Intentional Communities Newsletter: August 7, 2010

Promoting Community Living & Cooperative Lifestyles
Communities magazine, Directory, Video and more

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Earlier this year we rolled out a new Communities Magazine website where you can read a selection of articles from our quarterly magazine online. We post a handful of articles from each issue so you can get a taste of what Communities offers. Check the website periodically--we add new articles on a regular basis.

Available by subscription or sample order, and available on select newsstands, our summer issue (#147) focuses on Education for Sustainability. Here's some of what readers will find:

Live and Learn: O.U.R. Ecovillage Builds Learning Community by Elke Cole with Javan Kerby Bernakevitch. The residents of an eco-oriented, education-focused intentional community and demonstration site wear many hats, both public and private. Read this article online!


Teaching Hands-On Workshops in Community by Michael G. Smith. One-day workshops, two-week intensives, two-month apprenticeships, season-long internships, work parties, work exchanges, and other hands-on learning programs all offer unique benefits and challenges for both participants and intentional community members. A veteran teacher and natural builder shares his experiences from Emerald Earth Sanctuary.

To Learn Sustainability Is To Learn Community: An Example from South Portugal by Leila Dregger. Strained by difficult economic and ecological conditions, farmers Claudio and Fernando discover new avenues toward prosperity and land restoration through alliances with a peace community dedicated to regional renewal. Read this article online!

Seeing the Good in the World: Connecting Communities and Students for Sustainability Education and Transformation by Joshua Lockyer. After several years teaching about community in the abstract, an anthropologist and environmental studies teacher finds that direct student engagement with intentional communities provides the spark needed for personal inspiration, connection, and the potential for social transformation. Read this article online!

Sustainability: Reflections from an Eco-Warrior by Bruce Davidson. A cofounder of Sirius Community traces his path to a broadened understanding of sustainability—one which depends, more than anything else, on a change of consciousness.

Ecovillages and Academia by Daniel Greenberg. Ecovillages offer ideal campuses for sustainability education, but cannot fulfill their potential if cloistered from academia. Building bridges between the two is essential for the survival and relevance of both.

Leadership for Social Change: Living Routes in Action at Huehuecoyotl by Giovanni Ciarlo. An action learning program at a Mexican ecovillage offers students real-world lessons in project implementation and community service, while also benefiting residents and neighbors.

Olympic-Sized Community by Satyama Dawn Lasby. The sustainability coordinator for the biggest event in the world realizes that catering with washable dishware and eliminating bottled water from the green rooms, while laudable, are ultimately just drops in the bucket.

Intentional “Colonies” and Tropical Sustainability by Jon Kohl. Intentional communities in developing countries often seem like intentional colonies instead, appealing to the rich and the mobile but inaccessible to local people. Effective sustainability education requires an alternative model.

Towards a Seventh Generation by Understanding Israel. Tracing results within her own community, a lifelong educator suggests that time spent teaching children now to love and respect the earth will help us all move towards a sustainable future.

Permaculture and Holistic Education: A Match Made in Heaven…and Earth by Paul Freedman. The founder of Salmonberry School finds that permaculture and holistic education share many common principles, values, and analogous practices, with great potential for integration.


How to Add Zest to Your Sustainability Education Program by Melanie Rios. A permaculture teachers hits upon a gold mine of effective methods for enlivening her teaching—by drawing from the principles of permaculture itself. Read this article online!


Busted, Almost Bludgeoned, Possibly Broke: Hard Lessons from the Trenches of Sustainability Education by Lee Icterus. Making your community a home base for sustainability education programs can bring unanticipated challenges, potential pitfalls, and learning experiences no one thought they had signed up for. A survivor shares cautionary tales and tips.

Car-Reduced and Car-Free Rural Communities by Greg Ramsey. In the quest to create eco-communities that can lead us toward a sustainable future, nothing is more important than reducing car dependence—and fortunately, we already know how.

Beyond Sustainability: Building for Health by Julie Genser. People with environmental intolerances could be a perfect match for intentional community living if their needs were better understood and met there. Are communities willing to educate themselves and perhaps stretch their definitions of “sustainability” in order to accommodate the environmentally ill?

• Among the features we plan to introduce is a regular back page focus on Creating Cooperative Culture. This will be a space for photo essays, artwork, comics, poems, community profiles, quotations, recipes, games, seasonal rituals, personal anecdotes, contributions from children, or anything else that will inspire readers toward further exploration of cooperative culture. We are appealing to you to send us material that might fit on this back page.
  
• We are also looking for additional short material to include elsewhere in the magazine....and we are soliciting questions for our Cooperative Group Solutions panel...
  
• Please send us your own reflections on Communities articles...We hope you'll check our website for upcoming themes and submission guidelines, and either consider writing for us yourself or refer other potential contributors to us...We also encourage photographers to send us work for potential use on our cover...