GEN Europe
GEN Europe envisions the emergence of a diverse yet shared global pool of wisdom for sustainable living. GEN Europe promotes the building of community and solidarity as core to transition to resilience.
What is GEN Europe?[edit | edit source]
When people choose to live together with a shared vision and purpose in a way that’s respectful to one another, their local environment, and the wider world – that’s an ecovillage.
GEN Europe is the European network for ecovillages and sustainable communities. We are a non-profit membership association that supports existing ecovillages and encourages the development of new ones, while spreading the tools, resources, inspiration and culture of ecovillages across Europe and the world.
We run events, offer training and capacity building, and act as a platform for our members. We are the European regional node of GEN, the Global Ecovillage Network.
Our vision[edit | edit source]
A conscious, sustainable, resilient Europe where ecovillage values and lifestyles are widely adopted.
Our mission[edit | edit source]
To achieve our vision, we work with ecovillages and ecovillage networks, and support individuals who are curious about ecovillages on their journey to ecovillage living.
- We connect ecovillages to promote innovation, the exchange of experiences and knowledge, and to build friendships and networks.
- We build our collective capacity to inspire and enable the creation of new communities through training, courses and projects.
- We promote ecovillage lifestyles and solutions as part of the transition to a regenerative culture and bring people closer to ecovillages with events, publications and volunteering opportunities.
How we work[edit | edit source]
We’re a non-profit association based in Spain and Germany, serving ecovillages and national and regional ecovillage networks across greater Europe. Our day-to-day operations are served by the Secretariat staff team.
Guiding the Secretariat is our oversight body, the Council, who are elected every two years to hold our vision by the General Assembly. The General Assembly, made up of all full member ecovillages, makes proposals, debates and approves decisions and strategic direction for the organisation.
We organise ourselves and make decisions using Sociocracy, a transparent and participatory governance method based around consent decision-making.
We publish annual reports on our activities for our members and the wider public.
