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Testimonials
This EDE has been a huge experiential learning for me. The course gave me the opportunity to grow in to the different parts of my individuality, to more fully serve the community and the project I was helping bring alive. I learnt tools that allowed me to work with conflict in a constructive way, something I had previously shied away from. We also worked on recognising the importance of every individual opinion (including my own) in tools like sociocracy. This showed me how the diversity of opinion and experience in the collective helps create meaningful decisions and actions. We explored the different ways ‘power with’ not ‘power over’ organising can be done – I was very inspired by the permaculture principles in this social context. In the future I’ll use these tools in the community and workplace organising I do with the hope to create long lasting, meaningful change that the community is committed to and passionate about.
I thoroughly enjoyed exploring all the content shared during the EDE course, however diving deep into the social aspects was profoundly interesting for me. The best part of the experience was being able to practically use the skills we learnt in our project groups and with the wider community.
After leaving the EDE, I felt so many positive changes in myself. I was better able to listen, really listen, to people. Listening in this way helped me stay regulated during difficult conversations – when things got heated, I knew I could simply step back and just listen. I also noticed I had less shame. I still heard the old stories in my head, stories like ‘nobody likes me’ and ‘I am not talented enough ‘, but instead of withdrawing, I could see they were just stories and was able to stay present. During the EDE, I felt deeply interconnected to the group around me and safe enough to take ‘relational risks that reaped relational rewards’. This meant I made a lot of new friends! My EDE time was full of magic and one of the best five weeks of my life.
Projects being inspired and co-created by EDE ALUMNI
Dragon Seed Camp
The Dragon Seed Camp is happening every year in August, in Switzerland, since it’s creation within a project group of the EDE 2018.
The DSC is a one week gathering to connect, exchange and celebrate with the shared aim to strengthen a movement, within ourselves and as a whole, to support the transition of our current system into a more life-giving culture.
“We hold space for a community experience of self-organization and transformative culture. We live a one week eco-village experiment, where we practice and celebrate the world our hearts know is possible.”
https://dragonseed.org
Sonnenwald
In 2019, EDE alumni Paul Hofmann and his former project “Academy for Applied Good Living” joined forces with a founding group inspired by Schloss Tempelhof (DE) and other EDE alumni to establish the “Gemeinschaft Sonnenwald ” in the Black Forest. Today, around 80 people of all ages live there and run a seminar center as well as a regenerative farm with dairy cattle, their own cheese dairy and southern Germany’s largest agroforestry system. Info at: www.sonnenwald.org
AKMERKEZ PERMACULTURE ROOFTOP GARDEN
Hasibe Akın
1st permaculture rooftop farm of Turkiye, on the rooftop of Akmerkez shopping mall in Istanbul, Turkiye – In 2013, she convinced the mall administration, designed, and led the implementation of this project with a strong focus on community building with the vision “bringing together with everybody around a delicious table” She convinced the mall administration and she designed and led the implementation of this project with community building in 2013. The project is still sustained empowering many ecological inisiyative which occured after this project.
https://www.caticiftligi.com/akmerkezpermakulturcaticiftligi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL4F-hO1vQYon the rooftop of a shopping mall in Istanbul, Turkey from Hasibe Akin:
permacultureglobal.org
Scope Malawi
We work with schools in Natural resources management, Environmental Education, Sustainable agriculture, Climate change adaptation and mitigation, School health and nutrition, and functional landscaping of school grounds. Through our work, we aim to fight poor health, injustice, stigma and discrimination.












































































