This was held at Khula Dhamma in September last year. It felt like a pioneering event to us and we were very excited to host the lovely people from other ecovillages in South Africa. They came from Xhabbo Ecovillage (near Swellendam), Zuvuyo Ecovillage (in the KZN midlands) and Berg en Dal (near Ladismith in the Cape).
The original intention was to focus on building a network among actual ecovillages so we can set up a network-cum-resource / support group forum (possibly through an existing ecovillage awareness website).
We also saw it as simply a time of a “gathering of the tribes” – people from ecovillages or intentional communities in South Africa. And it was certainly that. We so enjoyed sharing our newly built hall for the event – lots of space to work and play!
We shared our histories and how and why our individual communities started; we drummed around the fire; we watched “Visions of Utopia” … there was also meditation and yoga.
On the Sunday we had some very helpful sharing around many aspects of community life; from the “energetic” psychological/spiritual aspects of living together, to bringing up children in a community, to building our homes and workspace, as well as ideas around developing livelihoods within an ecovillage. Very stimulating stuff.
Why don’t we do this more often?!!!