Who are we? What are the story of our ecovillages? Where are we from? What is close to our hearts? Take a moment to introduce yourself and the ecovillage you come from!
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I am Dr Aditi and presently work as Chief Sustainability Officer with a UN awarded eco-community Govardhan Ecovillage, located 90 kms away from economic capital of India- Mumbai. Promoting a culture and lifestyle of harmony with self, divine, nature and community at large with a living convincing case study of our ecovillage is our shared purpose towards better sustainable world. We are grateful to GEN for this amazing initiative and are excited to learn, participate and contributeā¦
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Welcome Aditi, I am looking forward to getting to know you and Govardhan better!
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Introducing Hundredfold Farm
Who are we?
I am Dr. Devon Kehler and am honored to be living at Hundredfold Farm āa small, rural community near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA. Our multigenerational community follows both ecovillage and co-housing frameworks for cooperative living. Our ecological focus is on water reuse/conservation and we strive to center sustainability in what we do and how we do it.
We are thrilled to be invited to participate in this incredible journey of reckoning with our resiliency alongside you all! Thanks so much GEN!
What are the story of our ecovillages?
Our community is situated on 80 acres of an old Christmas tree farm. We are located on this site because the folks who were involved in establishing our community believed our mission could be realized on this beautiful land. We are in a reflective period, as a community, because many of our establishing members are no longer with us and weāve experienced a surge of new members in the last 18 months. Consequently, we are revisiting our vision, mission and values, which will only be deepened by our involvement in this research study.
Where are we from?
While Hundredfold Farm is located in south-central Pennsylvania I grew up about 60 miles from Washington D.C. I spent 10 years living in the Sonoran desert region of the U.S. and carry desert sensibilities with me, even though I now live in a community surrounded by forest.
What is close to our hearts?
Grief is close to my heart. Grief is often close by because I believe in the interdependence of all living beings, and so many of our fellow beings are dying (or have already become extinct) because human activity has disrupted necessary linkages that are vital to the health and functioning of ecosystems. I know that part of resiliency is being mindful and attentive to grief, which is one reason why I was drawn to participate in this study. I appreciate the chance to do heart work alongside head work with yaāll!
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Welcome Devon! I am very curious to learn more about your community, and I very much agree that grief work is essential in these times. I feel grounded and heart-warm knowing that this resonates with you.
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Who are we?
I am Jack Stansbury and I too am honored to be living at Hundredfold Farm. I grew up on a farm in rural West Virginia, USA with my six brothers and sisters and my two parents. Gardening, home and auto repair, and landscaping were part of our home life. My older sister started a natural food store in our town, and she was the catalyst for me to become a vegetarian (mostly vegan), as well as confirming my opposition to killing sentient beings. Now my wife and I are fortunate to live in a community of like-minded, dedicated, and smart people.
What is close to our hearts?
We use consensus in our community as modeled by Butler and Rothstein. Everyone in our community has an equal voice in making decisions. In doing so, we remain true to our community values and goals, keeping in mind that our common welfare should always come first. Guests to our community are encouraged to speak up at all of our committee meetings.
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Welcome Jack, itās a pleasure to meet you!
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Iām Markus Feenstra, here with Robin, on behalf of the Earthsong Eco-neighbourhood in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. I see Earthsong as a synthesis of eco-village, co-housing and intentional community that Robin helped found around 25 years ago. We are still working through the multi-faceted challenges Covid brought into our community, such as a much higher than usual turnover of residents. I am grateful to be one of these, having moved into Earthsong just over a year ago.
We have recently embarked on a self-review of how we do decision making in our community, and I am curious what we can learn from those of you with expertise in this domain.
My work is co-developing a fractal theory of change and underpinning worldview that assists people committed to enhancing the wellbeing of all beings to renormalize ourselves, so we better embody our gifts for the world in our natural ways of being.
Iām feeling anticipation about about the adventure we are embarking on together, and wondering how our Earthsong community can benefit, and also how deep enough listening can happen within, through and between us for whatever beautiful possiblities might be ready to emerge from our collaboration to make themselves known to us.
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Hi Markus, and welcome! Your fractal theory of change sounds interesting and I am curious how you integrate the āwellbeing of all beingsā aspect. We might have a project coming up on developing leadership based in kincentric ecology (as in weāre all kin and ought to act like it, with deep respect for the intelligence and existence of more than human beings too) - fingers crossed it gets funded! I also really liked what you said in the call yesterday, about listening deeply to each other, and a curiousity about what can emerge in a space like that.
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Thanks for the question Anna. Renormaling, which is our theory of change orients from a post scientific materialist worldview, we call Community of Being or Co-being. From this orientation human beings are co-beings, which is to say we are more like communities than individuals, despite the narrative most of us have adapted to that all voices within us arise from the same being.
Our hypothesis is that the field of Co-being, which seems to emerge naturally with practice, has an innate tendency to enhance the wellbeing of all beings.
Our approach to testing this hypothesis has been to practice cultivating this field of Co-being within ourselves, in small groups of others doing the same work, initially accompanied by someone experienced with this work.
Our experience so far is that these groups emerge into the same field of Co-being, which helps clarify and amplify the work we are accompanying each other with in our inner communities.
As we each discover within and between us how the field of Co-being emerges and stabilizes, and how this seems to enhance wellbeing for us and others, we find that it spontaneously begins to move through us into our proximate close relationships, such as with partners, children, at work, with animals, garden plants, soil and its inhabitants, stars and planets.
The responses from these proximate beings suggests that there is something fractal about the way the field of co-being emerges, and its tendency to naturally enhance the wellbeing of all beings.
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Hi everyone,
Iām Thao Kin from Vietnam. Joining the Ecovillage Resilience project as the regional rep from GEN Oceania & Asia.
Excited to embark on this journey with you all 
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Kia ora everyone, I am Robin Allison from Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood in New Zealand, catching up with this project after an intense one month book trip to Australia. I am deeply interested and involved with the on-going inquiry of what it means to be human at this point in the collective life of Earth, and how to live this life with intention, engagement, and love. I am honoured to connect with others from around the planet in this inquiry.
Hi, Iām Duncan Crowley. Iām Irish and live in Parede, outside Lisbon, Portugal for 5 years, after 4 years in Curitiba, Brazil and 7 years in Barcleona, Catalonia (Spain). I donāt live in an ecovillage, I have spent time in a few, I support some GEN research projects (ETiA, Regen4all) and am exploring about how to implement ecovillage approaches to cities. Iāve been involved in Transition, permaculture, regenerative development and work with ECOLISE now. Iām an architect by training and doing a PhD in ISCTE about āCommunity-led ecocitiesā. First 2 academic posts about this topic are an article āTowards a necessary regenerative urban planning. Insights from community-led initiatives for ecocity transformationā and a book chapter āTransformational Politics. New Networks of Governanceā , that explores how municipalist, fractal, multi-level governance might offer proccess to enable ecocity model from the street, block, barrio, city to bioregionā¦
VIVA LA PACHAMAMA
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