Selected projects 2011
Development of GEN-Africa
Congo Conference
How to develop a sustainable society in the Democratic Republic of Congo? The conference was held from the 11th until the 13th of May 2011, in Kinshasa, addressing issues of sustainable development and permaculture in the DR Congo. more
North Africa Project
This is a project financed by the German foreign Ministry under the title ‘Supporting the emergence of ecovillage strategies for climate change adaptation and stability in the region’. This comes as an important recognition of the work of GEN. more
New Website Launched
A new website has been launched and is available at http://gen-africa.org/.
This is another step in the process of the emergence of GEN-Africa as an independent national network, supported by GEN-Europe. more
EDE Sieben Linden
The EDE in Sieben Linden has always served as an event for international networking and exchange, with a special focus on inviting experienced grassroots activists from Africa. more
Egypt Conference at Sekem
On the weekend of 18-22 November, 2011 over sixty Africans from many different countries and backgrounds, gathered at the farm site of SEKEM, a model for sustainable business development located about sixty kilometers from Cairo, Egypt. more
EDE Senegal
The EDE in Senegal finally took place from November 23 to December 22, 2011. Congratulations to the Senegalese team for setting up the first EDE in Africa!! 25 participants came from Senegal, the neighbouring countries (Burkina Faso and Gambia), but also from Ghana, Congo, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. more
Grundtvig Workshops
These workshops are fully funded by the EU, including participants travel and subsistence costs as well as organization and facilitation. GEN Europe has been running two of these during the course of the year, and two more to come:
- Permaculture Design Course, May 2011
- Cooperative Games and Circle Dances, July 2011
- Communicate Yourself!, November 2011
- Ways to sustainable Living, May 2012
Communicate Yourself! Workshop, November 2011
This intensive workshop was held from the 27th of November until the 4th of December in Sieben Linden. Participants from 18 countries were perfecting their communication skills, shared their ideas and practiced to facilitate and harvest group conversations. The program contained a lot of exercises and gave useful tools to help community building in the future. The participants stayed in contact after the course to help each other's project the best they can.
EDE Orissa
Back in 2007 John George from THREAD, Orissa, India took part in the first EDE in Sieben Linden, Germany. He brought with him news and inspiring images of a women’s movement: women taking an oath over fire as they step into leadership – pledging to safeguard their communities, their forests, their children; climbing on tables and pitching speeches to each other; in political protest to counter the potential of Monsanto to destroy seed heritage. Back then, John and I hatched a dream to bring the EDE to Orissa in order to further empower the Orissa Nari Samaj women’s movement and explore the possibility of recognizing their villages as ecovillages. Four years passed before this dream came true. more
GEN at UN DPI Conference
Macaco Tamerice (GEN), Ana Rhodes (Findhorn), Gerd (Transition Training) and May East (Gaia Education) joined as a team the UN DPI Conference in Bonn which is the prime annual event of NGOs in association with the United Nations.
The conference's theme in preparation for Rio+20 was Sustainable Societies Responsive Citizens. Their workshop “Designing the Transition to Sustainable Societies: the Role of Education in Engaging Citizens” received a lot of attention and many visitors.
GEN used the opportunity to make the organisation visible, contribute to the final manifesto and co-created a joint strategy to Rio+20.
EU Ecovillages Project
An extensive EU-funded collaboration project with the name ECOVILLAGES, recently started operations and will run for a three-year period 2011-2013. It focuses on a survey of eco-villages around the Baltic Sea with a view to promoting ecovillages as innovative sustainable rural development. During the project, various approaches, problems and methods of starting and developing ecovillages such as in areas like eco-technologies, eco-practices like agriculture/garden and social community building will be documented and toolkits for ecovillage initiators developed. The project is funded by the EU Baltic Sea Region Programme (Interreg) with 1. 46 M EUR, dubbed a flagship of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region and awarded the status of Baltic 21 Lighthouse project by the Council of Baltic Sea States. GEN Europe has become an Associate Partner of the project and will benefit directly by strengthening its presence in Northern Europe. more
Transition to Resilience Training
We are creating a European Learning Partnership that brings together the expertise of different European organisations for lifelong adult education in the field of social, economical and ecological sustainability, funded by the EU Lifelong Learning Program.
The goal is to develop a 2-year learning journey (the Transition to Resilience Training) to support those who work in... more
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News
26.01.2012 Swedish Ecovillagers come together
During three days in November, the recently restarted Swedish ecovillage association, Njord, hosted a big ecovillage gathering – the first one in...
24.01.2012 Outcome of the 'Communicate Yourself!' Workshop
This intensive and enriching workshop was facilitated by Kosha Anja Joubert and Martin Stengel in the ecovillage of Sieben Linden. 26 Participants...
