Join us - become and ecovillage case study!

Are you passionate about understanding and improving the practices and impact of your ecovillage? Do you want to know more about how the climate crisis might affect your community and what you can do to keep being a force for regeneneration? Do you want to share your story, practices and ideas with other ecovillagers from around the world?

As an ecovillage case study in the Ecovillage Resilience project, you will be an integral part of the mission to find out what ecovillages can nurture today to be more resilient and impactful tomorrow. We have space for 20 ecovillages, four from each region, and welcome all types of communities and languages to apply. Read more below and in the linked presentation You are also welcome to join one of our open calls

Bring you questions and inspiration to our open calls

August 9 at 15.00 UTC with team member Anna – good for Africa, Middle East, Europe, Eastern Americas
Check the time in your time zone here
Register for the August 9 call here

August 11 at 03.00 UTC with team member Trudy – good for GENOA and Pacific, including PNW
Check the time in your time zone here
Register for the August 11 call here

What will I do as an Ecovillage Case Study Partner?

The stories, practices, situation and dreams of your ecovillage will become the base of all our work, and your own learning, sensing and reflection a part of how we weave our collective understanding and create visions and pathways for GEN and ecovillages for the coming 20 years.

The project is made up of two main types of action – online sessions and local workshops.

One or a few members of your community will become part of the online community of practice. We will meet for two hours every three weeks to learn, reflect, sense, cocreate and vision together. We ask that each ecovillage partner has people willing and able to commit to being active members of this online space for the duration of the project.

Community of practice members, who all represent a case study ecovillage, will also host and facilitate local workshops, and do some local data gathering. You will recieve training, materials and support for all your local work, as well as resources to carry it out.

Some of the things your representatives will do:

join a global Community of Practice (CoP) and safe container of of peers all exploring similar topics
learn and exchange about resilience, adaptation, collective sensing, processing climate grief and more
lead your community in a local exploration of resilience, adaptation and impact
host and facilitate workshops and data gathering in their communities;
reflect on what we learn and how it makes sense in the larger context of GEN and the world;
give input into creative storytelling and sharing with the wider world
cocreate diverse new visions and pathways for ecovillages in the next 20 years
contribute to research on resilience, social transformation, and ecovillages

What each ecovillage and representative will recieve:

Support from leading international researchers, facilitators and experts to create well grounded pathways to resilience and impact
Channels to tell your story to the wider world in diverse and creative ways
Resources to look deeply at current practices and future scenarios for your place
Training to become leaders in ecovillage design, resilience and adaptation locally and in our global network
Peers and friends from around the world

Time Commitment and Financial Exchange

We antitipate that active ecovillage representatives of the project will to spend approximately 8 hours per month from September 2022 to January 2024. This will include online CoP sessions of approximately 2 hours every 3 weeks. Some periods might be a bit more intense, some less.

We will try to find times for online work that suit as many timezones as possible, with different options available.

Thanks to our generous donor, we are able to contribute to the costs of the ecovillage representatives’ time spent online, budgeted at £3,200 per ecovillage for the duration of the project, and an additional £4,000 for data gathering and local workshops in each place.

Selection Criteria

Alignment with GEN’s understanding of ecovillages: Working towards the areas of regeneration (social, ecology, economy, culture, integrating into whole systems design), and involved in participatory projects;
Relationship with GEN: an up to date profile on GEN database; known to regional liaison and/or participated in collaborative project or course;
Size: at least 20 members currently living on the land and engaged in the ecovillage’s work;
Established and Active: existed as engaged community on the land/property for at least 6 years;
Competent in online collaboration: previous experience working online
Real interest in the project: a desire to journey through the overarching, collective and individual inquiry, its diverse elements, curiosity to deepen and co-learn.
Committed to the project process and outcomes: Two people from each ecovillage who have the capacity to engage and take responsibility to engage for 20 months, following the process closely, take part in sessions, share information with the network and their community, hold and facilitate local sessions to contribute to the Resilience Assessment. And signed co-created agreement.

Application

If you feel you meet the above criteria and would like to nominate yourself and find out more details, please complete this application form by 24 August. We plan get back to applicants early September and start onboarding partners in mid September.

Formulario de solicitud en Español.

普通話申請表