The Community
This is a people-based project — we’re building a Community.
In our modern society that values consumption over everything else this is something we no longer have a good sense of, so we’ve looked into what it takes to create a community and what community really means. We’ve been observing and researching Eco-village, community-building, permaculture, ubuntu-contributionism, human development, and many related topics for over 15 years and we’re learning from the successes & failures of previous projects, from our sister project 8th Life La Palma and from other colleagues.
The definition of community we found here resonates with what we’re creating:
A community is a group of people united through a common struggle with the same stories
To this we’d add …
and who have a common vision of the future.
A common vision helps to hold people together as they work through this common struggle, it paints a picture of the future the group desires and provides much needed motivation. Our vision will be revisited by the group of founding members and revised if necessary to ensure the community has a shared vision.
Our Vision
An intentional rural community where the values and ideals of community, respect, peace and living “on-purpose” (in short, ubuntu) are rediscovered by our residents. The Eco-village provides a socio-cultural support structure and a healthy living and working environment. Fair work, cooperation and an abundance mindset prevail among our members. As a viable solution, others begin to collaborate with us and replicate our model. A stronger, fairer local economy emerges together with increased sense of community and belonging. As part of a worldwide network of such communities, we support a global transition to a more just society.
Other aspects of strong communities include defined leadership and decision making structures, long-term commitments, a shared language (ours revolves around permaculture and ubuntu-contributionism) and the careful and active selection of members.
Our sister project studied the temporary communities of their action-learning programs and confirmed that lasting relationships & solid teams are formed when a series of criteria are met. They made some basic models which help in understanding what’s going on under the surface. We learned about these models in the Integral Permaculture Course. That’s one reason why it’s a requirement that everyone who joins us takes the PDC.
More information on building strong communities.
More information on who we are.