This project wants to recover the ciliary forest (water-bordering vegetation) of the Igarape Simauma, in the Quilombola territory St. Rosa dos Pretos, through the planting of native trees. Its other aim is to collectively develop an agroforestry system in close dialogue with subsistence farming practitioners of the Quilombo.
As a result of the arrival of a mining company and the reduction of region’s productive areas, its identified serious problems, such as deforestation, silting in rivers and streams, and lack of water. It was from this diagnosis and discussion within the community that its created the collective Quilombola Agroforestry Agents on June 5th 2017, formed by 20 young quilombolas.
Indigenous association for the governance of the first people, Agro-Pueblos is developing the JAJAÑ project in the Sibundoy Valley, Southern Colombia, to holistically strengthen a local system of food production that in turn builds community resilience. The values guiding this work align with the cosmology of the Kamëntšá indigenous people located in the region.
The project will assemble a community nursery for the production of seeds and grains of food and medicinal species, which will then be distributed to the wider community. 120 families will be directly involved and it is hoped that the nursery will be able to reproduce around 12 food species and eight medicinal varieties with the aim that in four years time the entire community, made up of 1,267 families, will benefit from the project and the 24,000 plants distributed and planted; bringing about productive sustainability in the face of climate change.
Alongside raising access to food and medicinal species, the project seeks to support dynamic participation and knowledge exchange associated with the land and to nurture a spiritual bond with nature.
The JAJAÑ space will allow for JENABUATAMBAN (mutual teaching through mutual help in work), which in turn allows for social cohesion, and builds the structural importance of JAJAÑ for the permanence of the community.
AMORA’s goal is to regenerate the local river, so its people can swim in it again! 30 years ago, people swam and fished in it and children could play near the water and Nature. Nowadays, the river’s colour is black, its scent stinky, the fish are all gone, and the water quality is consistently rated ‘bad’.
Last year, a water sewage system broke in the Portuguese city of Montemor-O-Novo. Faced with yet another river ravage, the local community started organising and actively pushing for the river to be cleaned – acting from both practical and political approaches.
Around 40 people, many who live on the waterfront, gathered to begin establishing new forms of collective land management through deliberative and horizontal democracy. They believe that only through social and ecological regenerative practices will it be possible to regenerate the river and everything it represents.
AMORA seeks to:
This has already seen some success – population and local politicians have gotten on board, leading to the creation of a municipal environmental council – the first ever in the town.
In five years, they want to be able to swim in the river again – and inspire others to do the same!
Apthapi Comunidades del Vivir Bien believes that we live in a time of imbalance between human beings, and between the latter and nature, such that our very existence is in danger.
It suggests that we need to regenerate and restore ways in which we can relate and coexist for greater natural and social equilibrium.
This gave birth to the idea of creating a space where it can teach and show that Vivir Bien (living well) is possible; a space where it can raise new generations that learn to respect and care for a more balanced way of life, known as the “Escuela del Vivir Bien” (School of living well).
The School is a new initiative of four organisations that are combining their experiences: Flor de Leche, Inti Phajsi, Casa Espejo and Wayna Tambo, and is carried out in the districts of Achocalla, El Alto and La Paz in Bolivia.
It will be used by groups of people organised under a collective, institution or association that can learn and then implement the proposed curriculum in their territories.
ARD Agriculture and Research Development is an agricultural company dedicated to promoting Regenerative Agriculture and Ecological Awareness in Jordan, founded in 2020.
The project began with the design of a profitable model of Regenerative Agriculture Farming in the farm so it stands as a model in Jordan. In addition, they established a centre to host activities (workshops, training and residencies) to involve the community. The site provides accommodation, tools and equipment, and they want to collaborate with locals, universities, research institutes and cultural centres and promote cross-sector cooperation to stand as an incubation hub for local green projects.
ARD wants to collect the data along the way and build a platform for research and development in the field of Regenerative Agriculture and Ecology in both English and Arabic to promote its practice in Jordan and the region. In 5 years they see ARD becoming a physical hub for learning regenerative practices in the Region and a prolific online platform.
The Auletta Casa Mia project was founded in 2024 by young residents from marginalised areas in the province of Salerno, Southern Italy.
This region has faced numerous cases of toxic waste trafficking (whereby hazardous waste is falsely said to be non-hazardous and is then dumped in the region) and related legal proceedings, and is currently under threat from speculative projects that aim to exploit its pristine lands with extractive gas operations.
In response to these threats, Auletta Casa Mia was established to protect common goods: soil, air, water and biodiversity through processes inspired by mutualism and active citizenship. The project’s committee employs participatory and assembly-based methods with a transfeminist and ecological approach. This has so far included organising:
Within six months, Auletta Casa Mia had successfully halted a proposed mega gas and methane plant, triggered an anti-mafia investigation, and catalysed involvement from over 25 youths under 18 who now participate in and organise various local activities.
Auletta Casa Mia seeks to continue this regenerative journey, believing that the region’s underpopulated areas, surrounded by centuries-old olive trees, can become places to sow the seeds for new forms of civil economy based on agroecology, permaculture, and holistic practices that integrate art, culture, and ecology.
The “Autonome Heilschule Wendland” is a project in creation.
We want to establish a healing school, where people can self-study or attend daily classes, that is open for everyone that wants to learn about alternative medicine and treatments, to find individual approaches to their health. It is a place for support and exchange with a medicinal garden, apothecary, movement room and more.
We will organise regular courses and workshops to facilitate the transmission of knowledge from specialists to the people, regardless of their income, background and identities.
Be-in-cO stands for BEleif and BEing present, INspiration, INnovation and INterconnectedness, and for COmmunication, COcreation and COmmunity.
We facilitate transformative workshops to enable individuals, communities and organizations to realize their collective intelligence and co-create positive change.
We combine our expertise in social entrepreneurship and facilitation with the most innovative participatory methodologies and provide teams with alternative tools that are extremely precious in our chaotic, fast-changing world.
We work with cross-sector change makers and social entrepreneurs, social and humanitarian organizations, disadvantaged populations, volunteers, educators, communities and the business sector. We consider what we do to be the regeneration of human connection.
Beejvan is a farmer-led community based initiative in the tribal village of Khanand, in Karjat, Maharashtra India. Beej means Seed; Van means Forest. Seeds are representative of life; and forests of spaces that nourish and help life thrive.
As a farming community, Beejvan aims to promote 3 basic ideas and principles of Permaculture– Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share– through its seed conservation, regeneration and livelihood projects, securing food and nutrition security. Thakars, the local inhabitants of Karjat are traditional herbalists and healers. Khanand has 100 households and a population of 500. We are small and marginal farmers who cultivate on the hills, across river beds and rely on minor forest produce for a living.
Over the last two decades the aspiration to be urbanised came at the cost of losing traditional wisdom and cultural heritage. This has led to a never-ending cycle of poverty. Beejvan’s founders returned to Karjat after two decades and saw modern agricultural practices and deforestation had led to depleted soils and crop failure in the place they loved as a child, and the idea for Beejvan emerged.
Central to Beejvans vision is reviving the practice of tree-based farming, seed saving, multiple livelihoods, securing food/nutrition for the farmer. It aims to create local, scalable solutions to transform villages into biodiversity hotspots and respond to the climate crisis in viable ways, while also addressing health and inequalities at the local level. Beejvan aims to build the first community nursery by 2024, and seed bank of native species by 2025.
Benaa aims to empower Arabian youth to build sustainable development projects, and create an interactive enabling environment in the MENA region.
These projects cover:
Amatlán de Quetzalcóatl, Tepoztlán, Mexico, is an indigenous town with an important tradition of corn planting and milpa culture.
Conventional agricultural models and the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides have led to soil erosion and decreased soil fertility. The rainfall regime is also changing.
Based on the economic and social consequences of the covid 19 pandemic, Biocenosis decided to propose a model of local resilience in the face of global crises through the collective work of regenerative agriculture.
Using successional agroforestry systems, five project members and three farmers from Tepoztlán began planting rainfed crops in order to create a sustainable productive model adapted to the local context.
With this initiative, we hope to demonstrate the social, ecological and economic viability of this type of project, train at least 100 people annually and help transform the reality of the farmers involved in the Cuauhnáhuac micro-region and bioregion.
The Bioregional Learning Centre sits amongst a network of local people and organisations in South Devon where community innovation, local economics, and regeneration of place is already happening.
Our work is aimed at increasing the scale, pace and efficacy required to make this happen.
The region has the potential to become a centre of excellence in the UK, known for examples where we have changed our relationships with food, water, energy, soil, waste, ecology and economy, seen over time as an interrelated system.
We build partnerships and work in collaborative project teams to design and implement solutions to regional wellbeing and sustainability. Using best practice techniques for creative engagement we organise design days, get projects off the ground, hold the whole picture, connect people to each other and people to place.
Brickify recycles plastic waste bags into building bricks and lumber that are used to construct roads and build low-cost housing in Nigeria. It collects plastic waste dumped in drains, gutters and water ways and repurpose them to beautify the environment.
It also uses an inclusive model to collect its waste, whereby it rewards participating households and community members in cash or in kind as long as they submit the required level of waste.
The idea is motivated by the huge plastic waste problem in its communities. This problem leads to flooding, destroys the environment, harbours disease and causes other sorts of havoc.
Its bricks are durable, cheap, water and fire resistant, eco-friendly and heat resistant. They are available for sale to members of the public, but the project’s aim is to use them to build low-cost housing for the less privileged and homeless at a very cheap rate. There’s no need for cement to build the houses because they are used in a Lego like form.
Calderdale Bootstrap is a group of social entrepreneurs, co-operators, activists and changemakers, looking to engage our community in the upper Calder Valley to co-create our next economy.
We aim to build on the history of mutual self-help in our valley; work with our existing social enterprise and take it up a gear. We will inspire and directly support the next generation of enterprises to help create a more vibrant and more resilient solidarity economy, with real livelihoods, community commonwealth, and the ability to thrive in the challenging times ahead as the current economic system unravels.
Another Economy is Possible.
Chikukwa Research Trust is a small and committed team of community researcher-practitioners (farmers). They plan to establish a climate resilience program, with agroecology to stabilise landscapes and livelihoods that is more firmly rooted in the restoration of bio-cultural diversity.
Chikukwa is a cultural society, and the oldest permaculture community in Zimbabwe. But much of this has been eroded through inward and outward migration, and the younger generation being disconnected from this rich history.
The Research Trust will document their connections to plants and place during collective experiences and storytelling, and share these during interactions with two schools, and at their open-sided thatch building.
By drawing on the memories of traditional leadership and elders for shared learning about ritual and resilience, they aim to foster a more accountable leadership that people can trust, which will also build resilience to division and external threats, including climate variability and change.
In Hungary and the rest of Europe Roma people are one of the largest and most discriminated minorities and predominantly live in extreme poverty, geographically segregated.
Among many hardships poor housing conditions and lack of adequate heating during winter are some of the largest difficulties they face.
Eco-solutions can be cost effective and achievable with local resources and hence crucial for families with unpredictable incomes. Unfortunately few technological solutions are designed specifically for people living in extreme poverty in Europe.
Our work challenges this; we are developing affordable and efficient stoves, insulation and fuel programs in collaboration with local communities.
The purpose of the Compassos Institute is to debate ideas related to the marginality of youngsters and adults with special needs that cannot enter the labor market.
We also strive to develop ways to minimize and prevent environmental damage in Brazil.
The Compassos Action Project is multidisciplinary and works in different spheres, the main one being biodynamic agriculture. Families, schools and the community will all be welcomed.
We will offer practical experience creating a collective vegetable garden, as well as student training, courses and lectures.
We hope for this project to be replicated in neighboring cities.
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.
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.