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This article is reposted from the Terrenity Substack. See the original article here
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I have now been an ecovillage researcher for 6 years.
As an anthropologist, I’ve been self-studying, traveling to, and living in ecovillages, and a lot has changed since I first sold everything and set out on the journey. As a researcher, a renewed sense of responsibility to this project has welled up in me. I feel an incredible pull to share the resources I have collected and continue to document my evergreen learning journey.
1. We need to build the society of tomorrow, today.
I can’t keep hoarding my resources, nor can I deny my natural inclination to be a writer. So here we are. There is a unique urgency to build more regenerative and sustainable communities in which we can live, and to be able to do that, we need to demystify the process.
2. What you can expect as a reader
Get ready to scuba dive into the world of community creation with this newsletter. Terrenity is committed to sharing learnings, insights, and experiences in the realm of village building and designing communities.
We will now be sharing learnings actively on this Substack newsletter, where readers can expect unique insights to village building tools, regenerative community trends, and recommendations to products, courses, and services that help you build your village faster.
Subscribe today to stay informed and inspired.
To learn about more village design, take 32 seconds right now to sign up to the Terrenity Substack.
I say “we” because this Substack is open to co-authors and collaborators. If you want to write about ecovillages, intentional communities/coliving, coordi-nations, and regenerative design, then you are in the right place. Email proposals to hello@terrenity.org
3. Be my (virtual) community
I hope to create a space for enthusiastic community builders and seekers who are deeply passionate about regenerative community design, whole systems thinking, indigenous worldview, sustainable living, innovative green tech, and all of the applications of these fields in the ecovillage world.
I’ll be posting 4x a month, with 2 free posts and 2 paid posts.
Free Posts
As a free reader, you can comment, share, and interact with my substack posts. In a given month the 2 free posts will be any combination of these types:
Community Hacks Series — assessing common pitfalls in community building and providing different “hacks” and tools to avoid them.
Case Studies — an-depth look at an individual community, how they work and what they did right, with a focus feature on communities you can live in
Opinion Pieces — 6 years of ecovillage research and experience has led me to this. This is a window into my brain on the major trends in the space.
Musings — Conversations on addressing complex issues like diversity, equity, and accessibility, while assessing the field of redesigning society.
Paid Posts
Deep Dives - A monthly detailed post on a focused aspect of village building, with included resources and templates. These in-depth articles are based off the Community Alchemy guide.
Village Builder Insider - At any given time, I am working with and consulting several regenerative villages. Here you get monthly bite-sized project updates with my methods for village design and 3 lessons I learned each month.
+ BONUS audio recordings of articles for paid subscribers and a paid subscriber chat
If you would like to receive these goodies, take 32 seconds to upgrade to a paid subscription right now.
It’s $5/month but only $30 a year, which is a 50% discount. I offer this as a gift to all my early supporters, who will get grandmothered in as the publication changes.
You can unsubscribe in one click.
*This is different from personal consulting I offer to ecovillages, intentional communities, and coliving projects on how to get started. If that is your interest, just email me directly hello@terrenity.org
4. The story of Terrenity
Mid-pandemic I sold almost everything in my California apartment, packed my suitcase, and headed to Mexico. Even though I had an amazing job working in native plant habitat restoration at a 44-acre wildlife park in the middle of an urban city, I was craving more. I was craving community. About 4 years prior, I had discovered the word ecovillage, and was fully obsessed.
My background in Anthropology equipped me with a particular thirst to understand human culture in order to design our future. I set out with my camera and my notes to visit different communities, understand them, and receive the soul medicine that I knew community had to offer.
Terrenity is a project for ecovillage seekers and builders. In the past, the project also involved nonprofit consulting for ecovillages in Guyana and Uganda.
As I traveled, I collected research, made observations, and studied community life while living it. Along the way, I connected with an exciting startup working on regenerative neighborhoods, Regen Tribe, and became a co-founder of that project. Putting all my energy into that, Terrenity fell to the wayside for a short time.
I saw, and still see, ecovillages as one way to provide a radical alternative to some of the broken, extractive systems that we live in. Effectively, we can redesign society at local scale. We can live not just a more sustainable life, but a more meaningful, connected, and cooperative one.
And this isn’t just happening at local scale anymore. Initiatives like the network state movement, decentralization, and web3 are making possible new innovations in village tech and other alternative society options.
I am excited to merge all of my learnings over the last 6 years into this Substack. Everything I share will aspire to a next level of quality and usefulness, so please, join in. My goal is to become fully self-sufficient as a writer and researcher, and my pledge is to help you build (or find) the community of your dreams.
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