10 Steps To Get Ready for the Global EcoVillage Movement

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Marty

Project Nuevo Mundo is a new platform that will be connecting People and Impact Centres. Their plan is to promote resource sharing online and on the ground to promote community and sustainability! They currently have a campaign on indiegogo to raise funds for a Bus Tour this winter, where they teach workshops and set-up their on-the-ground network. Make sure to show them some support by contributing and sharing their campaign. Here is an article that they wanted to share with you!

Are you tired of stress, anxiety, unhealthy food, chlorinated water, traffic jams, air and noise pollution, paying rent, not having time to pursue your real interests and passions?

Do you want to live a life more in balance with nature? Are you looking for more meaning in your daily life? More real connections with people, time in nature, time to pursue your interests and dreams, fresh food straight from the ground around you, deep sleep at night, bubbling streams and cooing birds?

Living in an ecovillage may just be the antidote to many of the ills of modern urban life. Humans have lived in small settlements with close kin and extended tribal family in tandem with the cycles of nature for hundreds of thousands of years, and some psychologists say that current unprecedented levels of depression, stress, anxiety, drug addiction, and suicide are due to this fundamental disconnect from our past close relationships with each other and with nature.

An ecovillage is an intentional community committed to becoming more sustainable. In practice, this means that the resource inputs for the necessities of living come from local sources and are by and are by and large derived directly from nature in a way that allows nature to perpetually replenish itself and continually supply the needed materials. Ecovillages are also designed using whole systems design principles, to maximize overall quality of life for humans. Check out this great article on ecovillages.
Here’s how to get started making the shift.

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Community of Emerald Village Ecovillage in Vista, CA milking goats. Photo by Bryan Arturo

1. Grow your community, your connections, your network.

Solidifying relationships with an extended community of like-minded people is going to pay you back in a multitude of ways, opening up endless possibilities. The more you see other people living out their dreams, the more you will realize that yours are possible. Community can inspire and support you to live your dreams.

2. Join the Project Nuevo Mundo movement!

  • Connect with selected impact centers around the world matched to fit your interests and needs, and like-minded people on a search for transformation.
  • Participate in the PNM by using the network to find ecovillages and impact centers for work-exchange, trainings and events. (available this winter)
  • Attend a fundraising event to meet others in the network
    Re-Inhabiting the Village, November 2nd in Vista, CA
    Earth Odyssey Fundraiser –
  • Engage with us through our Facebook and Twitter
  • Supporting our IndieGoGo Campaign for Earth Odyssey 2013
  • Contribute $1000 the highest reward to the campaign and we will be your committed support team to get ready for the global ecovillage movement.

Want to know more information? Reach out to us at contact(at)projectnuevomundo.org to find out how we will support your transition into the regenerative villages movement.

earth-odyssey-logo-445

3. Acquire the skills to become self-sufficient while reducing your living costs and to make yourself useful on the land.

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An Introduction to Permaculture course at West Lexham, Photo courtesy of West Lexham.

4. Start using sharing economy networks to expand your personal network with others in the new paradigm economy

  • Use Couchsurfing, Warm Showers (for cyclists), AirBnB when staying in new places. Use mealsharing platforms whenever possible, or share your left-overs.
  • Use WWOOF, GrowFood, and soon Project Nuevo Mundo to exchange time for meaningful experiences, new skills, room and board.
  • Use Dhamma, a Vipassana meditation network of globally linked centers and volunteers, to attend “pay-it-forward” ten-day long meditation courses that teach valuable techniques in understanding your fears, desires, and consumer impulses, and eliminating them by finding internal peace and satisfaction. After attending your first course, volunteer in selfless service for the next retreat.
  • Sign up and trade with or create a local timebank or local currency. Exchanges use different websites and systems so search for your town’s name plus the keywords  timebank, time exchange, LETS, barter or local currency.

Create or join a gift circle. Start a Really Really Free Market.

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Colleen Cary and others meditated during a retreat last month for those 18 to 32 years old at the Insight Meditation Center in Barre. Photo by Christine Peterson for The Boston Globe

5. Imagine your dream village.

What would it look like? Who would live there? How would you spend your day? Start talking to other people, and see if there are others out there who share a similar vision. Sustainable Ecovillages is a social network to bring people together who have similar visions for building communities and joining Facebook groups like Evolver and Visionary Culture can help you find others who share the same vision. Find a Meetup group near you that shares your interest like !

6. Connect to your local permaculture and sustainability projects, and DIY/maker spaces

  • Use Wiser Earth to connect with local projects and Transition Network to check if your local community has a Transition Town movement, a community led response to climate change. If not, you can start one!
  • Search the global database Makerspace and connect with local DIY projects. “Maker spaces are community-operated workspaces where people with common interests can meet, socialize and/or collaborate.” (Source: Wikipedia).
  • Visit Permies.com and join a conversation about permaculture.

 

7. Take at least one month to live in a remote indigenous community

…or an ecovillage where local production and consumption is still the norm, and understand closed-loop living systems first-hand. Check out organizations like Ecuador’s Yanapuma.

  • Decide what kind of skills you would like to learn, and do your own research to find indigenous communities where those skills are prevalent (example: traditional healing with medicinal plants, crafting, hunting). There is currently no single database of indigenous communities that accept homestay, but Project Nuevo Mundo is working on one!
  • Explore Living Routes, a program to “Study Abroad in Sustainable Communities

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Annual Wisdom Keeper & Youth Council held at Deer Mountain. Photo courtesy of Earth People’s United.

8. Focus on a trade or master craft.

Discover your passion in life. What makes you energized and enthusiastic? What brings out your creative burst? Gain experience by doing, and by apprenticing with a master or teacher who has successfully based their livelihood on the craft you desire to master, preferably something a community might need or want.

9. Learn and practice communication skills.

  • Practice “holding space” – The idea is to allow someone to express themselves without the pressures of being judged or being told that they need to ‘improve’. This might run contrary to the labels we give to the ‘conscious’ or ‘sharing’ movement– we often believe that we need to ‘change’ people in order to bring them into the movement.
  • Set aside our personal desires and our need to ‘improve’ those around us. We may find ourselves guided by our collective purpose.
  • Holocracy or Non-Violent Communication provide structures for good communication. Check out Holocracy.org’s post on “Differentiating Organization & Tribe”,
  • Trying to focus on the collective purpose rather than individual needs allows a circle “to be more driven by its own unique purpose in life, like a child developing its own identity and goals beyond those of its parents.”
  • Find a local circle to participate in that brings intention to communication– non-violent communication circles, gifting circles,
  • Identifying yourself as an impartial ‘facilitator’ during a house meeting with your roommates.

Read more about collective decision making – “How to Make Better Decisions Together.”

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Getting ready for a community meeting at Atlantida Ecovillage in Cajibio, Columbia. Photo courtesey of Ecoatlandia.

10. Check out PNM’s recommended reading list, and dive in!

14 thoughts on “10 Steps To Get Ready for the Global EcoVillage Movement”

  1. Pingback: Collective-Evolution

    • We’re using more resources than the planet can produce and replenish. In fact, every
      year we humans consume the equivalent of 1.5 planets’ worth of resources! In a
      developed nation like the US,chances are you’re using four or five planets’ worth or more.

      If we don’t smarten up in consumption, scientists estimate that humans will
      consume twice as many resources as the planet can support by 2050. The
      consequences grow more and more severe as forests shrink, water becomes
      scarcer, arable lands diminish, and the level of greenhouse gases in the
      atmosphere approaches a deadly point of no return.

      Let’s we try to save one Taka/dollar/pound/yen ……..from our daily use,
      consumption, expenditure, LUXURY combat the CLIMATE CHANGE, GLOBAL WARMING and
      the sequences.

      http://www.facebook.com/sasraiMovement.2004

  5. Hi Marty,

    I have not read this whole page yet; but a quick scan suggests that it is well done and comprehensive, yet succinct. I had a problem with the intro, however, with the heading: Why leave the city and join the village people, you may wonder?

    Since I am a city dweller and early founder of the contemporary urban ecovillage movement, I felt a little taken aback.with this heading. I feel that it might be a real turn-off for many urban ecovillage/eco-city/transition town kinds of folks that are full of good energy, incredible knowledge and experience, and deep commitment on a variety of sustainability issues. Might you consider us in a more positive light than your heading and intro comments suggest?

    I do not like the prospect of a potential division between urban and rural ecovillage advocates.

    Thanks for considering.

    Best wishes,
    Lois Arkin
    http://www.laecovillage.org

  6. Please have lead to spread sasrai-Movement
    aimed at habitable earth

    Dear Madam/Sir

    Greetings from sasrai-Movement
    that works voluntarily since 2004 across the globe aimed at promote
    prudent and sustainable consumption and conservation, optimum use and reduce
    the abuse of resources. sasrai target to animate, activate each individual,
    family, community, institution, organization to Combat Climate Change, global
    warming, food, fuel, water, poverty, disaster, waste, ecosystem, biodiversity –
    finally reverse the devastating
    trend of globe. Road map
    towards the implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration –
    sasrai brings into focus Six MDGs, 09 time-bound targets and 31 quantitative
    indicators.

    Chinese President appeals to the Nation “build a thrifty
    society”, that sasrai Voice since 2004.

    Being “thrifty” means
    spending one cent as if you have only half a cent. This is an old Chinese saying
    to warn people to handle affluence without forgetting about a potential crisis.
    Underlying this common sense is an ethic rooted in Chinese culture: wasting is
    bad. President Xi Jinping has urged Chinese people to “build a thrifty
    society”, because if we persist with our business-as-usual production and
    consumption pattern we would invite a resource and environmental crisis.

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=532999326722502&set=a.410051592350610.85835.410048385684264&type=1&theater

    a. Climate Change to Low-Income New Yorkers: Drop Dead

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-robbins/climate-change-to-lowinco_b_3683217.html

    b. Climate Change and Violence Linked, Breakthrough Study Finds

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/climate-change-and-violence_n_3692023.html?ir=Green&utm_campaign=080213&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-green&utm_content=Title

    c. Due to Global Warming, End Is Virtually Certain for NYC, Boston, Miami, Holland

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/due-to-global-warming-end_b_3628981.html?ir=Miami

    d. Climate Study Predicts Flood-prone Future For
    Major U.S. Cities

    More than 1,700 American cities and towns – including Boston, New York, Miami,
    New Orleans, San Francisco, Sacramento and Seattle – will have some 25% of
    their populations living below the high-water mark by the end of this century
    if the current global warming trend continues, a new climate change study has
    found. [The same danger, of course, exists for coastal cities around the
    world.]

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=635650816460294&set=gm.10151800730432402&type=1&theater

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=578778172144617&set=a.410051592350610.85835.410048385684264&type=1&theater

    e. These 1,700 towns are locked into a flood-prone future by greenhouse gas
    emissions already built up in the atmosphere. The analysis published in the
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on Monday found that 79
    cities and towns with a combined population of 835,000 would be staring down
    those waters by 2023. About half of the population of Fort
    Lauderdale, Hoboken, and Palm Beach, would be
    living below the high tide line by 2023.

    f. Confronting the Growing Threat
    of Climate Change

    sasrai Commandment for
    Nature, Next Generation. Wish the Peace for Each, to ensure Rights for all –
    save a bit, reserve, preserve, rejuvenate and conserve resources

    Let’s achieve
    significant change in mindset, behavior and attitude combat Climate Crisis,
    Reduce Risk & Poverty, save Bio-diversity – Peace for Humanity……as the
    way to achieve the desired goal – sasrai – work locally-serve globally,
    initiative local-outcome global.

    AIMED AT SUSTAINABLE LIVING,
    ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

    Please Keep a hand written
    sasrai-Movement Poster in any discussion area

    Let’s have zeal to self
    tune in sasrai-Movement policy and be committed to save resource and reduce
    FOOD waste in our daily living – no matter how small it is. Please relentless
    to voice from each corner across the globe

    Please,
    save a drop of water daily, during all water related activities

    Please,
    plant at least a Native tree annually at own home or community

    Please,
    let’s waste not single particle of food

    Please,
    let’s waste not single particle of any resource

    Please,
    keep off electric appliances one minute daily

    Please,
    suspend travel by personal car once a day

    Please,
    keep a day in a week luxury free

    Please,
    do not throw away the waste wherever you like

    Please,
    No more junk food

    Please,
    Buy items made from recycled materials

    Please,
    save one minute to think on Climate Change and Environment

    You
    Can Reduce CO2 Emissions, Plant Native Trees Worldwide

    You
    could uphold the movement instantly using sasrai-Movement appeal at the
    bottom of your all printed material

    sasrai Volunteer demand your kind
    contemplation to spread sasrai across the globe effectively. Please keep a
    sasrai-Movement slogan at the bottom of your each letter or any other
    publication. Please keep a sasrai-Movement banner at your office gate.

    Regards

    SM Farid Uddin Akhter

    Secretariat In-charge

    email: [email protected] Phone:+88
    01553 748 354

    Let’s we try to save one
    Taka/dollar/pound/yen ……..from our daily use, consumption, expenditure,
    LUXURY combat the CLIMATE CHANGE, GLOBAL WARMING and the sequences.

    http://www.facebook.com/sasraiMovement.2004

    http://sasrai.wordpress.com/sasrai-movement/

    http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8450962401

    http://www.facebook.com/Pallipathagar

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Priyoithu

    Let’s be a desired friend to all
    creature, humanity, environment, earth

    Plant for planet, water for world,
    environment for entire

    sasrai – sustainable augmentation, solicited restraint, animated integrity

    Please send us your suggestion, comment via
    email: [email protected]

  7. Pingback: 10 Steps to Get Ready for the Global EcoVillage Movement | dreamweaver333

  8. While “Ishmael” introduces some pretty important concepts, Quinn’s “Beyond Civilization” covers those concepts, and other important ones from his other books, and is laid out in a simple non-fiction format – so you don’t have to wade through a lot of debatably poor prose.

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