Dec 2007

Interesting EcoVillage article

Hi everyone - Vanda has sent in the following article of interest (ATTACHED). It contains good background stuff on the origin of ecovillages by Hildur Jackson, one of the famous founder/namer people of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), and some useful statements about what an Ecovillage is.
071231 WhatIsAnEcoVillage
It also contains a diagram for self-audit to assess if we can call ourselves an ecovillage(!) and to collectively identify where improvements could be worked on. An obvious critical issue is having a common identity.

To find out more about GEN and check links to other ecovillages, see:
http://gen.ecovillage.org/

Village Happenings

Here (ATTACHED) is the latest "Village Happenings", with pics of some of our Xmas events.
071227 VILLAGE HAPPENINGS
And don't forget, for more complete coverage of the Sports Day on 15 December, check out Neil Davies' excellent pics as a slideshow at:
http://web.mac.com/marydavies2/iWeb/Site/Sports%20day%202007%20.html

International Prize for Villager

Congratulations to Maarten Ryder (Lot 102) who, in his capacity as a CSIRO scientist, has recently received a prize for international Scientific Collaboration from the Shandong Government of the People's Republic of China. (See ATTACHED) news item.
Well done, Maarten.
071217 Award to Maarten Ryder

Inspirational purpose of Pinakarri Community

Pinakarri is an Aboriginal (Nyangamarta) word meaning "deep listening". The Nyangurmart aboriginal communities live north of Port Hedland. Our community was established in 1991 and we are the first housing co-op with public rental and home ownership in Western Australia. See: http://www.pinakarri.org.au/

Loving More Completely - a Pinakarri story
It took nine years for the community in which I live to come clean about its purpose - 'through Pinakarri we learn to love more completely'. Erich Fromm says that our greatest fear is not of rejection but of loving. We planned for 8 years to live together, we faced our fears of being rejected as we entered into the process of becoming members of Pinakarri and then we began to face our fears of being accepted! What did it mean to be part of this community, this group of people that had made a commitment to share their lives together? What was required of us?

It was nearly a year after we began to live together that we came up with the simple statement - 'through Pinakarri we learn to love more completely'. I couldn't really tell you how those few words came to us, in some ways it feels as they were an amazing and unexpected gift. Almost as if a hand reached out from some other world to offer it to us, a world we only have glimpses of in our daily lives but hold in our innermost hearts.


Read the rest of this inspirational story at:
http://members.iinet.com.au/%7Epinakarri/archives/lovingmore.htm

Village Happenings

Here's another installment in our "Village Happenings" series.
071210 VILLAGE HAPPENINGS

I can't be everywhere with the camera so, if you have a good pic or two you think would suit these "Happenings", please send it to me for possible inclusion ("jpg" and "bmp" picture files are usable but "jpg" files are best as they give smaller PDF files).

Elizabeth - email

Village Happenings

There has been a lot on lately. See the ATTACHED file for various events - and more to come soon.
071203 VILLAGE HAPPENINGS