Courses and Events

Last week we had the amazing opportunity to receive a very interesting and practical training on sociocracy and peacemaking, two great tools for running non-hierarchical organizations as well as for good communication and consent decision-making within communities. Deborah and Root, former managing director and education manager of the Newbold Trust, hosted the workshop and shared their valuable experience of community living with us.

Even though Sunseed had already been benefiting from the implementation of sociocratic principles, learning more about them and receiving some practical training is a way of making our community even more socially sustainable. Since it gives a structural base for ever-changing groups, sociocracy fits particularly well at Sunseed, which frequently sees people coming and going. By introducing new policies on interpersonal communication, decision-making, roles, feedbacks, peace and conflict resolution, we want to ensure an enjoyable as well as effective functioning of the project.

On this 2-day course, we were able to bring up recurrent issues and concerns, to show our appreciation for each other and to start thinking about what we could be doing even better in terms of communication. We can now practice and put into place the ideas and tools we were given, especially regarding trust building, peace designing and role modeling and reviewing.

Taking the course together, practicing gratitude and sharing ideas – as well as ending the weekend on a lighter, partying note – seem to have developed more empathy and social cohesion among us. A beautiful experience in the moment, which will hopefully be perpetuated.

Some impressions from the participants:

“Root and Deborah form an amazing duo, who complete each other’s information. Their openness and the examples given from their own life experience helped break the ice and encourage us to speak up.”

Margrit, Organic Gardens Assistant

“These two days allowed us to sharp our tools, which should result in putting less effort in work and get better results thanks to the use of non-violent communication components.”

Atreyu, Long Term Volunteer

“This course set a stepping stone in our process of growing as a community. Deborah and Root facilitated the sessions in a way that made the decision-making both effective and fun, while the peace-making tools they offered boosted our self-trust as individuals and as a group.”

Dario, Communication Coordinator

“I believe Sociocracy can lead to more peace within communities, especially when many different cultures and nationalities are represented. It can offer us a ‘being a family’ feeling.”

François, Long Term Volunteer

“Thanks to this course and the teachers sharing their own experience, we are able to separate a bit from our work constraints and be with each other in a more personal way. We learnt how to communicate calmly and with respect, as well as improving our personal well-being. I can see how this can also be beneficial for future participants in our project.”

Jenny, Office Assistant

“What an inspiring, empowering, and energizing hands-on course! A true gift to our community, carefully adjusted to our specific needs, and bringing smiles to everyone’s faces. Both a sense of individual empowerment and of common purpose were fostered, generating a joyful
motivation to apply these tools in our community life here.”

Armelle, Facilitation Coordinator

Courses and Events

Last week our village has been transformed by a big event that brought together the different projects based here and many other people for the defense of water and our ecosystem. As we have been denouncing in the past years, the fresh water spring of the Río Aguas is getting every year dryer because of a super-intensive plantation of olive trees that takes most of its water from the aquifer.

We organized this day to invite everybody in the surrounding to come and see with their eyes the unicity of this place and the beauty of the hundreds of species that survive in the middle of the desert thanks to this scarce resource.

We would like to thank all the people that shared with us this beautiful time and all that helped in its organisation. We were very happy to meet many local people who took this chance to come to Los Molinos maybe for the first time. Many came from Almeria and some even from Murcia, and we hope to welcome them again in this amazing landscape.

If you want to be updated about the campaign against the ecocide in Los Molinos del Río Aguas, visit the campaign’s facebook page.

Courses and Events

As a part of our living and learning together, there are moments in Sunseed when we gather to share ideas and knowledge about one topic that could be of general interest. We call it seminar and yesterday we had the pleasure of listening to Lizzie, our sustainable living coordinator, introducing the basic concepts of food sovereignty.
As a topic it may seem quite abstract, but in fact it is stricly related to what we do everyday growing our own food and building networks with local farmers. Maybe for this reason we were quite a lot sharing our ideas in the terrace behind the main house.

Lizzie told us that as a concept, food sovereignty was first framed
 by
 the international
 peasant movement La Via Campesina at the World Food Summit in 1996, and it is rooted in the ongoing global struggles over control of food, land, water, and livelihoods. Food sovereignty is a movement growing from the bottom up, from the farmers, fishers, indigenous peoples and landless workers most impacted by global hunger and poverty. Food sovereignty goes beyond ensuring that people have enough food to meet their physical needs. It asserts that people 
must reclaim their power in the food system by rebuilding the relationships between people and the land, and between food providers and those
 who
 eat.

“Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.”

Declaration of Nyéléni, the first global forum on food sovereignty, Mali, 2007

Food sovereignty is based on four principles:

• To empower the food providers, giving them rights and access to land and combatting indecent labor conditions
• To localize food systems, bringing providers and consumers close together and respecting the right of food providers to have control over their land, seed and water against privatisation
• To value traditional knowledge and skills, that have been passed down over generations for sustainable food production free from technologies that undermine health and well-being
• To work with nature, focusing on production and harvesting methods that maximize the contribution of ecosystems, avoid costly and toxic inputs and improve the resiliency of local food systems in the face of climate change.

Finally, Lizzie invited us to pay attention to all the processes that bring food on our table and to acknowledge them not treating food as a commodity. She also encouraged us to be aware of local plants and herbs and to use the as medicines. It could be easy to find meaning and happiness living simply in harmony with nature.