Global Ecovillage Network (GEN)

The Global Ecovillage Network envisions a world of empowered citizens and communities, designing and implementing their own pathways to a sustainable future, and building bridges of hope and international solidarity.

The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) is an international network of ecovillages, administratively divided into five autonomous regions.

GEN’s primary purpose is information exchange among the thousands of projects across the world that are building and living in small intentional and traditional communities in harmony with nature, as well as information dissemination to the larger world. GEN does this with seminars, newsletters, educational programs at many ecovillages, and an active website with easily accessible contact addresses of members, resource lists, and links to related activities. GEN has consulting status with the United Nations agency ECOSOC.

For a fuller description, visit the GEN website, which has an enormous database of information on the many participating projects and related issues. On this site you can also find an article on the Global Ecovillage Network History 1990-2004.

The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) is a network of thousands of diverse communities worldwide that are committed to sustainable living.

The GEN network has a rich and diverse variety of Living and Learning centers in 5 world regions. This means that good models already exist where people live together and are manifesting practical examples of sustainable living. Below, you can read about some of them.

GEN LIVING AND LEARNING CENTERS

GEN LIVING AND LEARNING CENTERS are just a few of many diverse sites where people in the world are living sustainable plus lives and learning from each other and the environment. What characterizes L&L Centers is that they have a strong educational component and are based on social and ecological equity, in which people and the environment around them matter and are integrally linked.

These models can be replicated because they are easily adaptable to different cultural and social contexts. The idea is to train trainers in outreach programs based on global planetary awareness, provide meaningful livelihood at home, work in cooperation with like-minded people to build community, have a strong commitment to restoring the earth and using renewable energy systems, and invest strongly in young people’s future.

Indeed, we can transform the world if we set our energy to do it. Our modest efforts multiplied many thousands of times over, will make for a better and healthier planet.

A few of the GEN-affiliated university programs include the University of Dakar, University of Washington, Cornell University, University of Madras, Ithaca College, Pacific Lutheran University, University of New Hampshire, Kalamazoo College, University of Brasilia, University of Colorado, Environmental University of Curitiba, and others.

Awards by ecovillage associates include the Rolex Honorary Environmental Mention, The Gandhi Prize, The Ashoka Award for Enterprise, and The United Nations Best Practices Award.

For more information on how you can create an ecovillage, an L&L Centre, participate in an ongoing project, or fund programs, please contact the Global Ecovillage Network.

Sarvodaya

Visit Sarvodaya.org

Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka is a network of more than 12,000 self-sustaining villages that focuses on participatory community development with no poverty and no affluence, agriculture, micro-banking, livelihood training, cross cultural-meditation, and pre-school development.

The Tanamalwila Living and Learning Centre located near two national parks in the Southeast of Sri Lanka, focuses on permaculture, species diversity, human rights and peace initiatives. It offers regular courses to community-linked people in Southeast Asia.

Auroville

Visit Auroville.org

Auroville in India is a multicultural eco-city that has been endorsed by UNESCO. It has a wide variety of programs and receives visiting researchers, university students, and international volunteers. Programs exist in low cost building technology and sustainable living, food security and organic farming, training in architectural applications and town planning, environmental education, seed banks, medicinal plant gardens, traditional botanical knowledge, experiential education, philosophy, medicine and healing.

Auroville’s Forestry group works on land restoration and can serve as a training center for programs like the International Earth Restoration Corps.

Bija Vidyapeeth

Visit Bija Vidyapeeth

Bija Vidyapeeth in India (means education for Earth Citizenship) near Risikesh is an International College for Sustainable Living at the Navdanya organic farm in cooperation with surrounding sustainable villages. The rich bio-diversity of the farm provides the context for education for earth democracy in which participants (80% local 20% international) learns from nature and each other, while they study, live, clean, cook and eat together. Programs also include yoga, practice of music and theatre. Founded and run by Vandana Shiva, teachers include: Satish Kumar (Resurgence), Edward Goldsmith, Sulakh Sivaraksi, Fukuoka, Fridtjof Capra, Jeremy Rifkin, Wolfgang Sachs, Brian Goodwin

Crystal Waters

Visit CrystalWaters.org.au

Crystal Waters in Australia offers courses in permaculture design, environmental restoration, and community work. The UN Habitat Award-winning ecovillage features housing in rammed earth, pole structures, mud brick, domes, and straw bale. Demonstration sites exist for water harvesting, waste water use, rainwater collection, swales, dams, artificial wetlands, biolytic treatment, compost toilets, stand-alone and grid-connected solar power systems, heat pumps, cell grazing, land restoration, reforestation, orchard culture, wildlife corridor and rainforest applications. Crystal Waters has an excellent range of eco-systems, and abundant and diverse wildlife, which live in harmony and close proximity with humans. The Eco Centre is an ideal place for a genuine immersion experience and is linked to credit-earning university programmes.

Eco-Yoff

Eco-Yoff in Senegal is a sub-urban community development program oriented towards aiding people to protect their natural resources and village wisdom, insure their long-term survival, and alleviate poverty. It is the headquarters of a large network that has on-site demonstration projects, which include preserving mangrove ecosystems, village social action, green tech, waste water recycling stations, food security, solar cookers, water conservation, conflict resolution, micro-enterprise and employment, eco-tourism, integrated health, nutrition, and early child development. Through Colufifa village co-operatives, farmers and local women – are trained in community resource management and organic farming and are able to receive organic certifications. The network has been endorsed by the Senegal Ministry of the Environment and the UNESCO Chair of the Environment at the University of Dakar.

Ivory Park Ecocity

Read about Ivory Park

Ivory Park Ecocity in South Africa is a demonstration project located on the edge of a new and very poor township in Midrand near Johannesburg. It fuses African indigenous technologies with western tech. Models include ecologically-friendly homes, a zero energy community centre built by local women, solar energy, water conservation and harvesting, medicinal herbs, paper-making and traditional crafts, smokeless fires and solar cookers, eco-tourism, youth and women’s empowerment, youth environmental activities, sanitation, product recycling, food security; finance and eco-banking, eco-construction, eco-businesses, co-operatives; non-polluting transport, eco-urban planning; pollution, waste, and natural resource management. This is a courageous experiment in sustainability and poverty eradication for people living and working in cities and who need ecologically-friendly community models.

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Findhorn

Visit Findhorn.org

Findhorn in Scotland offers holistic education programmes. These include an annual ecovillage training programme, permaculture workshops, courses in personal development, spirituality, arts and crafts. Findhorn is part of a large organic community-supported agricultural scheme, and has its own currency and bank, uses renewable energy systems (solar, wind and biomass), recycles waste, including sewage treated in a reed-bed living machine system. It has many community-based enterprises and is creating a village of eco-sensitive houses. Findhorn is home to an award-winning reafforestation project, Trees for Life, and promotes an ethic of voluntary simplicity.

Zegg

Visit Zegg.de

Zegg in Germany stands for Centre for Experimental Society Design and is a community sharing a common idea of peace and sustainable living. Zegg offers courses in ecological building and renovation, mud-construction, organic gardening, permaculture design, spiritual ecology, the arts, social communication, conflict resolution, social networking, strategies for peace, and environmentally sustainable enterprises. The Zegg annual summer camps offer courses on everything from child rearing to countering global consumerism and resolving planetary crises.

Damanhur

Visit Damanhur.org

Damanhur in Italy is a community with its own currency, a diverse social structure, many successful businesses, organic farms, solar installations, and an experiential school for children. Damanhur offers courses in the healing arts, communication, personal and spiritual transformation, community building, and the arts, especially in mosaics, ceramics, painting, tiffany glass work, and weaving. There is research in fields such as color therapy, plant response to music, and subtle body acupuncture. Work exchange programs exist, especially on Damanhur’s farms.

The Centre for Alternative Technology

Visit CAT.org.uk

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales is run by a small community of dedicated tech environmentalists with hands-on holistic experience and academic expertise. A wide range of courses that cover green oak building, solar water heating and installations, timber frame self-build dwellings, wind turbine construction, alternative building methods, eco-design and eco-construction suitable for practicing architects and professional builders who want to learn how to be more environmentally-friendly. Courses also include green woodworking, blacksmithing, working with living willow, and providing participants with traditional local knowledge.

Tamera

Visit Tamera.org

If we want peace on earth, we need to get an idea of what peace is. So, more than 30 years ago a team of pioneers came together to create a model for a future world society in which peace is manifested and can be experienced as convincing and as possible. This led to the foundation of the Peace Research Tamera in the Alentejo in Portugal in 1995. Tamera is a deep ecology and spiritually oriented community, now reviving a desert area of Portugal through permaculture design. It is a place with the goal of becoming “a self-sufficient, sustainable and duplicable communitarian model for nonviolent cooperation and cohabitation between humans, animals, nature, and Creation for a future of peace for all.”

The Farm

Visit TheFarm.org

The Farm in Tennessee is oriented towards low-cost high satisfaction community living and self-reliance. It offers excellent examples of solar building design, micro-enterprise, large scale composting, food production, and regenerative hardwood forest management. The Ecovillage Training Centre at the Farm offers total immersion courses ranging from basic and advanced permaculture and village design to solar electricity, water treatment, natural building techniques. It provides a walk-thru visit to a straw bale dwelling, a dome, organic gardens, rainwater harvesting facilities, greenhouses, root cellars, a wetlands filtration system, and a solar car prototype. The Farm manages 400 acres of designated wilderness preserve, has a nursery for indigenous tree species, a forest mushroom laying yard, and many species of temperate bamboo. The community has outreach programs in Central and South America.

The Manitou Foundation

Visit The Manitou Foundation

The Manitou Foundation in Colorado fosters a network for different cultural and spiritual traditions and runs the Earth Restoration Corps (ERC), a training of trainers program in earth restoration, environmental technologies, micro credits, environmental businesses, and meaningful livelihood for youth.

The ERC is dedicated to helping establish and maintain training programs in ecovillages throughout the world and the protection of indigenous peoples and traditional wisdoms. ERC teams have partnership programs with communities in India, Brazil, and the Philippines.

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Barus

Barus in Brazil is a network of viable appropriate technology models in applied permaculture and village development, food production, natural architecture, nature conservation, reforestation, urban kitchen gardens, organic produce certification, permaculture design certificate courses. There are village women´s co-operatives, eco-tourism, aquaculture, organic agriculture, appropriate housing design, environmental education textbooks for schools, and appropriate village building technologies. Barus has strong links to the landless movement, as well as the indigenous communities.