GEN-Europe, Italian office in Torri Superiore secretariat report to members

General Assembly in Lakabe, Spain, August 2 to 7, 2000.


A) INTRODUCTION

B) RECENT ACTIVITIES:
Office / Travel / Staff / Internet report / Newsletter / Advertising / Promotion / publicity / Conferences / Video / Visitors, interns / Ecovillage Directory / Education / Legal status and fund-raising / GEN´s influence on Torri life


C) FUTURE ACTIVITIES:
Network Meetings / Council meetings / Board Meeting / Conferences


D) FINANCES


A) INTRODUCTION

This report is a short summary of our activity from May 1999 to June 2000. The information you can find here is an outline of the main tasks and goals achieved in this very intense period; for further reference and more details you can refer to the "GEN-Europe quarterly reports" available at the secretariat.


B) RECENT ACTIVITIES

- Office
Premises: The new GEN-Europe office is situated on the third floor of the front building in the medieval village of Torri Superiore, Ventimiglia, Italy. Composed of two rooms and a bathroom, it has a meeting room with TV and video that we share with the owner of the next door house (Marco Basteris). Its not a very large office, but quite comfortable and cozy.

Equipment: All the office equipment comes from the German office. Both our Macintosh computers are connected to the Internet. We have installed fully licensed programs: an Operative system in Italian in January and the Office 98 version of Word, Excel and Power Point in July.
Technical assistance for our Apple computers is difficult to find in the area, but we still like working on our old, resilient and user-friendly machines, and we are not considering changing them for the moment.

- Travel
Since February 99 I have been travelling all over the world.
Here is a list of the most significant events I attended out of Italy on behalf of GEN-Europe:

- February 99: to Lebensgarten, Germany for the Council meeting
- March 99: GEN Board meeting in Huehuecoytl, Mexico (with Agnieszka Komoch)
- May 99: to Lebensgarten, Germany, for the office transition
- August 99: to Romania and Hungary for the Eyfa meeting and visit to Gyürüfü
- October 99: to Florence for the IFOAM conference
- November 99: to Hasandede, Turkey, for the Council meeting
- December 99: to Sri Lanka for the GEN Board meeting with Sarvodaya, and to India for the visit to Auroville (with Agnieszka Komoch)
- February 00: to Saint Marcellin, France, for the French network meeting
- March 00: to Guinea and Senegal for site assessment
- June 00: to Sieben Linden, Germany, for Council meeting
- July 00: to Hannover, Germany, for Expo 2000 (with GEN Board).
- Staff
I have been working with Hugo Arellano, from Mexico, from June 15 99 to May 15 00, and with Cristina Evangelisti, Italian, from May 15 up to now. Community members Massimo Candela (my husband), Dominik von Duffel, Nina Freund, and others including a few volunteers have given support to the office management.
Our auditor Antonello Marasco stood by our side for all matters concerning taxes, legal status, registration, accounts and budgets, with a very professional and friendly attitude.

- Internet report
Since May 10, 1999, our "gen-europe" account registered the following traffic:
Lucilla (lucilla@gen-europe.org): 2103 in, plus about 500 on Council list and 800 on Elders list; 2432 out.
Gen (info@gen-europe.org): 3207 in, 2489 out
Active mailing lists:
rive@lists.gaia.org, ekilat@lists.gaia.org, cometogether@lists.gaia.org.
The French network mailing list is not on the gaia server (reseau.ecovillage@egroups.fr) and receives heaps of emails every day.
Agnieszka Komoch is our much appreciated free-lance webmaster and is paid by the hour.

- Newsletter
We tried different approaches to this important service to our members. We issue two editions (Summer and Autumn 99) of "Ecovillage news" as a supplement of the English newspaper "Positive news", then decided to go for a multi-lingual approach and published an autonomous newsletter in April 00 (400 copies), with national editions in a variety of languages.
National editions already printed:
- AAm Terra Nuova in April
- LØSnet in May
-Bugday in June
Gea (Spain), Forum Ambiente (Portugal) and Pozytiwnie Wyadomosci (Poland) are a bit late and should publish in the summer. The next edition is planned for the autumn.

- Advertising
A few national magazines, TV and radio troops came to visit Torri Superiore to describe our ecovillage activity and the GEN-Europe office. We accepted the publicity, which was offered freely, and tried to circulate as many useful information as possible.

- Promotion/publicity
We produced the new version of the GEN-International slideshow at the end of July, with a considerable amount of new slides from our office. We have also a really nice set of slides from Africa, and quite a few new images from European ecovillages.

- Conferences and debates
Main conferences attended:
Green party convention in Menton, France
IFOAM in Florence
Iglesias, Sardinia (training course for teachers)
UIA in Montecatini terme

-Video
We sold all the "Habitat Revolution" videos we had (15 copies) and about 10 copies of the Crystal waters video over the year. No plans have been made tp produce new videos, but a CD-rom version of the slide show might be produced by the GEN-Americas secretariat.

- Visitors/interns
An endless stream of guests came to our office, my guess would be in total about 80/100 GEN visitors were welcomed and taken care of in Torri Superiore in the last 12 months. Most of them were students and eco-tourists, interested in visiting other eco-villages as well.

- Ecovillage Directory
We sold about 250 copies of the Directory of Ecovillages in Europe since May 99.
The second edition of the Ecotopia directory in German which features 333 communities in Europe has been published in May. The English version will be published hopefully at the end of the year, giving larger space to GEN-Europe members.

- Education
Financial support to Hakan Barcin (Ecovillage Ecofoca, Turkey) for the Findhorn Ecovillage Training Seminar, February 2000
Permaculture conferences by Morag Gamble and Evan Raymont of Crystal Waters (May 28 to June 3), in Damanhur, Genova, Torri;
Straw Bale House Design Course & Workshop on June 24/July 7 in Hasandede, Turkey, conducted by Harald Wedig of the "Builders Without Borders" team.
Youth exchange between Damanhur, Lebensgarten, Tamera organised by Damanhur
Support to the TPN(Tinerri Prieteni ai naturii) youth group from Romania to study the European Evs and start a new initiative in their country.


- Legal status and fund-raising
A) The current Administration Council is composed by the following members, elected at the General Assembly in Torri Superiore in June 1998 and at the Council meeting in Hasandede, Turkey:
Agnieszka Komoch, President, from Ecovillage Lebensgarten, Germany.
Lucilla Borio, Secretary, from Ecovillage Torri Superiore, Italy
Thomas Seiersen, Treasurer, from Ecovillage Munach and LØSnet, Denmark
Silke Hagmaier, Member, from Ecovillage Sieben Linden and the Come together network, Germany
Demet Irkli, Member, Ekilat network, Turkey

After a long and tiring "legal battle" with the Belgian Ministry of Justice and the FAIB (Federation of Associations Registered in Belgium), the secretariat and the Council had to accept need of a new registration in Italy. A new version of the Articles has been completed and translated in the last days, according to the Italian laws, and will be discussed at the assembly.

B) Our President Agnieszka Komoch co-ordinates the fundraising activity for GEN-Europe, and has completed a thorough research on EU funding.
On the GEN-International level, a lot of attention is focused on this sector, since the Gaia Trust funds will be progressively reduced to nil in the next few years and the organization is facing the immediate challenge of becoming self-supporting. A "collaborative" method will start operating among the five secretariats and the special programs (Living Routes in the USA, Living and Learning Centres in diffent countries) in order to share the knowledge and avoid "collision" between funding proposals to major funders.

- GEN´s influence on Torri life
The physical presence of the Board in Torri Superiore is a very intense experience for me, as I felt totally involved in both dimensions. We are a fairly small group of committed people with high ambitions and a precious, magical village to revive. Since the very beginning GEN has been a propellent for us and has helped us in our networking efforts, beforehand from the Associazione office and now from GEN-Europe. The reduced costs of the GEN-Europe office have a lot to do with the Torri community, which is always ready to give support and voluntary help whenever needed.

B) FUTURE ACTIVITIES
1) Network Meetings:
National summer meetings
Come Together Network-Germany: July 16-23 in Sieben Linden;
Portugal: Tamera Summer camp August 7 - 18;
Dla Ziemi -Polish Network: August 25 - 28 in Wolimierz;
RFEV-French Network: from August 26 to August 29 in Arques, near Carcassonne.

Other meetings still to be defined:
EVNUK-Ecovillage Network of the UK: Yurt making course at the end of August;
LØS-Danish Network: late summer, dates to be planned at the board meeting on May 4;
Eco-communities network - Finland: late summer, dates to be announced after the Circeling School meeting May 5-7.
Ekilat-Turkish network: October 2000

2) Travelling
To Russia in late fall or early spring, in the hope to set up the Russian network;
to Africa in December/January, with some Torri members, to help the Colufifa villages in some rural projects;
to the USA in March for the next GEN Board Meeting.

3) Special projects
Computers for Colufifa (Senegal and Guinea) and possible network meeting in West Africa;
Eco-Tourism venture in Torri Superiore (see detailed project)
Networking tour in Great Britain in Autumn (Silke Hagmaier)
Network meetings to be arranged: Russia, Poland, Romania.
General Assembly 2001 in central Europe, possibly in Poland.