Region in change Creating communal structures within a whole region to support change towards a regenerative world

On October 1st, 2020, we, 13 people from different backgrounds, moved into the beautiful Fuchsmühle (in English: Fox mill) at the edge of the small town Waldkappel in the middle of Germany. As young people that are aware of the challenges and global crisis of our time, we came together with a big vision: To build sustainable and communal-based structures within the whole region to support bottom-up system change, regenerative ways of living and a long-lasting, resilient community networks.

We also founded a cooperative, which is able to acquire houses as well as agricultural and forestry fields, and an association “Region im Wandel e.V.” (in English: Region in change) for our non-profit work and projects. With the association, we want to build an organization that can be home and legal structure for many people and projects within the region of different kinds, to work together on regional change. As beautiful as this region is, it is known to be “structurally-weak”, which we see as an opportunity to build new and needed structures, that work under different conditions than our current capitalist system. In our theory of change, we need a holistic approach towards change. This is why we spread our work into different layers, inspired by the GEN approach: ecologically, economic, socially and culturally. We want to create many seedlings of alternative systems, that than can connect with each other and weave webs that are autonomous, resilient and in solidarity with each other. In our vision, this is how a network of community and support can emerge in which many people can be part of in their own ways.