This year's Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) European conference took place in the Krishna Valley community in Hungary. Thomas Heuser from ZEGG attended. He was particularly impressed at how thoroughly the spiritual community have implemented their ecological beliefs, dramatically reducing the ecological footprint for their 200-strong community.
For its self-sufficiency, the community only needs 1.4 hectares per person; our Earth could feed everybody if each person reduced their footprint to 1.9ha. What technology do we really need? This is a central question at Krishna Valley, where the community is putting into practice its aim of producing the grain it needs only using human and ox power. Additionally, it is not connected to the public electricity grid.
At the GEN Europe annual meeting, the eco-villages elected a new council - including Thomas Heuser from ZEGG! Together with four other members (Jana Mohaupt from Tamera, Macaco Tamerice from Damanhur, Zoltán Hosszú from Krishna Valley and Alfonso Flaquer Carreras from the Spanish network of communities) he will work for the next two years to promote and publicise the vision of GEN Europe. "It came as a surprise when I was nominated. But in the same moment it was clear that I was needed and that I was happy to make my knowledge and effort available to the network." The work for the GEN Europe Council is voluntary.
We congratulate Thomas Heuser and look forward to hosting the next meeting of the council in September in ZEGG.
Next year, July 2013, the GEN conference will take place in Switzerland at the Schweibenalp eco-village. We can thoroughly recommend attendance to anyone interested in meeting very inspiring and inspired people from a wide range of communities. This is one of the strengths of GEN: its members are very different but have strong common principles.
IMPORTANT: It is very easy to support the Global Ecovillage Network in its efforts to convey its international message: "A different world already exists." You can find out more here: http://gen-europe.org/join-us/become-a-member/index.htm
