Ecovillages – the dream, the prevention and the preparation
For me, Ecovillages are one of the answers to creating a healthy society. They are many people’s dream lifestyle, part of the prevention of environmental collapse and are also the preparation in case things do get hard ie Ecovillages are the dream, the prevention and the preparation all in one solution. I’d like to see many more villages created – hundreds or thousands – all around the world. Planting millions of trees, regenerating land, creating housing, localising economy, jobs and food security, creating green energy and caring for people. In short, regenerating people, land, culture and economy.
Ecovillages can fail due to their complexity
Whilst Ecovillages are the dream of many, most ecovillage projects either outright fail or fail to meet some of their goals. They are complex things that need a lot of expertise, energy, time and financing. Many fail even before the start due to groups collapsing, planning issues or not enough finance. Many end up being nice green places to live but have lost their soul due to things like group conflict, power dynamics, burn out and lack of ongoing funding. Ecovillage projects are often conceived and developed by groups in isolation, so we end up with many different groups solving the same problems without support from each other.
Wild Community address the critical success factors of financing, expertise and management
Wild Community’s vision is to create a healthy society through the development of ecovillages around the world. We address some of the key areas that are critical to the success of Ecovillages – financing, expertise and management services.
Wild Community consists of five components:
- The Wild Community Fund provides an attractive impact investment vehicle to mainstream real estae investors. The fund aims to channel some of the trillions of dollars going into property development around the world into developing Ecovillages. It is a social enterprise and will donate 30% of its profits and free use of intellectual property to the Foundation.
- The Wild Community Foundation creates social, economic and environmental impact in areas most needed by accessing philanthropic, NGO and government funding
- A global Network of Wild Community Ecovillages – Independent interconnected communities
- The Wild Community Solutions Hub provides services, education, coaching, business incubation, a design centre of excellence and Impact Assessment to the fund, foundation and the villages
- Four Solution Stacks providing proven Social, Digital, Environmental and Business solutions
Each Ecovillage is self governing within the bounds of “Regenerative practices only” and this boundary is stewarded by the Fund. Wild Community’s general practice is to land bank, ie we will never sell the villages – unless the residents want that at the outset. The legal structure ensures the investors have no governance control over the villages. Having a network of villages creates many benefits including – buying power, resource sharing, breadth of expertise all lowering the costs for villagers and providing the opportunity to create new and innovative housing and economic models for the ecovillages.
Benefits all areas of sustainability – Regenerating people, land, culture and economy
Wild Community’s success will mean that more Ecovillages and less mainstream housing will be developed. Each Ecovillage contributes to preventing the climate crisis and addresses all the UN’s SDGs. The benefits of creating ecovillages are many and varied and include: creating new businesses, increased jobs and skills, boosts the local economy, creates innovation, protects cultural heritage, carbon sequestration, lowers the carbon footprint, increases biodiversity and food security, improves nutrition and personal wellness, revitalises distressed neighbourhoods, promotes economic and social integration building community cohesion, reduces social service costs, breaks intergenerational cycles of poverty and reduces crime. Just to name a few of the benefits of well designed Ecovillages.
The Hub provides numerous benefits including: improved education, solutions, outcomes and impacts ie villages have better environmental, economic, cultural, social and whole system design outcomes, communities are more resilient. It lowers the administration burden creating improved government compliance, reduced costs, allowing villagers to focus on their life rather than admin. It improves knowledge capture creating positive feedback loops.
The fund gives investors an attractive impact investment option in the real estate investment space. This provides investors with safe returns, diversifies their portfolios (investors love diversification) and allows them to do good in the world.
Where are we at: Looking for funding, projects, residents and team members
Wild Community concept has been defined. The team is being built and partnerships formed. We are currently looking for our initial seed funding to set the legal entities up, hire the initial team, stand up the core organisation and perform the first found of investment funding. We intend to target $100 million in the first round of investment funding through private placement from high net worth individuals and by running a crowdfunding campaign. The crowdfunding is important as it will help to educate and market the ecovillage lifestyle to the mainstream. We are loosely targeting six to twelve months to finalise the first round of investment funding form the date of securing the seed investment.
We have established our social media outreach called Wild Open (www.wildopen.net) whose primary purpose is to reach into people’s lives through their devices and encourage them to find a deeper connection to nature, because if we don’t connect to nature we won’t love it and if we don’t love it we won’t protect it. Essentially Wild Open writes deeply about ecovillage lifestyles and mindsets.
Participate by investing, donating, registering a project or your interest in living in an Ecovillage or becoming a team member
If the Wild Community vision excites you there are a few different ways you can participate in the project. Firstly sign up to our email list at www.wildcommunity.org to receive updates of our progress. If you are interested in developing a village, living in an ecovillage, invest into the Fund or donating to the Foundation then contact us using the contact page on our website. Lastly, you can join the Wild Community team or our advisory team – we are currently looking for people with many different skill sets.