Make sure to pass along this email to your community!

Dear GEN Europe Community,

In community,

Franziska and Lena

for the GEN Europe Team

🔍 Content table

1. News from GEN EU

• Re-live the Gathering
• Reminder: Please fill in Gathering Feedback Forms
• Adult Education InfoSession
• Save the Date: Vision & Purpose of GEN Europe
• GEN Europe's General Assembly Report
• Resource Recommendations for Member Area
• ESC recruitment at GEN Europe is starting
• Join the new Fundraising Working Group

2. News from around the network

• News from GEN Ukraine
• Reflections from the GA 2026: Intergenerational Transition and the Future of Community
• Help Sustain Tamera's Escola da Esperança Project
• Women's Natural Buildings Retreat
• Upcoming SAGE Online Workshops: Exploring Sustainability Competences
• Confluência - practicing belonging & stewardship
• Living as a Soul Online Course
• Join the CHOICE Community of Storytellers
• Ethics – Lighthouse for the future of Humanity Conference
• New Online Course Platform launched by Gaia Education

3.  Volunteer and Erasmus+ training opportunities

• Last Call for ESC Volunteers in a Ecobuilding Project in Ängsbacka
• ESC group project - YES! to Sustainability Autumn team 2026
• Permaculture Internship at Schloss Glarisegg
• ESC volunteering at Progetto Gaia Terra

4. Trainings & Courses

• LeadHERship Webinar Series
• Community Organizing with ECON

5. Invitations from our partners

• European Day of Sustainable Communities turns 10
• Let the EU know where EU rules get in the way of community-led housing

More than a month has passed since we gathered at Nature Community, and yet the Gathering stays with us - in the friendships formed, the conversations that opened new doors, and the quiet shifts in how we see what's possible together. To help those memories stay vivid, we have compiled a newsletter that brings you the Gathering Photo Album and the Aftermovie, alongside recordings of our keynote sessions as well as an essay from keynote speaker Martin Winiecki, and new offerings of Nonviolent Global Liberation for our network

Thank you for being a part of this year's Gathering at Nature Community! To help us continue growing and creating even more meaningful experiences in the future, we would be deeply grateful if you could take a few minutes to share your thoughts through our evaluation forms linked below. 

👉 Participant evaluation form

👉Workshop holder evaluation form (only workshop holders!)

📅 September 7th 2026 at 18:00 CET |📍Online

Are you interested in Erasmus+ opportunities in Adult Education and curious about how you or your organization can get involved? Join this interactive Q&A session. After registering, you will receive access to two introductory webinars, which will help you prepare questions. There will also be time to exchange experiences, network and share information about courses, job shadowing and other possibilities within our network.

👉 More about Adult Education and its benefits here!

📅 October 7th at 18:00 CET |📍Online

We're continuing our conversations on GEN Europe's vision and purpose! We've integrated your feedback from the General Assembly and want to discuss it together with you.

In September, we'll send out a registration form - you'll also get the chance to review the tweaked version beforehand.

Aspiring Member Representatives are warmly invited to take part in the process. However, they will not be able to vote at the end of the full process.

In July 2026 we came together in Nature Community for GEN Europe's General Assembly. The 2026 General Assembly of GEN Europe brought together representatives of GEN Europe members for three days of reconnection, learning, as well as formal decision-making. The event combined community-building, thematic workshops, and the network's official annual business. The full report is now published online.

We are currently working on refreshing GEN Europe's member area! Do you have any recommendations for books, podcasts, articles or videos that could be of interest for other members? Let us know, so they can be shared with the network :)

We are happy to share that GEN Europe is starting the recruitment ESC volunteers for the next volunteering period, starting between March 1st and 30th 2027.

As an ESC volunteer at GEN Europe, you will become part of an international team of volunteers and staff and contribute to a variety of activities connected to the network's work. Positions include IT Assistance, Project Management, Communications & Graphic Design, Event Management and Membership.

👉 More information here!

📅 Apply by 20 September | First meeting in October |📍Online

GEN Europe is opening its newly constituted Fundraising Working Group, and is inviting members who want to join it.

A lot of GEN Europe's work is currently paid for by EU project funding, which decides the theme, the timeline and the partners. This group exists to open other doors, so our work follows what communities need.

It is also a place to learn together. Nearly every community faces the same question: how to fund the work without distorting it. Some of our members have negotiated with foundations, run crowdfunders, built member economies. That knowledge rarely travels between us. Here it can, and it goes back into your projects as much as into GEN Europe's. The first task is a shared mapping of what our communities do, what it costs, and how it is funded.

Questions: dario@gen-europe.org

We will announce the first meeting date at the end of September to those who fill the form.

From representing Ukraine at the European Ecovillage Gathering 2026 in Germany and hosting international strategy weeks to traveling eco-festivals, peace tours, and Web3 regeneration tools: the GEN Ukraine network—now uniting over 60 ecovillages and sustainable initiatives—shares key updates from Summer 2026.

During a sharing circle taking place at the General Assembly 2026, a group of participants discussed intergenerational transition and the future of community. The group created a text without confidential information, so the findings could be shared with the wider network.

Tamera is launching a crowdfunding campaign for their Learning Community - the Escola da Esperança Project. For over a decade, more than 80 children from Tamera and the wider Alentejo region have grown up together in a community-driven homeschooling initiative thanks to this project. To ensure the project’s full stability through August 2027, they need to raise €85,000.

📅 September 7th to September 14th |📍Algave, Portugal

Join Essência in celebrating the feminine with learning how to design and build a clay house, practice yoga in the morning and sing, move, share together in the evenings. There will be only women, creating a safe & supportive environment for each other surrounded by beautiful nature. Bring your friends and let's get muddy!

📅 Starting September 9th from 18:00 to 20:00 CET|📍Online

Are you interested in sustainability education, ecological transition and creating more regenerative communities? Join the upcoming free online workshop series organized within the SAGE project. The workshop topics include Adaptability, Exploratory Thinking, Political Agency and Collective Action.
People residing in Germany, Poland and Spain will also have the opportunity to take part in an training course at Arterra Bizimodu in Spain, taking place from the 6th to 12th November 2026.

📅 September 24th to September 27nd |📍Aviario, Portugal

This September, Traditional Dream Factory (TDF) invites you for the first edition of Confluência: an intimate and co-created gathering exploring TDF's role as a meeting point for the local and bioregional regenerative movement. This gathering brings together people working across six interconnected themes that we believe are essential for regenerative futures: Land Stewardship, Bioregional Development, Social Activism, Post-Capitalist Organising, Local Integration as well as Finance & Resourcing.

📅 Starting October 27th |📍Online

Drawing upon the map, compass and guidebook provided by the Ageless Wisdom teachings and holistic psychology, this course will explore and make sense of the journey of the Soul on Earth in seven online sessions. This course offers an introduction to the navigational skills and applied wisdom practices that help us successfully face the tests and accomplish the tasks that face the Soul each lifetime.

📅 Starting in September |📍Online

The CHOICE project is launching the Community Storytellers Lab: a digital storytelling program for people who want to document and share the stories behind community-led housing initiatives across Europe. The digital storytelling lab is more than a communications training. It is a collaborative space where participants will learn to document community experiences, reflect on the challenges and opportunities facing community-led housing, and turn these stories into tools for advocacy.

👉 Application deadline extended to the 15th of September!

📅 November 20th to November 22nd |📍Online

Join in this three-days online program for a profound and transformative experience. It will be an opportunity to explore and perceive the ethics that might serve Humanity now in this time of transition. It is also about how we step forward together to BECOME the lighthouse which radiates these ethics.

👉 Early Bird Booking starting on September 1st!

Gaia Education is launching a completely new online course platform designed to make your learning journey more engaging, interactive, and flexible than ever before. They are launching the platform two courses:

👉 Introduction to Gaia Education Regenerative Design (free)
👉 Design for Regeneration and Sustainability (Starting 12/10/26)

They are offering EVERYONE a 50% discount with the code GEDS 50 on the full Design for Sustainability and Regeneration course to celebrate this new step with them.

📅 September 14th to October 26th |📍Molkom, Sweden

Ängsbacka is still missing a few volunteers to join their 6 week ESC program for our Eco-building Forest Village Project. Ängsbacka will be carrying out a large-scale eco-construction project to create what they call our Forest Village. They are looking for volunteers who are passionate about community, sustainability, and hands-on projects, highly motivated people ready to dedicate their energy to practical work and communal involvement.

👉 Find out more about the ESC program here! 

📅 October 6th to October 21st | 📍Zavod Veles, Slovenia

This ESC activity will take place a sustainable initiative farm. The schedule will include various activities, mainly practical with explanations from different fields of sustainable practices while working (permaculture farming, natural construction, community living, social permaculture, social entrepreneurship, energy resources, water cycle on the estate, natural cosmetics) but also serving and supporting the events for others.

👉 More information here!

📅 January to November 2027 |📍Steckborn, Switzerland

Dive deeply into vegetable gardening, composting, keeping ducks and chickens and take the unique chance to participate in the Ecovillage Design Education course. Come join us to live and learn in Glarisegg, nestled between forest and lake.

👉Apply by August 31: Message info@permakultur-bodensee.ch with a short CV, your motivation, previous experience & some photos

📅 Two new positions for a six-month project available every three months |📍Rivignano Teor, Italy

Progetto Gaia Terra (PGT) is an experiential educational centre focused on themes of eco-sustainable construction, environmental regeneration, and relational maturity. The main objective of PGT is to practice and promote sustainable lifestyles on various levels: environmental, relational, work/educational, contributing to the transformation of society. To achieve this goal, it has launched an ecological village project for the experimentation of practices and theories in the field of community building.

👉 More about this ESC opportunity here! 

👉 More about Gaia Terra here! 

📅 Starting September 15th from 18:00 to 20:00 CET |📍Online

We are excited to invite you to our LeadHERship Webinar Series, created specifically to support, connect, and empower women in rural and remote communities!

As part of our Erasmus+ project LeadHERship: Strengthening Women’s Networks, this online webinar series brings together women to explore empowerment and our connection to feminine energy through body expression and movement, creative and reflective methods, experiential practices, honest conversations and shared experiences, self-awareness and personal growth, practical tools, models, and non-formal learning approaches.

📅 October 3rd to October 10th 2026|📍Different sites in Spain

Interested in strengthening movements and building long-term power for social and ecological change? ECON is offering a training on Transformative Organizing which will explore how to move beyond short-term campaigns and build lasting alliances, collective power and strategies for structural change. The training is aimed at people involved in social and ecological justice, activism and community organizing.

Erasmus+ opportunity: If your organization has an Adult Education Erasmus+ grant, this type of training may be eligible to be covered by the grant. 

📅 21 to 27 September 2026 |📍Across Europe

ECOLISE's European Day of Sustainable Communities turns 10 this September. For a week, communities across Europe open their doors to show community-led action in practice.

This edition features 70+ policy dialogues linking communities with local decision-makers, plus ten stories on themes from renewable energy to housing and circular economy. If your community would like to host one, ECOLISE has published a practical toolkit on how to organise a policy dialogue.

📅 Deadline 30 September

GEN Europe, coordinating the CHOICE project, is deepening its work on community-led housing. On June 29 the EU Council adopted Conclusions naming community-led housing models as good practice, and the Commission has opened a call for evidence on the Housing Simplification Package -a rare chance to document, in writing, where EU rules hinder ecovillages, cooperatives and other community-led housing initiatives.

ECOLISE is coordinating a joint response and needs real examples: if your community has faced legal or regulatory obstacles building or acquiring property together, your experience is exactly what's needed.

👉 Write to policy@ecolise.eu if you want to contribute.

Make sure to pass along this email to your community!

We're excited to hear from you. Share your contributions with us using the form below.