Organicvision – a world tour dedicated to sustainable lifestyle (by Johanna from Organicvision)
Curious about alternatives to mainstream urban lifestyle?
Wondering how our society can change to become ecologically viable?
This is precisely what we want to find out on our journey around the world visiting 30 exciting projects covering permaculture, eco-construction, herbology, self-sufficiency, homesteading, transition towns, eco villages etc.
We, that is Joanna and Franck- a German/Polish-French couple in their thirties, living in Brussels.
Some years ago, if somebody had asked us about the future, never we would have predicted that we would quit our jobs one day and do a project dedicated to sustainability…
We decided to rethink our future. After having visited several organic farms in Belgium and Spain in 2009, we were captivated by the generosity and enthusiasm of the people we met there. Compared to the authentic values these people were living, our office jobs, our hectic everyday life seemed fake and meaningless.
Many discussions and sleepless nights later, our decision was clear: We wanted to change our life.
Even more: We wanted other people to discover that it is worth to live closer to nature. But how do you do that? Our solution: Travel various countries and meet positive role models, work with them and share their inspiring ideas with others via interviews, video clips and pictures on a blog!
To this end, in October 2009 we also set up an association – Organicvision – as we wanted to show our sincere long-term investment in promoting sustainable lifestyle and setting up a network of activists in this field as our project develops.
Then we started to seriously prepare our world tour, which will start very soon with a survival training in Belgium followed by a permaculture design course in Southern France.
Open Source Ecology takes an open source approach to technology development with the aim to empower individuals to develop their own self-sufficient ecovillages without depending on supply chains, trademarks & corporations.
‘Factor E Farm’ provides a tool set that makes it possible for individuals to become self-sufficient. Tool set’s include instructions on how to create construction machines, tractors, solarpanels etc. at a quality level that comes close to commercial machines. All tool sets for open source technology are being published on the open source ecology wiki so others can use and further develop the material. Watch this video to see some of their machines in practise.
I’m quite impressed by this approach since I do personally believe that the open source culture can be transferred to many different value-driven fields. Ecological living is an area where concrete solutions and expertise could easily create benefit by being spread more openly via the Internet.
In the area of sustainable development there seems to be a big disconnect between corporate sustainability communication and actual solutions that are being applied. Maybe there is something even bigger corporations could learn from this simple concept & collaborative approach.
We are involved in an ecological housing project in Karlstad, Sweden.
Our city already has two ecovillages called Tuggelite (which was first in Sweden) and Mjölnartorpet. Since almost everyone keeps on living in their ecohouses it’s hard to move there. That is why we came up with the idea to create Ekoby3.0 (EcoVillage3.0).
So far we are 23 families who are involved. These are both single households, single families and families of all ages.
We find ourselves in the first development phase. The project team has visited the two current ecovillages in Karlstad and had a first discussion round with the municipality. Karlstad municipality is very positive towards our plans. The next step is to map all families ideas and wishes. Finding financing is tough at the moment, but by the time we will invest the situation might have changed. We have contacts with the Swedish interest free JAK member bank and the Swedish Ekobanken. Website (Swedish)
Our motivations are diverse, but all of us support the idea of ecological housing. For me personal I’d like to develop housing which provides the opportunity to live under my personal ecological footprint.
Together with Mira and four others we visited a co-housing/ecovillage project in Poncelle, Province of Luxemburg, Belgium this past weekend.
Imagine a little village in the least polluted areas of Belgium on a sunny day. You arrive around lunchtime and have lunch with Michel, who three years ago had the idea of starting up a co-housing project and acquired a piece of land with similarly minded people. He tells you about his vision and even though it is obvious that much work is still needed, you can see it: a place of happy co-housing. Everybody has their own house and income, but there is also a big common house, that can be used at any time by Lorien’s people for parties or for workshops, but can also be rented out to generate a bit more income.
Lorien’s land came with a few unfinished buildings and land of 1,5ha. The potential is plenty, but the money is not. So until more people join, i.e. buy a piece of it, finishing the houses needs to wait. In the meantime the garden can be put into place.
So this is what we helped with: we cleared an area in the garden, planted some vegetables, cleared up another area for a neighbour’s donkeys and fenced it off, so they can graze on the long grass. Soon there will be a workshop that will take the development of the garden to the next level.
The weekend was not all about work though. After a dinner which some of us prepared, we sat around a campfire until one in the morning talking over beer and wine. We all felt it was interesting to learn more about the project, but also putting up fences, etc. together with friends and others brought up interesting conversations. This combined with camping and fire made for a great weekend and I am looking forward to visit again. Would you want to come along next time? If so, please comment on this page and we will let you know the details. If you do not have a tent, there are also caravans that you can sleep in.
A place somewhere in a warm country far away from traffic and stress. A place with nice people sharing the work, doing things together they really enjoy and thinking out of the box. Am I the only one here, or is this also something you sometimes dream about?
Here the good news: These places do exist. It might not be all that perfect as we dream it up in our minds.
Community life is not always easy and it’s more a life choice than paradise. But I’ve visited many places with interesting set ups. A group of people that lives up to permaculture principles and applies environmental solutions like Earthships & solar kettles that still seem very cutting edge to us. The El Bosque village is one of them.
The Bosque Village is a combination of a campground, a rustic retreat center, a permaculture farm, and a forming ecovillage. We love to share our space with visitors interested in sustainable tourism, ecovillage living, outdoor recreation, personal development and creative activities.
The great thing is that el Bosque is open for volunteers so you can experience for a period of time how it feels to live in such a place. Have a look at the El Bosque group for more information.
Greenpeace UK just released an interesting animation called EfficienCity. It is shown how renewable energy can be used in a city efficiently. A very clear, solution oriented & somehow human approach. Well done GP UK!
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