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The Compost Company started as a reaction to waste management problems, in a neighbourhood with a lot of community garden projects. We aim to provide our members with a composting service, eliminating waste while improving soil fertility.

We pick up their green waste weekly and they get several compost products back. We also compost commercial waste to sell outside of our subscription service.

We aim to employ mostly refugees and help them get on their feet and find their way around Dutch society. The municipality reacted very enthusiastically to our plans and is helping us grow to increase our service area, and providing us with a place to start our business.

The organisation was established by a group of permaculturists and transitioners who joined forces to communicate, and inspire people about, the message of regeneration in Greece. Compostopía is a co-created and interactive theatrical event about composting and upcycling.

Before each event, it gets to know the bioregion and establish a dynamic Bioregional directory. This is a community database that captures the wealth of each bioregion in terms of the: people (skills, needs, offers), surplus (products, services, tools, machinery), resources (waste materials) and community issues that can be addressed by pooling resources.

It integrates this information into a performance, which is delivered in conjunction with local communities. It engages and trains local youth in designing, organising and executing Compostop?a. It utilises wasted resources to make the stage/costumes. It integrates local organic farmers and producers by serving meals with their ingredients.

After the performance, it brings participants together to kickstart or present projects, all based on reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, sharing resources, utilising waste and covering our needs with what it already has.

Cooperativa Tonanzintlalli was founded by 23 indigenous Matagalpa women to cultivate and add value to organic regenerative coffee grown under the tree canopy, in right relationship with the land and the people in the community.

Through this project, the women are seeking to recover, promote, and defend their ecological and cultural indigenous knowledge, and their economic and political self-determination.

Tonanzintlalli means Sacred Mother Earth. The cooperative is committed to upholding the rights of our Mother Earth and our sacred relationship with her and all her creatures. Its coffee brand, Café D’Yasica, has received a few national integrity and quality awards. It is a symbol of the healing that is possible through agroforestry practices that protect and regenerate the forest and the waters and provide sustenance and income to its people, mitigating the need to turn to extractive activities.

The cooperative has also played an important role in the cohesion and health of the larger indigenous community. It has funded and led activities such as cultural development for the youth and primary health care services during covid-19.

This integral cooperative was founded to reverse a process common to many rural Portuguese towns: population loss, the abandonment of agriculture and the decline of local commerce.

Located in Montemor-o-Novo (a small town in the south of Portugal), Minga is creating tools that support the development of local circular economies, whilst aiming to operate in all sectors needed for living: the production of goods, services, housing, health, education etc.

Minga has supported the creation of new businesses in different fields, including biocosmetics, ceramics, detergents, clothes and solar panel installations. It shares the administrative and management costs among its members and operates a financially sustainable shop that sells local products.

It promotes agro-ecological farming practices and helps to organize production and distribution channels for local farmers. It shares a space that acts as a venue for socio-cultural activities and operates an internal currency that facilitates the exchange of products and services between members.

Through its work, Minga promotes ‘degrowth’ principles that include: the deeper integration of humans in ecosystems, consuming less, reusing resources and sourcing locally, seasonally and slowly.

CoRenewal has been at the forefront of developing innovative ecological solutions for over a decade, from supporting Indigenous communities impacted by oil spills in the Amazon, to catalyzing post-fire watershed defense mobilizations in California.

A nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving biodiversity and addressing the impacts of natural disasters and environmental pollution on both community and ecosystem health, they are bringing together grassroots bioremediation, rigorous scientific research and community skill-building.

By allying with fungi and other biological entities, their programs facilitate innovative research and implementation of community-led, nature-based remediation technologies.

For example, CoRenewal works with local community leaders to: document the impact of oil contamination on microbial communities and ecosystem functioning in order to support Indigenous communities and habitats in the Ecuadorian Amazon facing a toxic legacy left by Chevron/Texaco; and iteratively inform the development of bioremediation methods in the Amazon.

They likewise collaborate to examine the ability of native fungi and microbes to facilitate post-fire ecosystem regeneration via native microbial amendments.

As three women working in the woodland industry, Cultivate observe the under-representation of women in this sector. Its work is gratifying and ecologically sound; contributing to the regeneration of woodlands, and reducing the ‘need’ for cheap imports. Cultivate finds that this work constantly reminds us of our place in the fragile ecosystem.

Cultivate is keen to get young women out into the woods to develop their own relationship with the natural world through practical activities. Through these activities, they may be motivated into lifework which supports environmental regeneration, and challenges gender roles and wealth accumulation as indicators of success.

Over time, it hopes to acquire a woodland base, practicing agro-ecology, where young women can develop skills to become mentors to the next generation.

A rural community in the Brazilian Amazon, Cupulate de Acará will create a chocolate-like product called Cupulate, made from the seeds of a fruit called Cupuaçu. The community has many natural resources, including a wide range of fruits. However, the commercial use of these resources is limited, because of the low selling price of raw produce.

The project will generate additional income for the community members, based on a regenerative agricultural business model. It will support the community in their explicitly expressed wish to regenerate and strengthen their traditions and customs, which include a close relationship to nature and each other.

A group of twelve people from the surrounding region are interested in producing Cupulate to sell in fairs and restaurants in the capital.

Cyrenians Farm, based near Edinburgh, Scotland, uses organic and permaculture principles and was established in 1972 as a Community Care Farm working with homelessness in a different way.

They created “residential communities” where homeless people could come and live alongside others coming from more stable backgrounds. The mixing of peer support and a stable home offered people a real chance to find their feet, feel heard and to create a safe space to build their lives.

Today it still hosts a community of young people coming from a background of homelessness, but is also a successful income generating farm.

Dajopen Waste Management Project is a Community Based Organization formed by members of Kitale, Kenya. Their mission is to help clean the town environment through reuse and recycling of municipal solid waste for the benefit of its slum dwellers and small scale farmers, as well as enhancing food security by making and supplying value-added organic fertilizer to farmers.

They have trained more than 165,000 people on waste management and organic farming, and eight community groups on producing a range of recycled products. The project’s activities include: composting of organic biodegradable waste, making briquettes from dry tree leaves and pulp papers, making simple maize shellers from scrap metals, to assist the small scale farmers and especially women who handle most of the domestic chores in the family. They support members in innovating to take advantage of the high rate of waste generation to create viable enterprises.

Uganda (Kenya’s neighbouring country) has sent civic leaders to learn about waste management from the project.

The Dalia Association was established in 2007 with the belief that Palestinians should control their own development. Palestinians receive one of the highest rates of international aid, leading to the deterioration of a strong civil society.

Dalia Association utilise the resources necessary to empower a vibrant, independent and accountable civil society acting at the grass-roots level, through community controlled grant making. It focuses on four dimensions that ensures holistic community development: environmental, cultural, social, and local economy. Communities are empowered by being able to control their own development by identifying the problems within their community and enacting their own solutions.

Danjoo Koorliny Walking Together is an Aboriginal-led, large-scale, long-term systems-change project helping us walk together as Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people towards 2029 (200 years of colonisation in Western Australia) and beyond, be it in Western Australia, Australia or globally.

Through this, we can all become better ‘Carers of Everything’, which includes caring for ecological, social, spiritual-cultural and economic life.

In 2019 four Noongar leaders came together and chose the Centre for Social Impact at the University of Western Australia as the host organisation for the project. Since then, Danjoo Koorliny has held large-scale public engagement activities (festivals; story, song, dance and art events; symposia related to themes such as fire, land and waterways, etc.), as well as high-level senior leadership engagement and alignment across sectors. Research has begun; documentation collated and shared; relationships forged; and processes and protocols established for the next nine years.

Danjoo Koorliny is a unique process for how we can walk together and co-create a better future, based on and led by the wisdom of more than 80,000 years of how to live regeneratively on this planet.

Deccan Development Society (DDS) is a 39-year-old grassroots organisation in Telangana, India. It works with nearly 50 village-level voluntary associations (sanghams), led by 5000 dalit and indigenous female small-holding farmers.

At a time when development for dryland farmers only meant groundwater extraction and shifting to mono-cropping of commercial crops, DDS recognised the effects these shifts had on ecology and gender relations. It understood that traditional farming practices were valued by poorer women with degraded soils due to the holistic benefits they offer in human, livestock and soil health, whereas men narrowly focused on yield and the monetary benefits it offers. This inspired
DSS to pursue participatory and sustainable development methods that could assert the sanghams’ autonomy in multiple spheres like food, nutrition, seeds, market, media and so on.

By valuing the indigenous knowledge of these women on food and farming, and by using bottom-up participatory decision-making, the society has implemented successful initiatives that integrate:

• Ecological conservation
• Livelihood development
• Gender and social justice
• Food security
• Health and nutrition enhancement
• Agro-biodiversity

The Society is now active in 30 village sanghams, supporting rainfed biodiverse farming, grassroots health and legal workers, community led market for millet produce and also engaging in awareness events, information publications and advocacy campaigns. These activities ensure earth-care and human care and raise the profile of women as leaders in their villages.

Over the decades, DDS has designed integrative programmes such as eco-employment days, Community Gene Bank, Medicinal Plant Commons, Community Grain Fund, Balwadies and more which have been replicated and scaled up by other CSOs and also the government.

We regenerate the mountain ecosystems of our ancestral Andean lands through afforestation and reforestation with native species, and with the capture and propagation of beneficial microorganisms to improve soil fertility.

We provide trainings for campesino families in the importance of reforestation, conservation of natural resources, and returning to indigenous agro-ecological farming methods. We support community livelihoods by providing fruit trees, medicinal plants and Andean grains for family gardens.

For us, the regeneration of soils and waters goes hand in hand with regeneration of culture and ancestral knowledge. As such we are an example of both social and ecological regeneration.

Drylands Natural Resources Centre (DNRC) is a Kenyan registered NGO, operating in Makueni County, Kenya.

Its vision is of sustainable and resilient communities in the drylands of Kenya. It seeks to bring about improved livelihoods of the marginalised communities and people living there.

The organisation equips subsistence farmers in drylands with the tools to restore degraded lands and address the challenges of deforestation, falling agricultural yields, failing livelihood, water scarcity, loss of traditional knowledge and climate change through permaculture and agro ecological best practices.

DNRC is currently working with 800 smallholder households (about 4,200 people) and 12 schools (about 3,000 pupils). Achievements so far include:

• It has grown organically. From planting 5000 different tree saplings per year, in 2021 it planted 70,000 tree seedlings and over 35 different tree species. All these trees have been planted on the most degraded areas of land of smallholder farms and schools
• Over 250 farmers and officers from other regions have visited and learnt from its work
• It has trained over 50 students who are pursuing either diploma or degrees from different universities and colleges
• It has hosted and trained both local and international students in permaculture, dryland tree nursery establishment and management and Agroecology

Dularia is an immersive education centre which empowers socio-economically disadvantaged indigenous Santal tribal communities in West Bengal, India, to generate livelihood through regenerative practices.

Santals are one of the largest indigenous tribes of India. In the state of West Bengal, they work primarily as rice farming labourers using toxic chemical pesticides and fertilisers, which devastate the ecosystem and damage their health. To provide them with regenerative livelihood alternatives, Dularia promotes natural farming, natural building, agroforestry, indigenous herbal medicine, and natural arts and crafts.

In order to facilitate true empowerment, Dularia is autonomously run by a team of Santal tribal members, led by a Santali woman, who take all the day-to-day decisions, with national and international experts who support them each year through workshops and trainings.

To date, its major milestones are:

• Using permaculture techniques to restore a degraded plot into a thriving and diverse ecosystem within two years.
• Building natural building structures integrating vernacular art with modern building techniques, and demonstrating the use of upcycled waste and locally abundant materials as alternatives to cement.
• Demonstrating natural rice farming as a viable alternative to the current toxic practices by applying biochar and “Jeevamrit”, a traditional microbial inoculum, to regenerate soil.
• Developing entrepreneurial skills of Santal Tribal team members so that they can start generating their own livelihood.

Earth Freedom Collective is a decentralized network of co-ops working in the domains of food, solar, housing, hemp/cannabis and health justice sanctuaries. Each co-op has a trauma-informed workforce development component, providing economic opportunity to society’s most marginalized.

The collective has access to over 700 acres of rural land in Northern California and a network of urban eco-villages in Oakland seeking to address issues of racial and economic justice, community health, sustainable housing and climate resilience.

It is working with diverse community partners to establish a hybrid model LLC cooperative and community land trust rooted in black and Indigenous land reclamation. These channels will provide practical pathways for large numbers of people to gain access to land, food and freedom from exploitation. It envisions the creation of numerous healing centers anchored by elders from various wisdom traditions that provide spiritual and practical support for marginalized communities.

Earth4Ever Conservation Foundation works with communities of marginal farmers using permaculture principles, enabling them to be self-sufficient by establishing integrated systems that regenerate the ecosystem they live in.

They use a participatory approach to address local challenges of water shortage, depleted topsoils and declining bio-diversity (due to unhealthy farming routines) – in translating healthy farming techniques on their own lands.

They use a participatory approach to support marginal farmers – who face challenges of water shortage, depleted topsoil (sold to brick kilns) and unhealthy farming routines – in translating healthy farming techniques on their own lands.

Since it was established in 2019, it has:

* Set up a one-acre Permaculture Demonstration Farm where it demonstrates Permaculture principles in action and conducts hands-on workshops;
* Trained 15 women farmers (across 6 villages) to become key-point farmers and establish their own Permaculture Kitchen Gardens, amid the COVID crisis, with a focus on growing bio-diverse nutritious food while restoring the ecology of their regions;
* Facilitated their setup of the key-point gardens in their backyards, providing a demonstration for their village and inspiring many more women to join. Currently the total outreach is 61 women across 14 villages.