Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community

by Diana Leafe Christian

Overview

How to research, visit, evaluate, and join the ecovillage or sustainable community of your dreams.

Finding community is as critical as obtaining food and shelter, since the need to belong is what makes us human. The isolation and loneliness of modern life have led many people to search for deeper connection, which has resulted in a renewed interest in intentional communities. These intentional communities or ecovillages are an appealing choice for like-minded people who seek to create a family-oriented and ecologically sustainable lifestyle—a lifestyle they are unlikely to find anywhere else.

However, the notion of an intentional community can still be a tremendous leap for some—deterred perhaps by a misguided vision of eking out a hardscrabble existence with little reward. In fact, successful ecovillages thrive because of the combined skills and resources of their members.

Finding Community presents a thorough overview of ecovillages and intentional communities and offers solid advice on how to research thoroughly, visit thoughtfully, evaluate intelligently, and join gracefully. Useful considerations include:

• Important questions to ask (of members and of yourself)
• Signs of a healthy (and not-so-healthy) community
• Cost of joining (and staying)
• Common blunders to avoid

Finding Community provides intriguing possibilities to readers who are seeking a more cooperative, sustainable, and meaningful life.

Diana Leafe Christian is the author of Creating a Life Together and editor of Communities magazine. She lives at Earthhaven Ecovillage in North Carolina.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781550923834
Publisher:	New Society Publishers
Publication date:	05/01/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
File size:	649 KB
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Diana Leafe Christian is the author of Creating a Life Together and editor of Communities magazine. She lives at Earthhaven Ecovillage in North Carolina.

Diana Leafe Christian is the author of Creating a Life Together and editor Communities magazine. She lives at Earthhaven Ecovillage in North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword

Introduction: Ecovillages and Other Intentional Communities
What This Book Can Do For You
Who This Book is For
What is an Intentional Community?

SECTION 1: COMMUNITIES: AN OVERVIEW
Chapter 1: Why Community?
You'll Impact the Planet with a Smaller Ecological Footprint
You'll Feel Safer
You'll Most Likely be Healthier
You'll Save Money
You'll Grow as a Person
You'll Experience Connection and Support with Like-minded Friends and Colleagues
You'll Have More Fun

Chapter 2: Ten Most Common Fears about Joining a Community
1. I Don't Want to Live out in the Boonies
2. I Don't Want to Live with a Bunch of Hippies
3. I Don't Want to Live a "Poverty Consciousness" Lifestyle with Limited Resources
4. I Don't Want to Live with countercultural types who are trying to avoid responsibility
5. I Don't Want to Have to Join a Religion or Take up some Spiritual Practice I Don't Believe in
6. I Don't Want to Live in a Hierarchical System or Follow a Charismatic Leader
7. I Don't Want to Have to Think like Everyone Else.What if it Turns out to be a Cult?
8. I'm Afraid I Won't have Enough Privacy or Autonomy
9. I Don't Want to Have to Share Incomes or Give all my Money to the Community
10.What if we all Can't Get Along? I Don't Want to Live with a Bunch of Bad-tempered,Dysfunctional People
Other common questions about community living

Chapter 3: Community Living-Day-to-Day (excerpt from Communities magazine)

Chapter 4: Ecovillages: For Future Generations
Ecovillages — Multiple and Various
Human-Scale, Full-Featured Settlements
Five Characteristics of Ecovillages
But Is it Really an Ecovillage?
"Lifeboat Communities," Future Generations

Chapter 5: Cohousing Communities
The Costs of Cohousing
Joining a Cohousing Community
Cohousing Communities and Non-Cohousing Communities
Elder Cohousing

Chapter 6: Urban Communities: Group Households and Housing Co-ops
Urban Group Households
Organized Neighborhoods
Housing Co-ops
Senior Housing Co-ops
Student Housing Co-ops

Chapter 7: Rural Homesteading Communities, Conference and Retreat Centers
Homesteading Communities
Conference and Retreat Centers

Chapter 8: Spiritual Communities
Spiritually Eclectic Communities
Communities with a Common Spiritual Practice
Camphill Communities

Chapter 9: Christian Communities
Service-Oriented Christian Communities
Catholic Worker Communities
L'Arche Communities

Chapter 10: Income-Sharing Communes
Radical Cooperation
What's It Like Financially?
Why Are Income-Sharing Communities so Well Known?
Benefts of Income-Sharing
Challenges of Income-Sharing
Who Income-Sharing Works Well For

Chapter 11: What Does It Cost?
Factors in the Cost to Join
"If I have no funds can I still join a community?"
Cohousing,Housing Co-ops, Conference Centers, Spiritual Communities, Communes
Do Communities Tell You What It Costs?
Sample Costs:What it Costs to Join a Community

Chapter 12: What Does It Take to Live in Community?
Not for the Faint of Heart
What Works Well in Community?
Who Does Well in Community?
Who Does Not Do So Well?
Preparing for Community
What Do Communities Want from You?
What About Young People Just Out of School?

Chapter 13: The Communities Directory, the Internet, and You — Researching Communities
Print and Internet Resources
Communities Directories and The Internet
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Chapter 14: Your Criteria for Communities to Visit
Where to Start
Community Size
Can the Community Choose Its Members?
Age of Members and Rate of Member Turnover
Independent-Income and Income-Sharing Communities
Your Future Community: Ideals and Realities

SECTION 3: VISITING
Chapter 15: My Marathon Tour of Communities (reprinted from Communities magazine)

Chapter 16: Planning Your Visits
Setting up Your Own "Marathon Tour" (or Multiple Shorter Visits)
What to Pack
Bring Work Gloves
Don't Bring Fido
When You Arrive

Chapter 17: Excerpts from a Community Seeker's Journal (reprinted from Communities magazine)

Chapter 18: How to Be a Great Guest (and Make the Most of Your Experience)
Community Etiquette:What Hosts Would Like from Visitors
How to Get What YouWant from Your Visit
That Elusive "Sense of Community": Don't Count on It Yet
"Come Here,Go Away"
Did You Hear About the Visitor Who?
The "Great Guests"Hall of Fame

Chapter 19: Seriously Seeking Community (reprinted from Communities magazine)

Chapter 20: Evaluating Your Visits (And Debunking Some Assumptions and Expectations)
Signs of Health, Signs of Distress
Assumptions and Expectations:What's Realistic?

SECTION 4: JOINING
Chapter 21: Taking a Second Look
Values
Mission and Purpose
Overall Friendliness
Lifestyle
Aesthetics
Your Children's Needs
Potential Friends
Housing
Financing

Chapter 22: Choosing Your Community: The "Insider's Guide"
Who Owns the Land?
Financial Information
Do You Get Your Money Back If You Leave?
What Are Grounds For Asking People to Leave?
What Legal Entity Does the Group Use to Own Property?
How Does the Group Make Decisions?
Who Has Decision-Making Rights and When Do They Have Them?
The Membership Process: Organized or Laissez Faire? "Narrow Door" or "Ya'll Come"?
How Could You Make a Living, Really?
What Else Should You Consider?
If No Community Appeals
Don't Marry the First Community that Asks You

Chapter 23: The Membership Process
Courting and Assessing the Community While They're Courting and Assessing You
I've Got Major Challenges — Should I Tell Them?
Taking an Even Closer Look
Stranger in a Strange Land?

Chapter 24: Entering Community Gracefully
How to Win Community Friends and Influence People
"Come Here,Go Away"— Take Two
Like a Wolf Entering a Wolf Pack
Developmental Stages of the New-Member Process
What If I Don't Like It?
What If They Say "No"?

Chapter 25: "The longest, most expensive, personal growth workshop you will ever take!"
Community on a Bad Day (reprinted from Communities magazine)
We Set Out to Change our World (reprinted from Communities magazine)

Appendix A: Sample Community Membership Documents
Appendix B: Can Living in Community Make a Difference in the Age of Peak Oil?
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Open-hearted and hard-headed in equal measure—and with a delicious sense of humor —Diana Leafe Christian takes the reader on a comprehensive tour of the world of ecovillages and intentional communities.This is the volume for those exploring the options and willing to learn from those who have already trodden the path.There could be no better guide on the path of exploring this lifestyle."
— Jonathan Dawson, president,Global Ecovillage Network; author, Ecovillages: New Frontiers for Sustainability

"When you combine encyclopedic knowledge plus wry humor plus a realistic assessment of what the future holds for all of us, you get the wise advice in Finding Community. In a world after fossil fuels, it can extend the keys to your next car, your next house, and the rest of your life. If there is a silver lining to the clouds on the horizon, it will be found in the redesign of human communities.No one knows this subject better than Diana Leafe Christian.To a troubled world, here is the core of the solution."
— Albert Bates, co-founder,Global Ecovillage Network;author, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook

"Through long experience and sheer social honesty, Diana Leafe Christian offers essential resources for and catalogs the oh-so-many pitfalls as well as delights of visiting and joining a community. Finding Community is like having an explorer's compass and a roll of charts under your arm as you embark upon unknown waters.All the more important to learn these essentials before you're out at sea."
— Richard Register, author, Ecocities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature ; president, Ecocity Builders; founder, International Ecocity Conferences

"Diana Leafe Christian has done it again! Her First book, Creating a Life Together, has become something of a bible for would-be community founders. Finding Community promises to be just as important.Thoughtful, thorough, and engaging, and enlivened by stories from the trenches of real community life, it's a must-read for anyone seriously seeking community."
— Liz Walker, author, EcoVillage at Ithaca: Pioneering a Sustainable Culture ; cofounder and director,EcoVillage at Ithaca

"This charming and commonsensical guide to approaching intentional group living should be read by every serious community-seeker. It offers an amazingly knowledgeable perspective, warmly sympathetic but sometimes wryly humorous toward both communities and those who visit and join them."
— Ernest Callenbach, author, Ecotopia

"An amazing, comprehensive, collaborative and kaleidoscopic achievement! By showing community seekers practical living examples of cohousing projects, ecovillages,and other intentional communities, Finding Community has the potential to change the suburban way of life and help North America reconcile its ecological footprint."
— Professor Declan Kennedy, architect, and member of Lebensgarten Ecovillage,Germany

"This stunning overview of ecovillages and intentional communities is not only a terrific read, but abounds with essential, profoundly important information for anyone seeking more community and a sense of belonging in their lives."
— Joan Medlicott, author, The Ladies of Covington Send Their Love series and The Three Mrs. Parkers

"Finding Community is full of wisdom and "Convenient Truths" for anyone wanting to join an ecovillage or intentional community, and packed with advice for ecovillages and communities wanting new members, too."
— Max Lindegger, cofounder,Crystal Waters Ecovillage,Queensland,Australia; director,Global Ecovillage Network Asia/Oceania

"Heartwarming and fun, Finding Community will help readers make informed choices about joining a community.Diana Leafe Christian knows what people want."
— Hildur Jackson, cofounder,Global Ecovillage Network (GEN);co-editor, Ecovillage Living: Restoring the Earth and Her People