Earth Friends Intentional Community

Mission: To bring forth a spiritually fulfilling, ecologically and environmentally restorative, socially just human presence on this planet by co-creating and living in community with this purpose as the founding intention.

From www.ic.org/directory/earth-friends-intentional-community/:

Motivation
Major change is upon us brought about by the consequences of over consumption and the commodification of life to feed an economic system that requires endless growth. Climate change, unpredictable weather patterns, peak oil, toxic food production systems, economic disparity, social inequality and mass species extinction are just a few of the consequences that we are facing. We know the status quo is unsustainable and the future we are currently creating is precarious at best.

At the same time, our hearts know that a more beautiful world is possible. Only through recognizing our spiritual connection to the web of life around us can we be the change we wish to see in the world.

Vision
A spiritually fulfilling, ecologically and environmentally restorative, socially just human presence on this planet.

Mission
To co-create an equitable, resilient intentional community prepared to face the current and future challenges of our time by living in sacred relationship with ourselves, each other and the web of life around us and in collaboration with other intentional communities.

About Us
We are a couple looking for other potential founders.

Community land has not yet been acquired. Ideally we plan to locate in the Northeastern US on diverse property that offers both woodland and cropland suitable for supplying energy, growing most of our own produce for food, fiber and medicine and allowing space for community growth in the coming years. The community members will cooperatively own the land, vehicles and other property, with both shared and private living space.

We seek to cultivate much of what we need from the land and each other as well as exchange with the surrounding community through food production, cottage industries/crafts, educational offerings, retail sales, and hosting visitors in a possible hostel and wellness/retreat center.

We welcome the participation of people of all ages, ethnicities, sexual orientation, gender identification and family structures. We welcome people of all faiths and honor religious beliefs and practices within the community to the extent that they are harmonious with our principles.

Community Principles
We support each other’s spiritual development.

We consciously nurture our individual and collective growing edge and are grounded in the belief that all things must change in order to evolve.

We take a stand for life with our voices and actions.

We live our lives in a way that unravels learned behaviors that contribute to a sense of separation from the web of life around us as well as contributing to oppressive behaviors, systems and structures.

We maintain regular self-care practices like meditation, yoga and exercise in order to practice mindfulness that enhances the collective well-being.

We work with the land and intimately know the land as our home.

We celebrate our sacred relationship with the land through a natural systems-based spirituality - making offerings, asking permission, and engaging in deep listening to our environment in guiding our decisions regarding land and resource use.

We grow a large portion of the organic food we eat using regenerative farming practices.
We are bringing forth an environmentally rejuvenating way of life so that what we do improves the capability of the environment to support life indefinitely.

Permaculture design and development is a major source of inspiration in meeting our goal of having a net positive impact through radically applying the principles of reduction, reuse, and recycling to all our decisions regarding consumption.

We commit to learning and practicing non-violent, compassionate communication and to engaging in sharing circles.

We participate in circles of engagement for the purpose of creating meaningful discussion, companionship and learning around many different topics and aspects of life and with this awareness we create an environment that allows the possible emergence of a larger “we”.

We nurture love, respect, joy, laughter, art, music, movement and expression as part of our daily life practice.

Our days are filled with community meals, work projects, rituals and celebrations.

We are committed to inclusive governance and decision-making through processes that are based in distributed authority and shared leadership such as holacracy or sociocracy.

We continually explore the nature, structure and outcomes of our processes understanding the need for their evolution.

We are committed to offering educational opportunities for our children within the community that respect individual learning paths while nurturing interdependence.

A service of the Data Commons Co-op. The project has been supported by Equal Exchange, the Cooperative Charitable Trust, the USDA, and many others - thank you! Tech volunteers over the years include: Benjamin Bradley with support from GAIA Host. Ben Mauer with support from Quilted. Paul Fitzpatrick. Ronin Tech Collective, Brattleboro Tech Collective, Sligo Computer Services. Jason Lemieux. Default map tiles courtesy of MapQuest. Default map data (c) OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA.