories and data to showcase our accomplishments for the year, we felt an enhanced sense of gratitude for the abundance within our members and collaborators. As a network and organisation, our resilience was tested and proven, and like a diverse ecosystem, we navigated challenges with creativity, flexibility, and solidarity. We were truly pressed to practice the ecovillage principles, particularly “clarifying vision and higher purpose” as well as “listen to the feedback of the world.” We believe our Annual Report reflects this and are pleased to share it with you here.
Access the Global Ecovillage Network Annual Report 2020:
Our Vision and Mission remain the same, as do many of our core frameworks. And we remain open to evolving how we serve these, how we work together, and how we understand our impact. Read the invitation for celebration from our passionate and committed President of the Board. Read the reflection and re-focusing from the Focus Area Directors of the GEN International team. Notice how we exceeded some of our targets (particularly the number of communities we reach out to and the number of online learning participants we engaged with). And learn how our restructuring process is re-shaping our work.
In a year of restricted travel, we maintained our global focus through collaborating with partners in all regions, through the Twinning Project, Hildur Jackson Award, BLAST, GAMER, Green Economy, Ecovillage Transition in Action, Ecovillage Schools, and Research. We continued to showcase stories from the network in our Online Summit. And our volunteers and Ambassadors networks grew and strengthened.
You can also read about our priorities for 2021 and join us on the journey back 25 years, to celebrate all that shaped who we are today. As always, we invite you to dive into each of the regions’ highlights as well. Representatives from GEN Africa welcomed well-earned recognition for several awards in 2020 and infused energy into the Pan African Ecovillage Development Programme. CASA Latina held an enriching and regenerative annual meeting and embraced online learning opportunities with several collaborative education projects. GEN Europe followed suit in the online world, creatively adapting their in-person gathering to an incredible array of online engagement workshops, as well as launching a Connect and Create course and Communities of Hope documentary. GENNA also made the most of the possibilities online with several projects and gatherings and brought together an impressive collective for their Regenerative Education Working Group Summit. GENOA further enhanced their newsletter, social media, and website while also launching an impressive 7-month online co-learning journey, ReGEN-Nations, across 11 countries. And finally, NextGEN made great strides in each of the regions, reinvigorating their teams and structures and representing the youth voice at various events and trainings, while also demonstrating their innovative creativity in both online and local spaces.
These are just some of the accomplishments we are proud to share. We hope you feel curious to delve deeper into the stories and quantitative highlights of an incredible year. And perhaps, if you haven’t already, we invite you to step further into GEN – continuing the theme of celebrating 25 years, with 25 invitations of ways to engage with GEN.
“Living in community is an incredible journey of continuous self transformation… the most enriching experience in the world.” -Macaco Tamerice, Damanhur, GEN Online Summit
GEN Staff
