Our friends and colleagues in GEN Ukraine have been working tirelessly since the war began to provide refuge and humanitarian support in ecovillages, as well as helping refugees adapt and embed into community life through activities like food growing and building. You can find more information about their work here. GEN Ukraine is now launching an urgent fundraising campaign as winter approaches, and we're sharing their requests here. In October Ukrainian energy infrastructure was severely attacked. 30% of Ukraine’s power stations were destroyed and the attacks go on. It causes…

National and regional ecovillage networks play a vital role in spreading thriving community culture - forging connections between existing projects and supporting new ones based on shared cultures and languages. We're celebrating the finalising of the WESEEN project, that has supported the creation of two new networks - Western Europe (WE) which links the Netherlands, Belgium and France, and South East Europe (SEEN) connecting Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary. In the final evaluation meeting, 15 representatives of 7 partner organisations met in Ecodorp Zuiderveld (with their ducks!) in the Netherlands to…

Launch and Thrive project kicks off to activate ecovillage networks From France to Finland, from Spain to Sweden, national and bioregional ecovillage networks have long played a hugely important role in GEN Europe. These networks gather ecovillages and projects with cultural and linguistic commonalities, host local, national and regional events in close proximity to their communities, and are able to more effectively network with like-minded national organisations and campaign on local and national issues. It’s clear that national ecovillage networks bring many benefits, and one of the goals of GEN…

Want to join the GEN Europe team? We're seeking an organised, motivated project coordinator (10 months) to cover the maternity leave of one of our colleagues. The ideal candidate will have experience with the Erasmus+ scheme and will coordinate our project working group to ensure KA1 and KA2 applications are written and submitted at each Erasmus deadline. Curious? Read on and apply by November 2nd! To find all the details and apply, visit this page.

Work is under way on the Green Refuge project - an ambitious bioconstruction initiative in Busha ecovillage which aims to provide warm winter shelter to refugees. In this report, board member and ecovillager Steffen Emrich brings an update from the ground in Ukraine. GEN EU and GEN Ukraine representatives meet to discuss the project At this summer's European Ecovillage Gathering in Denmark, a fundraising project was started for a community strawbale building in the ecovillage of Busha, Vinnytsia Region, Ukraine. The goal was initially to complete the build between August…

Participants in the cosy surroundings of Ananda Gaorii One of the core functions of an ecovillage network is to act as a bridge between communities, enabling ecovillages to connect with one another, share experiences, build relationships and collaborate for constant learning. Here Ulrike Schimmel from Sieben Linden describes how four communities recently came together to do just that - in the process creating valuable resources for ecovillages across the network and beyond. So many ecovillages host volunteers these days - and so many of us are re-inventing the wheel when…