This is our 8th Ecoversities Assembly: Entangling Worlds, that we held on August 9th, 2025. These spaces are especially for those who have been part of any Service Circle in the history of the Ecoversities Network. We gather to bring together threads from different conversations that have emerged across the alliance — to share, support, and deepen our collective learning.
This time we adjusted the schedule to be more inclusive for different time zones, especially in Asia and the Pacific region. We will be switching it up in future meetings so it’s not always inconvenient for the same people. We had the intention of navigating three important issues and opportunities for learning that are currently alive for us, these are: the Website Makeover, Solidarity and Finacial Abundance.
The Notes!
1. Financial Abundance Facilitated by the Financial Abundance Circle
- How do we steward the resources we’ve collectively raised?
- Who decides, and how?
- What practices can reflect our values of relationality and trust?
- Put money towards solidarity/emergency fund
- Support people who treat Ecoversities as a full time job
- Service circles who come up short or whose context we consider exceed the conditions posed by the grant guideliness
- Store your wealth/excess/abundance in your relative’s belly
- What other creative ideas in raising funds/workshops/coworking/programming spaces
- No-questions-asked fund /abundance fund/ investing in our collective wellbeing
- Person on GG team in crisis needs to cover tickets
2. Website Makeover: Putting Relationality at the Center Facilitated by Andre Andino
- How can the website reflect who we are — globally, locally, and relationally?
- How can we make it a living space for shared questions, visibility, and connection?
- Some questions around clarity in ways of being involved in the Alliance
- Some images or designs that show our diversity – illustration that can be more artistic
- Include in co-learnings the more than human world as an important learning that we have as an alliance
- Try to find ways of putting more stories about what is happening worldwide with nature rights.
3. Solidarity Facilitated by Yeyo
- How do we respond as a relational web to collective pain, war, genocide, violence and erasure?
- How else can we organize, act, inform, support, and care — together?
- It is being said in instigators that we are not responding to the terrible context we are dealing nowadays, with Palestine and other wars we have being facing.
- Maura reported there Will be a Conversation with Sara and Alessandra, who couldn’t attend the assembly because of the time zone… “Good idea to devote a Compost Heap to it. Compost appeared out of the need to have a voice to talk about the humanitarian crisis in Palestine.
- Camilo points out that there will be more situations arising within the alliance that will need to have our attention. It’s important to hold dialogues around this as a collective of humans. Camilo proposes we have relationship discomforts within the alliance. We should welcome a circle—a Compost Heap or other—where we can dialogue around our emergent emergencies. Circle to dialog the emergencies that have come up from our relationships.
- Camilo: We should also remember that Pollinations Exchanges and Residencies can serve as a continuing laboratory for responding to emergencies. Exchanges: lab of ideas about relational systems that might be used for emergencies
- Michael has joined the Alliance particularly to help composting conflicts. Two questions: How does the collective respond to emergencies wherever in the world they occur?
- and How does the Alliance respond to the divisions within our members on responses to the genocide?
- Magdaluz: Solidarity in the Center of Ecoversities Alliance conversations always. How can we be in solidarity around the world when we are so far away, have so many different problems in our various spaces, how do we be in touch with people far away, we want to relate with each other and help each other… Solidarity is a big word and space that we can go to and needs to be centered. Are we going to talk about Palestinians, and if we are, what are we going to do about it?
- Section of solidarity in the magazine: Maura
- Yeyo points out that this kind of conversation can open up all sorts of reflections and deeper conversation in service of big problems like this. Let’s broadcast this kind of information to the wider Alliance, that the Compost Heaps and similar conversations are available and useful to individuals and groups. How can we highlight stories of solidarity in action? In Colombia there are groups using “hours” and gift culture; courts offering buybacks of weaponry, etc. We can talk about this further!!!! Radio program, Radical Unlearning in Spanish, maybe do one on Solidarity in English. Make a Fireflyfrequencies podcast, an open audio platform in Europe that can transmit at the same time as some of our Compost Heaps, esp. the one on Palestine..
Annoucements + NEXT STEPS!
- Financial Abundance Circle: As part of our 10th Anniversary Campaign we received about 6K in generosity. Hooray! We have to determine how to steward the $6,228 raised through our crowdfunding.
- Develop a decision-making process for allocating the unrestricted funds
- Consider creating a reserve fund for emergent solidarity needs
- Explore implementing a “no questions asked” fund for core contributors with financial needs
- Consider implementing a money abundance pie process to identify monetary needs within the collective
- Evaluate how to distribute funds between service circles with greater needs
- Explore creating an ongoing mutual aid fund model that can be continuously replenished
- Website team: Update the website to better reflect Econversities’ global, local, and relational identity and connection to more-than-human learnings
- Yeyo: Facilitate ongoing conversations about solidarity responses to both global crises and positive initiatives
- Harsh: Figure out funding for Yeyo’s tickets to the global gathering and arrange for ticket purchase in advance
- Sierra: Complete writing the report of the Turtle Island Gathering
- Sierra: Check details about the matching funds for the crowdfunding campaign
- Composters circle: Organize the next compost heap about the Palestinian humanitarian situation on TBD
- Maura: Confirm the date for the Palestine-focused compost heap with Sara and Alessandra
- Composters: Develop a mechanism for people to anonymously share their discomfort for conflict resolution
- Ecoversities community: Discuss and clarify expectations around expressing discomfort and listening to others’ concerns
- Germinators: “We have 35 projects of which 17 have been selected for funding this cycle. We will be hosting 4 calls between now and November. The first opening call will be 29th of August.Subsequent calls will be held on the 29th of each month until the 29th of November. The September and October calls will be open all Ecoversities including the projects that were nominated but not selected. They’ve been informed. The intention is to facilitate peer learning exchange and practical support from the Alliance for these projects through exploring the spirit of Ecoversities and our collective learnings through storytelling and connection” – Sierra
- Communications: “Healing for the Future” an interview series with ecoversities learners around the world continues. Previous guests have been Noni, Charito, Chevanni, Hiva about Conflict Composting, Ancestrality, Intergenerational Learning. Next up is Andrea and Dan about their learning paths on the 28 of August, 2025.
- Website Makeover on going, Andrea, Amaru and Salo are holding the process.
- Yeyo and Vanessa will launch a poetry workshop.
- Publications: “the Publications Fellowship has been intense and engaging” – Vanessa
- Regional Gatherings: The European Mini-Regional Gathering in Romania was a success. ULSUC also happened in India.
- The Latin American Gathering in Chile will be held from November 18 to the 22th, 2025. Registration is now open. On Monday September 1 there will be an information call.
- There will be a Ecoversities Abya Yala Cycle of Conferences to support the Latin America Gathering costs and strengthen the network.The pilot event will be held on the 5th of September.
- Conflict Composters hosted the “Living as an anti-capitalist in a capitalist world compost heap for a beautiful conversation.
- The Language Justice Workshop was held last weekend with over 16 participants!
- Global Gathering in Thailand: an email should have arrived in your inbox if you registered.
- Making visible Roles & Relationality in the Ecoversities Ecosystem: Fill the form if you are a service circle member, we are seeking ways to validate our gift and service to the alliance.
Closing Remarks
We are grateful for all the friends who joined us for the assembly, for those who accompanied us in spirit, to the more-than-human world for allowing us to hope beyond hope, and our diversity which is a fountain of learning, expanding and enriching our way of being and feeling with other fellow living beings. Thank you everyone! Keep doing the good work, let’s keep re-imagining the way we do things and co-creating with the energies around us.
With inmense love and courage,
-the Facilitation Team, Albert, Yeyo, Sierra and Andrea.
