Newsletter Editor
Leila Dregger is an agricultural engineer and longtime journalist, visited many continents, communities and peace projects. She is a screenwriter for theater and film, was the editor of the magazine The female voice - politics of the heart, press officer of the house of democracy in Berlin, the ZEGG in Belzig and Tamera in Portugal, where she mainly lives today. Since 2012, she is the editor of the GEN-International Newsletter. She teaches constructive journalism for young professionals and students, as well as in crisis regions. She is the author of several books.
Site content by Leila Dregger
Blog posts
Conference for Global Peace Plan Tamara Healing Biotope Ecovillage Hosts Conference for Global Peace Plan Portugal, August 1st-14th, 2016
he Tamera Healing Biotopes Ecovillage has a plan for global peace. Its implementation requires the collaboration of many inspired people. During two weeks in August (August 1st-14th, 2016), we invite visitors to get to know our southern Portuguese ecovillage to learn about our global peace plan and experience our community. Our aim for these two weeks is to introduce people to the idea that they can develop their own thoughts and insights and to widen the network of people committed to a … Read more
ICSA Conference 2016 in Tamera “Community Approaches Towards Inner and Outer Peace”
ICSA Conference 2016 in Tamera Ecovillage (Portugal) July 1st-3rd, 2016 From July 1st-3rd, 2016, the International Communal Studies Association (ICSA) Conference will take place in the peace research community center in the Tamera Healing Biotope Ecovillage in southern Portugal. This year’s theme is “Community approaches towards inner and outer peace.” ICSA was formed in 1985 during an international conference held at Yad Tabenkin, the Research and Documentation Centre of the Kibbutz … Read more
Editorial Newsletter January 2016 Dear friends of ecovillages, dear ambassadors, members, allies throughout the world,
Two major crises of our time - climate change and the refugee crisis – are intertwining to reach historical dimensions. People the world over - and all beings of nature – are existentially threatened, with nowhere to turn to. Climate change, in the guise of a long-term drought from 2006-2011 was one of the factors that lead to the war in Syria. In the past three years, the number of people boarding rickety fishing boats – leaving Myanmar and Bangladesh for countries further south in … Read more
With RefuGEN on Lesvos Nothing prepares you for Moria
RefuGEN was created by GEN Europe to help support refugees arriving in Lesbos, Greece – more than 1,000 arrive to the island daily. GEN has established a volunteering hub on the island, committing volunteers through June 2016. Leila Dregger of the Tamera Ecovillage shares her experience as one of RefuGEN’s first volunteers. Want to help? Click here to volunteer. Donate (all RefuGEN efforts are volunteer). … Read more
Join Friends of GEN Support what is close to your heart: GEN Small Projects Campaign
You can be part of making sustainable dreams come alive in 2016! All around the world there are communities and people doing amazing work to take care of people and the planet. There are incredible examples of the restoration of degraded ecosystems, rivers and lakes; the rebuilding of community support ‘nets’; the recognition of elders knowledge and ancestral wisdom; the development of economic activities and systems that create solutions and not just problems, to name a few. In … Read more
Carbon Farming The Best Way to Sequester Carbon and Reverse Global Warming
Many ecovillage communities have been experimenting with different means of carbon farming and have gone well beyond carbon neutral to become net-negative carbon communities. These villages provide best practices models for sequestering billions of tons of carbon and reversing global warming. Essential Reading: GEN Representative to the United Nations, Rob Wheeler, brings you stories of success from ecovillages around the world. We think it’s a must-read! … Read more
GEN at COP21, France "These are our friends that are being existentially threatened."
A GEN delegation of more than 15 leaders participated in the United Nations Climate Conference in Paris this December. Through our participation, we explored the questions: what role do ecovillages have in climate change and what do we seek to accomplish? … Read more
The First EDE Course in Palestine Waters of Hope – Nourishing the Heart of Sustainability
In November 2015, the first Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) course took place in Palestine: two weeks of learning, sharing, and community empowerment. The village of Farkha has great promise for becoming a model of sustainable ecological development. … Read more
Co-Act: Together Network Dialogue with all Actors
The TOGETHER network has launched the CO-ACT project to counterbalance the power of economic lobbies by using radically different methods. Considering that co-responsibility not only includes local actors but also public policy makers and legal frameworks at other levels, it is not enough to apply pressure with technical reports, by connecting with high-level contacts, etc. There is also a need to develop a bottom-up process dialogue involving the largest amount of citizens at a local level, … Read more
Mexico: The Power of Grandmothers The Story of Kalpulli and Grandmother Hope
The Power of Grandmothers can create and maintain healthy communities - just like this one from Mexico, collected and translated by Tracy Barnett. Esperanza Moran was not a young woman when she decided to pack up her family, leave the big city and stake out a claim in the wilderness with an assorted band of spiritual seekers. The eldest of her five children was already in college; she had co-founded the first School of Love, a program dedicated to exploring the divine feminine within, and had … Read more
