NEWS GEN twinning project

The GEN twinning project is for ecovillages, eco-projects, and regional and national ecovillage networks to twin one project of the global south with one in the global north, in the hope of collaboration.

Centre des Hommes from Togo put forward its project Ecovillage Centre des Hommes (ECDH).  The project was selected among 45 applications, with every region represented.  After evaluation by the GEN team, they felt that ECDH had great alignment with La Bolina in Spain.  Both organisations were invited to meet each other and and check whether we could work together to design a mini–project to highlight our common aims, to be selected as best twin project by GEN.

Then La Bolina, represented by Dario, and Centre des Hommes, represented by Senam, designed together a project call ‘News story’: two sides of local development and migration, one common dream.  Despite the differences where we are located, our two organisations share common aims and backgrounds:

– Centre des Hommes (CDH) focuses on local development in Togo involving farmers, artists and children to offer them opportunities to overcome poverty through social entrepreneurship and education.  CDH is in the process of building an Ecovillage site to support the local community to thrive, but they first need to do water management on their land to create the training center Ecovillage Centre des Hommes.

– La Bolina envisions a world of connected ecological, regenerative and intercultural communities, and activates this vision in a depopulated rural area of southern Spain. They are dedicated to the promotion of a local circular economy, and a dignified and respectful integration of migrants and refugees, running education and training programmes and growing and selling ecological vegetables.

NEWS STORY: two sides of local development and migration, one common dream.  This is a project that will create a short video and a crowdfunding campaign to tell the news (story) on the different kinds of education that our Centre des Hommes and La Bolina organisations use to fight against poverty, protect the environment, and take care of the health of the earth and people.

The project will benefit the human and environmental development of the populations of our communities and villages.  The video aims to raise awareness among the local population of the objectives of sustainable development, and to propose solutions to the rural exodus of young people in the villages.  It can offer  inspiration about how the communities can emerge from poverty and young people can be self-sufficient in their own village while protecting their environment.

The crowdfunding campaign will invite donors from the Global North to support CDH to create the water retention landscape that they need to start the construction of their Ecovillage project, and donors from the Global South to support La Bolina in its work of integration of migrants and refugees.  We will also include aspects of non-monetary exchange and gift economy to create a new narrative for cooperation between projects in Europe and Africa, based on exchange and mutual support.

People in our communities will be better educated and more self–sufficient.  Migrants will be more aware of dangers, the reality of the living conditions in a European country, local rights, and also possibilities and opportunities to have a better life. 

NEWS STORY has been selected and won a €1000 grant.  The video project was a collaboration between Centre des Hommes in Togo and La Bolina in Spain and the  enthusiastic GEN Ambassador, Adélaïde Merle.  A final report on the project has been sent to GEN and approved by them.

Read more about this Twinning project here. 

Watch the Video resulting below.

An insight from two people involved:

Senam, Centre des Hommes

 » With gratitude! We celebrate and appreciate the time we have given to connect with each other, reflect on synergies, and make this proposal happen.  Our project reflects the experience and perspectives of La Bolina and Centre des Hommes.  We hope it is a beautiful and important project to explore a new story of development and migration from a Spanish and Togolese viewpoint.  We show this throughout a documentary film. »

Dario, La Bolina

 »Despite the differences in the context where we are located, our two organisations share common aims and backgrounds: Centre des Hommes focuses on local development in Togo involving farmers, artists and children, to offer them opportunities to overcome poverty through social entrepreneurship and education. They are in the process of building an Ecovillage site to support the local community to thrive, but they first need to do water management on their land they can create the training center “Ecovillage Centre des Hommes”.

La Bolina envisions a world of connected ecological, regenerative and intercultural communities, and activates this vision in a depopulated rural area of southern Spain. They are dedicated to the promotion of a local circular economy and a dignified and respectful integration of migrants and refugees, running education and training programmes and growing and selling ecological vegetables. We came together in this project to show how our communities value and collaborate with the environment, creating connections and using local resources, to talk about migrations, their risks and opportunities, and to learn from our different points of view. »