Web Features
The residents of an eco-oriented, education-focused intentional community and demonstration site wear many hats, both public and private.
After several years teaching about community in the abstract, an anthropologist and environmental studies teacher finds that direct student engagement with intentional communities provides the spark needed for personal inspiration, connection, and the potential for social transformation.
A permaculture teachers hits upon a gold mine of effective methods for enlivening her teaching—by drawing from the principles of permaculture itself.
Also in This Issue (Print Version Only)
· NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABILITY
· TEACHING HANDS-ON WORKSHOPS IN COMMUNITY
One-day workshops, two-week intensives, two-month apprenticeships, season-long internships, work parties, work exchanges, and other hands-on learning programs all offer unique benefits and challenges for both participants and intentional community members. A veteran teacher and natural builder shares his experiences from Emerald Earth Sanctuary.
· TO LEARN SUSTAINABILITY IS TO LEARN COMMUNITY: An Example from South Portugal
Strained by difficult economic and ecological conditions, farmers Claudio and Fernando discover new avenues toward prosperity and land restoration through alliances with a peace community dedicated to regional renewal.
· SUSTAINABILITY: REFLECTIONS FROM AN ECO-WARRIOR
Bruce Davidson
A cofounder of Sirius Community traces his path to a broadened understanding of sustainability—one which depends, more than anything else, on a change of consciousness.
· ECOVILLAGES AND ACADEMIA
Daniel Greenberg
Ecovillages offer ideal campuses for sustainability education, but cannot fulfill their potential if cloistered from academia. Building bridges between the two is essential for the survival and relevance of both.
· LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL CHANGE: Living Routes in Action at Huehuecoyotl
Giovanni Ciarlo
An action learning program at a Mexican ecovillage offers students real-world lessons in project implementation and community service, while also benefiting residents and neighbors.
· OLYMPIC-SIZED COMMUNITY
Satyama Dawn Lasby
The sustainability coordinator for the biggest event in the world realizes that catering with washable dishware and eliminating bottled water from the green rooms, while laudable, are ultimately just drops in the bucket.
· INTENTIONAL "COLONIES" AND TROPICAL SUSTAINABILITY
Jon Kohl
Intentional communities in developing countries often seem like intentional colonies instead, appealing to the rich and the mobile but inaccessible to local people. Effective sustainability education requires an alternative model.
· TOWARDS A SEVENTH GENERATION
Understanding Israel
Tracing results within her own community, a lifelong educator suggests that time spent teaching children now to love and respect the earth will help us all move towards a sustainable future.
· PERMACULTURE AND HOLISTIC EDUCATION: A Match Made in Heaven...and Earth
Paul Freedman
The founder of Salmonberry School finds that permaculture and holistic education share many common principles, values, and analogous practices, with great potential for integration.
· BUSTED, ALMOST BLUDGEONED, POSSIBLY BROKE: Hard Lessons from the Trenches of Sustainability Education
Making your community a home base for sustainability education programs can bring unanticipated challenges, potential pitfalls, and learning experiences no one thought they had signed up for. A survivor shares cautionary tales and tips.
· CAR-REDUCED AND CAR-FREE RURAL COMMUNITIES
Greg Ramsey
In the quest to create eco-communities that can lead us toward a sustainable future, nothing is more important than reducing car dependence—and fortunately, we already know how.
· BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY: BUILDING FOR HEALTH: accommodating people with environmental intolerances in intentional community living
Julie Genser
People with environmental intolerances could be a perfect match for intentional community living if their needs were better understood and met there. Are communities willing to educate themselves and perhaps stretch their definitions of “sustainability” in order to accommodate the environmentally ill?
Voices
· LETTERS: No Avatars Desired, 2010 Cohousing Conference, The Sustainable Human
· PUBLISHER'S NOTE: AFLOAT IN CHOPPY SEAS: Though Our Support is Hot, Our Profits are Not
· COOPERATIVE GROUP SOLUTIONS: OPEN MEETINGS: WORTH THE RISK?
· CREATING COOPERATIVE CULTURE: AN INVITATION, AND A MUSTACHE ESCAPADE
Twelve-year-old Jibran has always lived with fuzzy boundaries between “family” and “community.” They became even fuzzier when he came home to discover his mom’s positive pee test. (From Issue # 146 - Family)
Though “baby having” had not been a consensus decision, a small community embraces a newborn, survives his infancy, and bonds like any other family: doing each other’s dishes, snuggling on the couch, and fighting over who gets a shower before the hot water runs out. (From Issue # 146 - Family)
HOUSEHOLDING: COMMUNAL LIVING ON A SMALL SCALE
Especially in financially uncertain times, those seeking the advantages of intentional community living can often find them within a single shared house. (From Issue # 144 - Community in Hard Times)
Easing themselves in and out of each other’s houses, yards, and chicken coops, members of White Hawk Ecovillage find traditional borders becoming more porous. (From Issue # 146 - Family)
Reviews of two great books on community living, one on life in a convent with surprising insights even for the most secular, and one on the history of utopian experiments in Oregon. (From Issue # 146 - Family)
