During the previous cycle, around September, we came together to celebrate our sixth assembly. The theme was horizontality, as a word that describes our collective process of decision making, sense making and creating opportunities for responsability, our ability to respond.
Day 1: In this cycle of the Alliance, What individual/collective learnings you want to share?
Maura:
- Some of the things that came is self-preservation and self-care
- Changing worklife so it no longer is the problem.
- Positive feedback to work together.
- Live as anti-capital, anticolonial beings in a world that celebrate the things that we are not celebrating collectively we can work on those things.
- Anxiety and worry we need to care for also, selfcare.
- Learning from the more than human to focus.Sierra
Sierra:
- We shared around the collective learning of taking it slow, rest, staying with the trouble, exploring with the more than human, learning with the earth, the territory as ecoversity, more grounded spirituality, collective spiritual, complex ecology, learning with myscelium, ecological process that we are part of, recalibration between rebalancing, pandemia and online and offline worlds
Bhawna:
- As human beings we are more than life. Dead doula, how to coop with grief, attachments, how we are attached with anything, being in a living body we get so attached to everything and how we understand attachment.
Yeyo:
- Interrelationality that is in the Alliance activities and how this creates a sense of care and sense making ere we can feel that we are cared and hold by the others
- We talked about this intentionality of language justice and the advantages that have happened.
- The trilingual global gathering in Brazil was great
- Pausing to make everyone listen to each other
- We talked about the pollinization and how is more complex, mixed, exchanged, the adventour of midwife and visit from different places. Flora has been pollinizing in Chile.
- The importance of germinatiors and a symbolic seed fund – alliance.
- Openness of the alliance that creates a space for everyone.
- Diversity is good, advantage, encounters and disencounters – we are weaving community and family.
- If reimagining education is the field we play, the ball is relationality ‘Si reimaginar la educación es la cancha donde jugamos, los recursos el balón, el nombre del juego es relacionalidad.
Tarika:
- People with similar intention come together things seems well
- Language of love – beyond languages in gatherings
- Coming together bring a lot of strength instead of doing things individually
In regard of the current cycle: what has been your experience on your service circles of ecoversities?
Bianca:
- Learnings of the global gathering circle; I was sharing we make care central to the work of what we are doing. We need a bigger group doing that. New people to showed up. People doing more things. More intentional harvest doing the gathering.
- Big participation of youth – shake the alliance – they have created a group – how do we create and hold the space to make them enter? There are a lot of things to figure out about how to make them part of these spaces.
- Conflict transformation- composting – time and effort to acompany and compost – lost a lot of energy and people are not approaching them anymore.
Maura:
- Financial money aspect: many conflicts come from this, the system itself.
- I’m hoping we can start a series of conversations that will start with that.
Alicia:
- Board of things that we can share and offer to the community.
- Share a bit about architecture from my perspective.
- Sandrita – the beautiful idea of doing residencies with tematic idea of movement.
- Some parts of this knowledge – thematic ways or perspectives
- There is so much to learn about architecture and we all have the need to gather more people, prepare food in different ways – share with more people.
- Things that we are trying to figure out, we can be together, we are a big family.
Albert:
- Deathversities.
- What emerged of the 3 of us is the need to bring the awarnesses of dead in the collective. Sometimes we merge the survival strategies so we don’t allow ourselves to connect in a deeper level. We are good at opening portals but not that good at closing portals. Otherwise all of our energy escapes, we need some awareness and sensibility on how to create the rituals that honor that. Shifting energies
Joao:
- Fermenting.
- Gatherings, reflections about the challenges of creating gatherings.
- What is the periodicity that could accompany them.
- In this planetary gathering – what is the time … maybe more slow and with more intentionality – more meaningful ‘’ the challenge that we have was deeply called – a group to make means with the intention to contribute to the alliance – difficulties in understanding what it means to be at service –
- Articulate archetypes to make understandable the possibilities to how to be heard and how to make, how can we create these archetypes of metaphors that could serve the collective?
Day 2: If the best were to happen in the next three years, how would it look for the alliance?
Wangüi – Noni – Albert: maybe there will be more money put towards our regional gathering, it is quite difficult to travel within regions, and we like to put resources on meeting more people, There are other resources, such as really increasing the capacity into translation, into afrikan languages, we struggle, also into translating other afrikan languages, such as regional afrikan elders, old people are not speaking english, neither they are speaking french, how do we weave that into the network, if we are creating more spaces of the sacred and spirituality, how we actually get more capacity, thinking from the region, germinator seed fund, there is already a movement between the Indian Multiversities, how to connect to more sources of founding, how can we give more money to initiatives that are beginning, and also accompaniment.
This is linked to that, I would love to see more collaborative projects, as there is so much potential, so much awesome offerings, as I am seeing this in the reimagining education conference. They are putting it on their own schemes. We also would love to have clarity to how people join the network, I would really love to have an passport that belongs to the ecoverse, a global recognized passport, which says the ecoverse, and nobody will ask you anything, it can take you to any part of the world without struggles. In Eastern Cape, my big dream is EMANDULO, which is a Wellness Village, which is coming up soon. And of course an Ecoversities airplane, with a pilot. My very first foodversity in Afrika by 2026.
Tarika – Yeyo: I was with Yeyo, my big dream was to see an actual address for people in different gatherings can stay a day or two, a space where you can recreate the space for creation, the feeling of home and soul. About Yeyo he would also like to support more locally where the gathering is happening, workshops by skillful and knowledgeable people, holding 5 or 6 day workshops, expanding the resources and purpose. Ashramversity
Bianca: my dream for ecoversities in brazil, we can expand these connections to formal schools, because even though we have advanced dialogue in terms of educational spaces, my dream would be to expand this based on what we lived in the gathering, to be able to connect with public schools, that sometimes advance and sometimes go back.
Jayashree: coordinate more with the Indian Multiversities Alliance and Ecoversities.
Salomon – Flor – Joao: we also dreamt about this ecoversities passport. We would like to have map all these ecoversities places where we can go. And also connect more with our emotions and our sensitivities, and have these spaces for introspection. What I also understood is having these learning exchanges within the ecoversities, for our dreams, for our projects, we could have this really easy way to connect with our projects, more residencies, more projects.
Delia: the biggest dream to create their own currency, that is really useful for supporting our own projects.
Sierra – Jayashree – Maura: direct activism, defense of the earth, land defenders across the world. Bringing closer connection between Indian multiversities and ecoversities. Land defenders across the world. More bridging between inter-generational work especially with youth and children. Supporting families, parents, caregivers who are terrified of moving their young ones out of normal schooling to independent learning spaces. Holding short term workshops, in various subjects where our people have expertise. Growing food, food security, water management, healthcare, living conversations around capitalism and living in a society that doesn’t support our ways of being.
Asato: listening from the heart in coming to Brazil.
Horizontality: The next three years
Andrea: we now have the possibility of finding more funders, right now we have one funder. We are getting the funds, a grant for three years now, this invites a little more stability, around the resources that the alliance has. This is also a possibility of changing somethings. We received funds from FCF, every year they ask us to submit, concept notes, full proposal. When you receive your funds, we all need to read your reports, in the reports we find all the stories that you put together in your reports. This year, we have some set groups where we put the money. The alliance works in service circles, on these categories that work for the proposal. Each year we are receiving $115,000, and we divide it by these categories.
Sierra: Nesting our horizontality (…) all of us we have been programmed into how organizations, nonprofits, businesses, collectives in modern society work, how decisions are made, and often these are top down, often it is easier to show up in a space and have someone tell you what to do. And so part of our path is how we redistribute, decision making, sense making, response ability, to the wisdom that we each have to discern what direction the collective needs to go in. and I think it is a slow path of unlearning, but we have already come long ways, with the capacity we have right now. This past circle has have three or five new circles, not necessarily because of there was money, but just because of this necessity to co-create in service to the collective. (…) Each of us has the ability, the possibility and the responsibility of create these changes for the service of the whole (…) These assemblies exist as a touch point, for us to come back, collectively sense into, what needs more support, how to open and close different processes. We are all learning together.
Response-ability: How can we make these dreams a reality, how do we ground them into this reality?
Bianca – Yeyo – Bianca: bringing more financial resources to abya yala, and how we can gather around this initiative together, a bit about not only the service circles at the global level, but how can we also support other groups, either through collaborative projects, but also thematic residencies, a deepening of the interest that we have, in Ubatuba there is a group of people that say, let’s work toward a common learning process, takes into account different cosmovisions. Camilo touched upon support circles, that are pretty abundant in Latin America. The need for a circle that touches more into the spiritual needs of the alliance. A curiosity towards the youth movement that emerged during the global gathering. Radical hospitality.
Salomon: More Residencies, so that we could have a passport, where we can do things. After being in Brazil, I would love to stay in touch with Maria Agraciada, and Fabian. I would love to find other funds, one or two more people more people to join. There is the support. Commitment from both sides. Specific Exchanges between Brazil and Ecuador. If people can join. have this person, or group of people help to connect the financial service circles, just to remind the process and the things that they have to do, just to have a clear explanation of what is needed, from this service circles of finances.
Maura: Noni is interested in working with the land, she is seeking for some help for making a proposal. Nina suggested a monthly wisdom sharing space. I’m personally working on these web conversations around capitalism, and finances.
Harsh: can we increase the money for the ecoversities regional gathering fund, each region, needs to have at least $5,000.
Gerardo: Flora is exploring a gathering abya yala in chile, a second thing she wishes to participate, next year, sensemaking and care circle.
Madhuri: mapping multiversities alliance, mapping ideas, resources, so that individuals collectives.
Noni, Sandra, Maria Agraciada: spiritual healing sessions, healing grandmothers, Noni can help writing your proposal.
Summary of the 6th Assembly: Nesting our Response-ability & Celebrating our Horizontality
- Celebrations: the new cycle proposal has been approved! guaranteed Funding for the Next Three Years of Ecoversities, hooray; Donations Page Online!; Regional Welcome Calls: Eco-letras Ecoversities Book Authors Presentations: Youthversities; Grandmother Circle; Waterversities; Audiovisuals Lab AuLab; Creation of Regional Weavers Circle; A Tri-lingual Global Gathering in Brazil; Partnership with Enlivened Cooperative to receive funds; +1100 participants in the REC 4.0; III Afrikan Regional Gathering!; V Latin American Gathering; ongoing workshops with Conflict Composters and Sensemaking and Care Circles.
- Regional Support and Collaborations: more emphasis on the support, care and attention required for empowering local communities and their regional gatherings. Various proposals around thematic residencies or learning exchanges. Such as increasing budget for Regional Gatherings, observation that has been integrated for this cycle proposal.
- Coordination and increased capacity on fundraising: a call for the alliance for a coordinated effort to secure more funds to support their regions.
- Resourcing our Horizontality: we are beginning in putting our dreams, gifts and projects in common, practicing gift economy, acquiring capacity to make change in our communities, celebrating our richness.
- Youthversities: how do we involve the youth in the processes of the alliance?
- Deathversities: the alliance is great at opening spaces, what about closing them with the proper rituals and practices?
- Relationality, Learning with the Earth, the Sacred: an awareness of our intimacy with the territory is emerging within Ecoversities, by the rise of various innitiatives that celebrate Life and Learning with the Biosphere.
Invitations + What to do next?
- If you are a Service Circle Member please fill the Ecoversities Playground Miro Board Waterfall with your reflections and learnings from your service circle!
- Website Form “This form is designed to collect your valuable opinions and suggestions on how we can improve our website, making it a better resource and representation for our ecoversity community.” https://forms.gle/
ttNRMsAHBqLYkwJx6 - Offerings & Needs Form “What are you missing in your toolkit that would you like to learn? What are the topics that are calling to you right now? What help are you needing right now that can be offered on an online space? What do you have in abundance of knowledge and practice that you want to share? What spaces do you want to open for others? Open to any member of the alliance!” https://forms.gle/
a9s9c58Rd2o2tNB68 - If you want to be part of the volunteer team to organize the next Assembly, please contact Andrea.
- Join the Ecoversities Alliance Google Calendar of Offerings and add your events there!
Closing Remarks
Thank you for joining us in the assembly. We honor the light and fire that were brought to this assembly to accompany our thoughts, dreams, and ideas. Wanting to keep walking together, trying to understand, in our many languages (body, soul, words, meanings), what that means. We hope to connect soon. With love,
Andrea, Sierra, Yeyo, Marco and Albert
