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 Last updated: 03-10-2022 -

 Promote the concept of eco-village in Africa - Ecovillage Movement in Africa

Supporting the movement of ecovillages is ultimately

curbing rural exodus and immigration to Europ

Eco-Villages for Africa

Resources and

Best Practices

for the emergence

of ecovillages in Africa

How to develop the movement,  how to start an ecovillage,

 how to manage it,  where to find financing

Strategies
and Issues

Why should we support

the eco-village movement

in Africa?

 

Original French Version - Version française here

  • Give the urge to undertake, bring hope to young people by goodpractices - Curbing the rural exodus, creating jobs, improving the quality of life.

  • Emphasize an approach that allows for greater food self-sufficiency, for energy and financial independence, while opening up more to the world - Proposal for a holistic approach

  • Welcome to those who wish to support this site and in particular the folder on ecovillages in Africa. Notably to make it multilingual (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Swahili) and more interactive (forum, facebook etc)

  • Search for a volunteer Webmaster and translators

  • Correspondents for each country are warmly awaited

 ECOVILLAGES  - GOOD PRACTICES
  -
Movement of
Eco-villages

  - Ecodistricts - transition Villages

  - Models and good practices in the world

  - Urban Ecovillage

  - The ecovillage spirit in Europe

PROCESS - MANAGEMENT

   -   Strategy and Issues

   -   Process - Convince

   -   Management - Good Governance

   -   Safety - people

   -   Social Business

   -   Self-financing and development -Diaspora

   -   Fundraising
     Resources -Experts-Volonteers

   -   Essays-Courses-Training-MOOC

   -   Poverty - Development - Demography

INFORM - SHARING KNOWLEDGE

   -   ICT-WiFi-Telecentre-Radio Community

   -   Sharing Knowledge

   -   ITC and rural world

EDUCATION

  -   School - Eduquer - eLearning

  -   Reversed or flipped School - MOOC

  -   Model School - Green Schools

  -   Children's information-entertainment

CHILDREN - YOUTH - WOMEN

  -   Gender issues

  -   Youth and Child labor

  -   Street Children

HEALTH

  -   Health - Hygiene - eHealth

TRANSPORT

  -   Transport

  -   Travelling by bicycle - Workshop

MICRO ENTREPRISES-FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE

  -   Workshops - Income activities

  -   Recycling

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

  -  Renewable Energies 

  -  Solar Electricity

  -  Biogas

  -  Ovens - Refrigeration

DRINKING WATER - GREY WATER

  -  Drinking water - Irrigation

  -  Toilets - Sanitation

FOOD SELF

  -    Vegetable - Nurseries

  -    Agroforestry - Agroecology - Incredible

  -    Free Seeds - Guards

  -    Livestock - Poultry Fish

  -    Educational Documents Agrodok

  -    The Great Green Wall -The Desert

BUILDING IN ANOTHER WAY

  -    Low cost constructions

  -    nnovative and economic Habitats

VILLAGE CENTRE

  -    Hall sport - Market

  -    The bakery - modular school

 

... visit also

  -   Eco-villages in the world

  -   North - South  Innovations

  -   Energies

  -   Gardens

  -   Urban Agriculture

 next

 

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2016-11  Conference Ghana: GEN Africa in partnership with GEN international will hold the upcoming Conference at Ghana Permaculture Institute (GPI) in Techiman from December 1 - 6, 2016.  - 35 active leaders and advisors of the network will meet in order to consolidate the work we have done so far and plan the way forward. The conference will include the General Assembly. - The conference aims at achieving the following objectives:
Celebrate official registration of GEN Africa - Strengthen GEN Africa, review the strategy and plan next steps - Meet as a General Assembly: reporting on activities and finances for 2014/2015, re-elect new members into the Council etc. - Re-examine how we function as a council and as a GEN Region - Develop functional partnerships - Evaluate targets for 2016, identify targets for 2017 and align with GEN International targets. - Identify more people in the network to support with specific tasks (i.e. fundraising and website management) - Finalizing memberships - Networking and sharing within the Region
http://africa.ecovillage.org/en/event/gen-africa-conference-2016

 

Global Ecovillage Summit Dec. 2014 - Dakar Senegal

Connecting Communities for a Sustainable World
http://gen-africa.org/
Hosted by the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and GEN-Africa (Ngor, Dakar, Senegal)  The Senegalese government launched a program to transition 14,000 traditional villages to Ecovillages. What can we learn from this? The summit will bring together governmental decision makers, social entrepreneurs, NGO representatives and Ecovillage experts from around the world to share solutions and exchange best practice.
https://www.facebook.com/events/260604077428989/

 

GEN Africa is the African ecovillage association, promoting social resilience, environmental pro­tection and restoration of nature through the concept of ecovillages as models for sustainable human settlements. We actively support the de­vel­opment of ecovillages and networks in all parts of Africa.
https://ecovillage.org/region/gen-africa/
Poverty in Africa resides only in the minds of its inhabitants”, and GEN Africa is aware of the richness and resilience of their societies, and thus promotes an ambitious program of transforming its rural communities into eco-communities or ecovillages, a model to combat the effects of climate change, ensure food sovereignty of their populations and the proliferation of social enterprises that promote the creation of local economy to avoid the migration of its inhabitants to the cities or to other continents.
https://ecovillage.org/gen-africa-conference-2016/
Global Ecovillage Network -Africa
https://www.facebook.com/genafricanetwork/


GEN - Global Ecovillage Network Europe

http://www.gen-europe.org/

Urban Ecovillage

http://urban.ecovillage.org/ 

Ecovillage - Projects Map

https://ecovillage.org/projects/

 

What is an ecovillage? Global Ecovillage Network - his way of life is the solution to all our problems: terrorism, isolation, economic crisis, food crisis, disasters of any kind,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_kbThtV7nI

Ecovillage living - a new source of hope - Kosha Joubert - South Africa
TED Geneva 2015 - Kosha Joubert shares how community-led regeneration can become a source of solutions for today’s societal challenges. Kosha takes us on a journey around the globe to discover ecovillages, envisioning a world of empowered citizens and communities, designing and implementing their own pathways to a sustainable future, and building bridges of hope and international solidarity.Kosha Joubert grew up in South Africa. She went on a pilgrimage through her own country in 1991, discovered a community of black and white South Africans living together, and has lived in intentional communities and researched intercultural communication ever since. Currently, she lives with her family in the Ecovillage of Findhorn, Scotland, and serves as President of the Global Ecovillage Network. She is fascinated by the phenomenon of Collective Wisdom: how can we transform our communities, organisations and societies into systems of cooperation, creativity and innovation for a planet at peace with itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmWa3mFKM84

 

 The Sustainable Development Agenda - the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — adopted by world leaders in September 2015 at an historic UN Summit — officially came into force. Over the next fifteen years, with these new Goals that universally apply to all, countries will mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind.
http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/ 

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Eco-Villages

Author: John Raimondo

http://www.enviropaedia.com/topic/default.php?topic_id=288

 

Eco-covillages are urban or rural communities of people who strive to integrate a supportive social environment with a low-impact way of life. To achieve this they integrate various aspects of ecological design, permaculture, ecological building, green production, alternative energy, community building practices, and much more.

Eco-villages typically include the following characteristics:

• Permaculture design

• Buildings constructed from local, natural materials

• Reliance on own (off-grid) power supply

• Utilisation of renewable energy/alternative technology

• Self-sufficiency of food supply using sustainable agriculture and permaculture methods

• Earth-restoration projects

• Being of service to specific populations in need

• Use of local currencies

• On-site cottage industries

• Participatory communal decision-making

• Established processes for conflict resolution

• Established process and communication skills for bonding and connecting the eco-village community.

Whilst the physical aspects are relatively easy to achieve, often the greater challenge for members of eco-villages is to be able to overcome individual prejudices and ‘personal shadows’ in order to achieve a sustainable, social cohesion of the community. According to Robert Gilman the main steps to creating a sustainable community include:

1. Recognize it will be a journey - and enjoy it!

2. Develop a vision - and keep developing it

3. Build relationships and bonding

4. Make the whole-system challenge explicit

5. Get help - to become more self-reliant

6. Develop clear procedures

7. Maintain balance – sustainably A lack of management or process skills is the primary reason why unsuccessful communities have failed in the past!

Douwe van der Zee has described permaculture as a combination of the words ‘permanent’ and ‘agriculture’, and was formulated specifically by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren to emphasise the difference from traditional agriculture. Traditional agriculture has become increasingly impermanent, in the sense that it relies on huge inputs of external energy, capital and labour, and has often been destructive to the soil. Permaculture systems are self-sufficient and ultimately need few or no external inputs. Mollison and Holmgren had more in mind, however, than just agriculture. What they proposed was nothing less than a radically different way of relating to the environment and to each other. It was meant to counteract the highly unsustainable, anti-nature ‘more, bigger, better’ (consumer) culture approach that has characterised modern society in the recent decades, and has largely been responsible for the serious global environmental, human and economic problems we now face. Permaculture is about using natural principles to ensure the maximum production of food and other human needs locally. This has considerable economic, agricultural, social and other implications.

Some of the basic principles of permaculture include:

1. Maximal retention and minimum waste of water

2. Diversity

3. Multifunctionality

4. No external inputs of harmful substances

5. Self-sufficiency

Self-sufficiency is the basis for most eco-villages as it ties in with everything else. In a cultivated ecosystem different crops ripen throughout the year. A variety of vegetables, eggs, fruits and nuts, cheese, bread, honey and other foods, as well as electricity and energy for cooking, are consistently available. Self-sufficiency is extended to many other spheres of life within an eco-village including buildings. Houses are built of natural materials such as clay, stone, straw and wood – whichever is most easily and locally available. There are a number of eco-villages in South Africa. Here are some useful websites about these eco-villages, as well as global sites concerned with eco-villages and intentional communities.

 

www.kuthumba.co.za/index.htm

www.khuladhamma.org/node

www.zuvuya.co.za

www.berg-en-dal.co.za

www.xhabbofarmcommunity.co.za

www.gqunubegreen.org

www.ic.org

www.gen.ecovillage.org

www.dianaleafechristian.org

www.ecovillagenews.org

www.wwoof.org/wwind

 

Reinventing how we live in the city

LA ecovillage: self-reliance in car-free urban homestead - In urban Los Angeles, about 3 miles west of downtown, 500 people live on 11 acres where priority is given to bicycles, fruit trees, greywater, veggie gardens, clotheslines, compost, shared spaces (tool shop, art space, bike shop), micro-businesses, on-site natural food coop and chickens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdQGozSavz8

Los Angeles Eco-Village

http://laecovillage.org/

 

Seed Communities: Ecovillage Experiments Around the World  -The book is out! "Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community" . Curious about the leading edge of green living? After traveling to ecovillages on five continents, Professor Karen Litfin shares some gleanings about how these seed communities might help us to create a sustainable future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtNjZaXDGqM

Ecovillage book from Karen Litfin

http://ecovillagebook.org.

 

Senegal

ANEV - National Agency Ecovillage in Senegal
http://www.ecovillages.sn/  

SOS Environnement Sénégal - Organisation de recherche et d'action sur l’environnement
http://sosenvironnement.typepad.com/sos_environnement/life_in_senegal/

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Transposed in urban areas, the ecovillage model becomes a process:
Urban ecovillage is a group of people who are working to create urban neighborhood relations as contribute to sustainable development of the area, preserving - even restaurant - a healthy natural environment, valuing the historical, protecting human health and developing an economically equitable community open to cultural diversity.
Several forms: An urban ecovillage can have the form of a housing group, a block of buildings or a townsite, a set of shared habitats or an entire neighborhoodRéseau des écovillages en milieu urbain - Urban Ecovillage Directory

http://urban.ecovillage.org/

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"True contribution is not simply about just doing good,
it's how you do good that really matters".

 

"Small actions taken by each of us, multiplied across communities, can create a better world." – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

“The more intentional you are in your choices, the more every change makes room for more changes … I just love that there’s this endless potential.” ~Dee Williams

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