In Community We Trust

The future is a return to local, place-based connection

Building Our Regenerative Future: Week 3

Monday marks the halfway point of Building Our Regenerative Future, our month-long webinar. With over 235 participants so far, we are building a vibrant interactive community exploring the most crucial issues of our time. Last Thursday, we had an extraordinary discussion on the future of culture and the potential to weave new myths and media supporting the regenerative paradigm. I framed the conversation with a half-hour lecture on how culture and media “manufacture” our individuality and subjectivity, on a mass scale.

You are still welcome to join the course. The first four sessions are archived and available for viewing. In our Slack community, we are exploring all of the topics raised in the live sessions and defining a path to collective, collaborative action. We may add an extra session or two, depending on community interest. Use the coupon WEGENERATE for a 20% discount. 

Monday, July 13, at 12:30 pm EST / 5:30 pm BST / 6:30 pm CET / 9:30 am PST, we have our Session on Community. See below for a description and a roster of participants.

I hope you will join us!

How do we form healthy communities based on ecological principles, cooperation, and good governance?

We foresee a renewal of place-based communities rooted in trust and cooperation. For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors lived in tight-knit communities. These are our true home. But how do we gain the benefits of these arrangements, restoring trust and community values, while maintaining our individual autonomy and creative initiative? How do we optimize our own, our friends, and our family’s happiness as we build diverse adaptive, and resilient communities? 

We provide you with tools to build and empower your community. We review best models, design principles, and legal structures — from cooperatives to land trusts — which you can use to jumpstart the regenerative community of your dreams.

Guest Speakers

George Lamb

George Lamb recently established GROW, a life skills education programme that gives children the opportunity to interact with nature, teach them about nutrition and provide a sustainable source of food for schools and the local community.  The content aligns with seasonal food and farming activities and life cycles, giving students a deep understanding of their place within the world and their potential to connect to it. The Totteridge Academy in Barnet, North London, is the site of GROW’s initial school farm. Before working in education, Lamb was well known in England as a television presenter and radio host on the BBC.  Prior to his work on television, he was an accomplished band manager responsible for the careers of dance music maestros the Audio Bully’s and current solo sensation, Lilly Allen.

Yael Marantz

Yael’s journey began in New York leading design-thinking and innovation processes for an array of Fortune 500 clients and not-for-profit organizations as a senior strategist at Wolff Olins. As she awakened to the intelligence and design solutions found in Nature, she launched Mimetika, a biomimetic-led consultancy pioneering life-centered design to help organizations innovate using Nature’s genius.

Understanding the implications of the climate crisis, Yael was intrigued by alternative experiments in living. She visited and researched ecovillages around the world while completing her masters thesis on reimagining communities through biomimicry, biophilia and living labs. This inquiry led her to the position of Communications Director for Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), an NGO that catalyzes the power of communities for a regenerative world. Today Yael is a co-founder and steward of Brave Earth (Tierra Valiente), a living lab for regeneration located in Costa Rica. With the culmination of her experience and in dialogue with the land, she is prototyping a model for community anchored in resiliency, reciprocity and regeneration. 

David Casey

David Casey is a graduate of UC Berkeley in Political Economy of Industrial Societies, with concentrations in Global Poverty & Practice and Energy & Resources. David has lived and worked in seven countries in Latin America. He is the co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer of NuMundo, a platform that connects people and impact centers (land-based projects for regenerative living), encouraging resource sharing on the web and on the ground to catalyze planetary regeneration and individual transformation. With his strong vision and clear articulation and conviction, he is able to attract wide support from multiple sources in the form of donated labor, land, and financial capital. Among other things, David is also the founder and co-producer of Cosmic Convergence, an annual gathering of art, music, tribal technology, education for conscious living, and Maya culture on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, and a co-founder of the NuSeed Gathering in Costa Rica. 

Cassandra Ferrera

Cassandra Ferrera is a lifestyle activist at the intersection of land and community.  Having pioneered a niche in cooperative real estate and co-founded two intentional communities, Cassandra is a deeply curious and courageous practitioner serving community projects at the edge of cultural evolution. Her work has led to an unique understanding of the complex financial, legal, political, and personal factors involved with creating intentional community and she serves as a valuable resource to cultural visionaries seeking to land their visions and live their values. The quest to serve the movement deeply and broadly led her to co-found CommonSpace Community Land Trust in Sonoma County, and serve as a board member to the Foundation for Intentional Communities. Both of these organizations are committed to land liberation and racial justice. Cassandra is a mother of two and partnered well with another true communitarian.  They live in deep emotional partnership with another family and together are embedded in a very rich community setting called Landwell in Sonoma County, California. Cassandra is committed to learning to listen to the plants, trees, animals and land as the more human world guides us into healing and regeneration.  

Milana Shamuri

Milana Shamuri has been known for drawing together diverse ideas, skills and ways of living from ancient spiritual disciplines to help encourage harmonious relationship between people and Mother Earth. Co-founder of Ecological hotels in Tulum such Ahau Group, Alaya Tulum, Raw Love Raw vegan super food restaurant. Co-Founder of Paititi institute in Peru a 4000 hectare Incan Sanctuary that for nine years has been dedicated to permaculture education which creates vibrant, local food economies. Paititi's food forests and gardens serve as an educational model as well as utilizing indigenous medicine practices and natural healing modalities. Milana’s vision is to co-create communities with a greater purpose and service. As well as she’s trained in clinical nutrition, started doing yoga at a very young age and teaching in her early twenties. She has also studied integrative medicine and functional medicine.