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 See also: Network, Magazine, MotherCities, NewWorkCenters, Regions, Organisations, Networks, Themes, Patterns, Proposals

The purpose of GlobalVillages wiki is to collect and distribute information about human settlements (mostly, but not limited to rural settlements) which are substantially influenced and augmented by information technology - in a positive way, which adds to their liveability. But it might also be villages which perform exceptionally in managing their local environment or their inner social and spiritual patterns - villages that the world can learn from and that want to learn with the world. See also GlobalVillageDefinition and GlobalVillages/Definition.

The purpose of the directory - which is still not very much more than an ecclectic notebook - in particular is to locate such places geographically. We are aware that the current state of the directory is very provisional, but this will be a future main area of work and we hope to combine the work with Global Villagers meetups.

Africa

Kenya

Ethiopia

Lesotho

SouthAfrica

Asia

India

  • Auroville is a project that is considered one of the flagship communities of the ecovillage movement. Started in 1970, it was initiated by the "Mother" a devotee of Sri Aribundo whose Asham was located in nearby former colonial outpost of Pon de Cherry. In the beginning it was started as a global UN sanctioned effort involving many nations and based on the vision of the Mother and Sri Aribundo. Started on a piece of denuded land, the poineering villagers or Auroville have been able to totally transform it creating a lush oasis that is now home to nearly 3000 people. Auroville is now seen as a center for sustainable practices and renewable energy for not only Asia but the world. They now are working on a massive effort to rapidly expand the population of the village and transform it into a prototype ecociity of 50000 people by 2050.

Siberia

  • Vladimir Megre is the Russian author of a series of books about Anastasia, a seer in Siberia who advocates living in nature. More than ten million books have been sold. The many principles are embraced by communities in many countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, Lithuania and other countries. In Russia, there are ecovillages Grishino, Kovcheg and Rodnoe.
  • Cheremshanka is a village in Krasnoyarski krai, Kuragino region. It is the base for The Last Testament Church (English) lead by Vissarion who claims to be Jesus the Son of God. There is a town Abode of Dawn near Tiberkul lake and about 30 villages in an area of 100 km diameter.

SriLanka

  • Sarvodaya is a not an ecovillage but a remarkable and inspirational collection of local villages that are now considered part of the Sarvadaya movement started by Dr Arirantyi 40 years ago. It is to many a model of sustainable community based development that builds itself not through external aid but effective allocation and investment of internal resources.

Nepal

Japan

Morita Village wants to be a "Global Village"

Laos

The Jhai foundation is working in five villages in Laos to provide them with email and VOIP despite lack of electricity.

Australia and the Pacific

  • Crystal Waters Started by eco-visionary Max Lindegger, it now has a population of 200 and is one of the leading ecovillages in Australia. They pride themselves on their cultural diversity and also on the fact that they have dramatically increased agricultural production in a land that was once seriously denuded.

  • People Fastaem maintains several distance learning centers in the Solomon islands. In a discussion in Vienna with Joses Sanga, Member of Parliament for a constituency from Malaita Island and Minister of public services of the Solomon Islands, we discussed addressing them to find out about the possibility for a Global Village experiment on Malaita Island.

  • Sommerville Ecovillage based on Permaculture principles and Pattern Language.

Europe

Austria

Croatia

  • Giovanni Abrami suggested to work on a Global Village Development Project in the place where his family stems from: Abrami

Estonia

  • Keuruu Ecovillage The purpose of this ecovillages is to pursue a sustainable lifestyle. The surrounding woodland is being developed as a holistic ecological forest. Historic buildings are being renovated. Bicycling is encouraged. The small town of Keuruu is located about 60km from Jyv�skyl�.

Finland

http://www.wikia.com/wiki/User:Digitalvillages Wirby the global village

Germany

  • Friedensstadt is a small settlement south of Berlin with deep roots in a Christian community that might want to become a Global Village.

  • the village of Jühnde in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxonia?) is doing tremendous efforts to be energy self-sufficient.

  • The Unperfect House is an urban center like Arena which has characteristics of a Global Village Center. They call themselves part of the borough of "Essen-Unperfekt".

  • Nordwolle-Delmenhorst a very interesting remodelled factory complex "to live and work on the information highway"

  • ZEGG Ecovillage is an intentional community of 80 people located near Berlin. "ZEGG's goal is to integrate personal development, new social structures, political commitment and action so that a vision for a more humane world can grow." ZEGG does not mince words, they not only have take pride in "letting love and sexuality play an important role in our community-building" but also make no bones about their resistence to capitalist globalization and see their community as one alternative vision of a sustainable future "rooted in our hearts and longings, as well as in our practical experience."

  • Retzstadt

Media Villages in Baden Würtemberg:
Italy

  • Colletta di Castelbianco an ancient medieval village in the Ligurian Mountains near Genova, remodelled as a "lone eagle" domicile. Is it a condo or a village?

  • Damanhur is a spiritually oriented ecovillage with a population of over 1000 people that was established in the mid 70s. It now has its own currency and is considered a semi-autonomous region in Italy. Included in this confederation are several officially functioning villages with mayors and councils, etc. Damanhur is very outreaching and supporting ecovillages in Europe and elsewhere.

  • Bagni Di Lucca presents itself explicitely as a Global Village.

  • Ai Calmi in the Brenta valley is a house for Globalvillagers. Abrami

  • Albaredo and Budoia want to take part in the AlpIVille project of Adolf Jaendl.

Lithuania

see also extra page

Two approaches to Global Village building in Marcinkonys

Portugal

  • Tamera is a spiritually oriented community that is focused on the overcoming of nuclear family structures and the healing of fear, jealousy and disruptive gender relations. Now Tamera is going also GlobalVillages explicitly by starting a three year buildup called "Monte Cerro"

  • Artlantica is an exciting plan for an Ecovillage based on Ayurvedic Health and Design Principles.

Russia (see also Siberia)

Serbia

  • Küstendorf bei Emir Kustorica has many featues of a Global Village; it brings together people looking for a refuge from our market-dominated culture.

Slovenia

  • Harmony Village is a proposal by Iztok Smajs Muni, an artist in Velenje who has created a variety of multipurpose visual patterns that foster inspiration, meditation, contemplation in a village. Look through the pages to see the patterns and interior site specific installations.

        • There seems to be just artworks....Franz
Switzerland

UnitedKingdom

  • Findhorn (Scotland) is a spiritually oriented ecovillage that offers cources through its educational program that include personal development as well as practical information on sustainable development. Findhorn is considered to be one of the flagship communities of the ecovillage movement.
  • TheHoneyCafe (Wales) is a cluster of homes in the Welsh countryside where Eluned Hurn and John Rogers live. Eluned is a pioneer of Internet BBS systems.
  • Poundbury is a housing development owned by PrinceCharles which has some characteristics of ecovillages and pattern languages.
  • Dorset County - RuralRenewalCompany, founded by AlanHeeks, is creating a substantial ecovillage.
  • The Earthwise Sustainable Living Centre at The Farm, Anderby Road, Chapel St.Leonards, Skegness. See also The Gaia Trust.

SouthAmerica

Columbia

  • Gaviotas is remarkable story of hope begun in a place where civil war has been become a permanent fixture in national life. However the success of Paolo Lugari's founding of Gavoitas has been so successful that it has attracted worldwide attention including former US National Public Radio reporter Alan Waisman who wrote the bestseller Gavoitas: a Village to Reinvent the World. Gavoitas through its founders ingenuity have invented many low-cost appropriate technologies that make sustainable development a practical reality for people in developing countries. With a population of 300, this community has affected several times that number of the indigenous people in the region by providing relatively high paying jobs for the local economy which is in a very isolated part of Columbia. In addition, Paolo Lugari working with Gunter Pauli and the Zero Emissions Research Initiative (ZERI) are now planning to expand the project in an effort to develop the entire region based on the model used successfully at Gavoitas focusing on a forestation program for the region.

see also: http://www.worldandi.net/winter06/human.html

Ecuador

NorthAmerica

Mexico

Ecoaldea Huehuecoyotl. See also the peace caravan http://www.lacaravana.org

USA

  • The Farm (Tennessee) has a rich history. Founded in the late 60s, by countercultural hippies seeking refuge from the man, they eventually settled in TN, but not before being travelling to several locations via a peace-n-love convoy of VWs and buses and being turned away by locals. The Farm is considered to be one of the primary ecovillages in the US and is also HQ for GEN/North America/Central Division. They offer courses and training on ecovillage development. It has a population of about 200 people. See Communal Living by Rachel Meunier, letter from Roan Carratu, J.Edgar Hoover and The Farm, America's Communal Religions.

  • LA Ecovillage Los Angeles is one of the first urban ecovillages to be established in the US. The founder Lois Arkin raised one millions dollars through the offering of notes and then purchased several apartments buildings in central LA. 50 people now live in these units and they are incrementally being rehabbed.

  • Arcosanti Arizona is a experimental project designed to promote the architectural designs and theories of Paolo Soleri. This project has a population of about 50 people but is shooting towards a population when completed of 5000 people. While the total property size is 800 acres, this relatively high density project has a compact footprint. The compact complex of buildings includes several multistory buildings that house the majority of the services and residents. The visitor entrance building is five stories high and built along side the mesa, while the East Crescent complex is a semi circular three story building built around the performance arena and is designed to faciliate commercial/service facilities at the lower level.

  • Earthhaven North Carolina

  • SourceOpen Madison, Wisconsin

Canada

  • Pigeon Creek Ecofarm Central Alberta Organic Cafe and Ecofarm starting up on 60 Acres near Pigeon Lake, Alberta

  • Aura Borealis We are dedicated to finding solutions to sustainable living in the North. We host both The Green Foundation, a non-profit environmental educational organization which promotes ways of living that are re-integrated with nature, and Boreal Ecoliving, which demonstrates ecological living at a wilderness centre on a piece of land near Edson, Alberta.

Directories

Communities Directory of the Fellowship for Intentional Community

Networks that build and support Villages with Global Village potential

Ecovillage Related Sites, References and Resources:

more links

http://www.dismantle.org/televill.htm more directed towards theory

http://www.futurekansas.com/rural/doc21.htm website from Kansas with good thoughts

http://www.rainforestcoffee.com/solar_coffee.html have they ever succeeded?

Discuss

JeffBuderer: Hello all,

Janet, thanks for providing that info about ecovillages. I have gone through your email and added much of the content to this Global Villages Ecovillage Directory. If anyone else has any useful links in relation to Ecovillages they might consider adding something there as a way to improve the flow of information within our network.

Franz, I noticed there was inconsistencies in the formatting obviously because different people had posted. I was wondering how you wanted to approach this. Have you considered seeking out volunteers to manage a section of the wiki to keep it growing but still well managed and "trimmed"? It is my understanding that wikipedia works this way.

Jeff

JanetFeldman: Dear Jeff, Peter, and All,

Hello and thanks to you too, not only for a fantastic start at the entries (you have covered a lot of ground already...sorry to be bringing up the rear, so will try to get my rear in gear for a few of them, esp. in Kenya), but also for some of the resources in the first place, as you originally came up with some of them yourself!

Hopefully others will add to this great database, and Peter, does this meet at least some of your own needs (you had mentioned something which sounds more expansive/extensive, at least from my initial reading)?

I notice that you wrote to Sam Kongere, Peter, and will mention something to you which you/we might want to consider: I think your accountability/transparency ideas would be well-placed and perhaps better understood at the grassroots if they could be grounded (and worked out) within the context of projects which are helping in some more immediate way to address the stated needs of the nonprofits or groups posting.

The ideas about which you, Ed Magiste, myself, and others spoke during the past couple years--of national workshops/meetings in which groups could get help with things like grantwriting and knowing how to find resources--would, in my view, be a great setting for a discussion of accountability and transparency, which could be built into a "toolbox" of "how-to's" and also into whatever joint or solo projects do emerge from those meetings.

What you propose to people (like you did in your response to Sam) is certainly "helpful", though in a way which is of a different order and type than they are looking for, and may cause some misunderstanding, or at least a lack of clarity about what it is you are seeking or are prepared to do to help them address the subject matter of their immediate requests.

It might be worth considering an approach which both gets them to answer your questions (as well as think about or understand the importance of what you are asking for their own lives), and also gets them to design their projects to meet certain Accountability and Transparency standards. This would involve, in my view, indicating to them why your questions matter, why this is helpful for them to do, and also telling them some concrete ways in which you are prepared to respond to their answers (as well as their needs). Through donations or equipment, for instance, or in terms of workshops, finding online resources they can use, or in-country contacts they can work with who might advise and/or partner with them. The development of a business plan. Perhaps you do have that in mind...and can you tell us more about that if so?

This gets into the other posts by Ed and Andrius (perhaps Chris and Lucas too, as I think they posted helpful materials and thoughts on these subjects)--on "trading/broking", BusinessModels, et al--so will segue into those today or tomorrow as a follow-up to this train of thought. With all best wishes and greatest thanks for your caring and concern, which is surely a bedrock principle of eco-health for the whole global village! Janet

Jeff Buderer:

Franz, I noticed there was inconsistencies in the formatting obviously because different people had posted. I was wondering how you wanted to approach this. Have you considered seeking out volunteers to manage a section of the wiki to keep it growing but still well managed and "trimmed"? It is my understanding that wikipedia works this way.

Thank you Jeff! I think we need to sort out social structures and agreements in a wiki. Technology does not "sort out" things that it enables.Currently my presence as a "maintainer" of the whole process is very low, but I see that things are going the right way. It would be valuable if you bring the formatting flaws to our attention so we can work on it better.

Andrius: Franz, the regions were in capitals - I changed them to lower case because wiki page titles are case sensitive. I didn't do them all at once, though. I think that is what Jeff was referring to.

EdJonas: Hello, I am Ed jonas from Alberta Canada. Left some info for you from up north. Keep up the good work. Thanks

AndriusKulikauskas September 2, 2009 6:55 CET Franz, I would start to make a wiki report, with a page for each village, and we could also display that in other ways, for example, with maps. But what fields do you want for each village? For example, URL, Longitude, Latitude, MapScale (especially if we can't pinpoint the location), Population, Leaders or Contacts, etc.

All content in this wiki is PublicDomain except as noted otherwise. Please be kind to our authors! changed: September 2, 2009