Permakultura

Meeting of European National Networks at Tori Superiore, Liguria, Italy

January 2014

Tori Superiore is situated in the beautiful valley crossed by the river, with small waterfalls stream down from leafy mountainsides. For many of us it is unusual to see leafs on trees and flowers at this time of the year.

First European National Networks Meeting took place in summer 2013 during last GEN Conference in Shweibenalp, where we have decided to meet again in January 2014.

At Tori we could meet In larger group. Over 25 people from 12 European National Networks (also not formal registered networks) participated in the meeting. Thanks to Urlika Schimmel and Anna Kovasna, who organized the meeting, Lucilla Borio, our facilitator, and whole community from Tori the meeting took place with extremely friendly atmosphere, enjoyment, the spirit of cooperation.

More or less we knew each other, but during the meeting we created closer relations between us. It was a good place to get to know much more about other national networks, their history, characteristics, their highlights and challenges.

The form of the meeting was unusual. Everyone was involved in the creation of the meeting, the substantive content as well as activities between working time. The mixture of songs, games, exercises with meaningful mind work made for going forwards with appointed plan of topics. We discussed about cooperation, education, partnership between networks, political strategies, fundraising possibilities, exchanges, mobility between national networks. Incredible how many topics we worked on in so short time.

It was very intensive, powerful meeting, and also very fruitful. We made some agreements, which are now realized in international team. Working together in cooperation benefits to us all.

Interesting people around, inspirational talks…, and behind the window almost all the time was raining. The sound of rain had a soothing effect on the brain work and created homely atmosphere. The time was running up so fast, with coffee/tea or food intervals. But interesting talks, discussions you could hear everywhere till late night…

I have the impression that everyone in our international group found for himself the niche and because of cultural diversity we could create harmonious completeness. This harmonious cooperation is an example and hope for balanced, peaceful, new civilization which I think everyone of us hold in the heart.

Monika Podsiadła