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Q:  How can I get involved?

A:  Come to a meeting, and/or read this website, and/or get involved in doing a task from the TaskList (one great starter task is to contact a current Organising Committee member and talk to them about the community and how you would like to be involved).  If you're a bit overwhelmed and looking for a place to start learning about the project, you can start by having a look at the Prospective Villager Information Pack, which is currently a work in progress.

Q:    Who is the Home Ecovillage Project (HEP)?

A:     Home Ecovillage Project is the name of our on-line group.  The village will have a different name, as yet undetermined.  We started in 2007, as various people with similar visions met one another, and started meeting to create the village of our dreams.  The people who have showed up to the most meetings include Lara Barge, Julian Howell, Matt Nash, Tara Perry, and Nathaniel White (in alphabetical order by last name) but this is not the full set of active members.  At some point we will incorporate, and all the members will be shareholders.

Q:   Where is the project based?

A:     Our ecovillage will be built in South-Eastern England, within easy rail access of Brighton and London.  Many of our members live in Brighton, but a sizeable minority live in London, and some live as far away as the Western US.

Q:   What is the development plan for the ecovillage?

A:     In the late Spring of 2009, we will run a series of participatory design conferences (known as "charrettes") to finalise our legal structure, community economy design, site design, and development business plan.  Between now and then, we are preparing, clarifying membership issues, gathering information, looking at sites, and recruiting our development team, future residents (people and businesses) & potential investors.  After the charrettes, we hope to be legally incorporated, to accept investments, buy land, and begin the process of building and moving onto our site.  That may still take yet another year, or perhaps several years.  A pictorial version:

Q: Are there any specific designs yet?

A: There are not any finalised designs yet, but several drawings have been made at a design workshop in Ocotber. Some of these can be seen at  Home Ecovillage Project.

Q:  Is there any land/planning permission yet?

A:     We do not yet have a definite site, or planning permission.

Q:  Who is funding the ecovillage?

A:     We have identified a number of individuals who would like to buy plots, buy houses, or purchase shares in the development company.  However, we are still in the process of completing our funding plans.  We are seeking some grants for the development process, and some members would prefer to find a way of managing the development that is not "capitalist".  We have agreed, however, that our top priority is making a plan that works.  The current best-worked-out plan is to fund the land-purchase and construction of community-owned buildings with a combination of private investment and bank loans, which we will then pay off over time by 1) some resident/members paying rent to the community, 2) some on-site businesses paying rent to the community, and 3) some resident/members purchasing land or homes from the community, subject to the community's covenants.  We are all happy to receive any gifts or donations that people or groups are willing to offer, and we are also seeking more investors who share our values.

Q:   How is the ecovillage going to be governed? 

A:     These are our Purpose, Principles and Vision, and these are our governance agreements.  In brief, the membership as a whole uses a special kind of consensus decision-making to set policies, and individual members or committees are delegated the job of executing those policies (and given the authority to use community resources to do so).  Any member in good standing can attend any committee meeting.  An Organising Committee (OC) meets regularly to coordinate the work of the other committees, but the OC does not have any special powers beyond its coordinating role.

Q:  What is the policy on farming, livestock and pets? 

A:     We do not have a policy on pets yet.  Some founding members have dogs and cats, so it is unlikely that we will ban pets.  ("We did ... values-clarification work around the issue of eating and raising animals for meat this Spring [2008]. Our conversations stretched over two meetings, and opened up a forum area on this site. At the second meeting, the members agreed that village residents could raise animals for food in their own private residences / gardens, so long as they were not "factory farming". This means that in practice, animals such as cows could not be kept, as no-one will have the necessary private space for humanely keeping cows. If residents (or on-site businesses) want to raise animals elsewhere on the village property, they will need to seek the agreement of the membership, or establish a new agreement with the group at that time. Naturally, the vegans among us will be careful to attend such meetings! In general, we agreed that use of woodlots, fish ponds, etc. would be governed by committees of people knowledgeable about the care of the relevant ecosystem, and that people who want to go fishing, or chop down trees, etc. would require some basic training from the relevant committee.")

Q:   Is there a spiritual focus to the ecovillage?  (this is also in the Purpose, but it might be worth re-iterating).

A:     We have a "many paths, one mountain" ethos.  We are also committed to communicating honestly with one another and learning from our interactions -- for more details, see the Principles.  In practice, this means that so long as you are willing to share your spirituality / religion with others in a friendly (rather than forceful) way, we are all happy for you to bring your full spiritual self.  If you don't like holding hands or listening to people talk about their spiritual ideas / feelings, you may not be happy here -- because we do have a melange of different folks who like to share what they're into.

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