The Erasmus+ funded REGEN4ALL project was launched in Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon, in March, where project partners met for the first time to kick off this year-long project based on ecovillage research.
The purpose of the ReGEN4All project is to serve researchers, practitioners, and adult educators from ecovillages and academia as well as policy makers on all levels in order to make the knowledge gained within and through ecovillages more accessible both for research and policy decisions on sustainable lifestyles and living environments.
As a practitioner, ecovillager or an educator, it can be hard to reach ecovillage related research, to know it is there and to be able to use it in their work. Without access or capacity to find this research, it will stay hidden and not used. Everybody will have an interest in making ecovillage related research more known and utilised, therefore the project partners have set the target to create links and make research easily accessible.
he project partners are GEN Europe (represented by GEN Research), ISCTE-IUL (Center for International Studies / University Institute of Lisbon), ECOLISE and LOES, the Danish Ecovillage Network.
This project is a starting point for a flourishing cooperation between researchers, educators and practitioners. Within the project the aim is to create Communities of Practice within those target groups, both on a national and European scale. The partners will create a web-platform that contains a matching system between ecovillage researchers and ecovillages, a database that contains a collection of literature about ecovillage research and a code of conduct on how to approach ecovillages as a researcher – and for ecovillages how to handle researchers conducting research in their ecovillages. Furthermore, the project will hold an online colloquium series of presentations and discussions between researchers and practitioners.
The greater picture is to create an international and decentralised research institute for ecovillage research on all levels of GEN in close collaboration with academic institutions and advocacy institutions such as ECOLISE.