Hello!
I am feeling increasingly called to "spawn" a series of eco villages, starting in/near my hometown in Minnesota as a pilot. I am also interested in starting this in my other favorite town where I currently live, Monterey California.
Education is so important and it seems our populations do not know how to be resilient in the face of all current and pending disasters. I am tempted to just buy the land somewhere and would love to draw people to it to help build it up with me and live on it with me. It would provide a base to influence the creation of more eco villages. Imagine if entire areas were sprinkled with self sustaining plots of land and housing filled with intentional people?
I have an education and experience in permaculture design, policy, economic development, renewable energy, cooperatives, agriculture, etc. I think the desire to do all of this is the culmination of utilizing my education and experience for the greater good.
This is still scary for several reasons/questions.
1) Do I gather the community first and then invest?
2) Do I invest in the land first and let them come?
3) I am not a skilled builder so I don't know the basics of completing some of the building tasks on my own.
4) How do I draw people to it?
5) What if people don't come to help?
6) Where do I find these people anyways?
7) Why aren't there more permaculture communities that are local/accessible and not located in the middle of nowhere?
Do people get funding help from sources? (I am a professional grant writer and this would be no problem for me, just curious what people do to fund in general)
9) Would this end up being more stressful in the end than just joining a community?
So many questions. Curious if anyone has had experience with this process. Curious if anyone reading this is also interested in swinging into this type of endeavor.
Thanks friends!
Ali
