What are the Community-Tours?

The community-tours empower an alternative economy based on trust and sharing. 
Travelling between ecovillages and other sustainable communities across Europe we connect them in a global gift-economy network.
Doing this, we bring products, experts and spare ressources from one community to the next place where they are needed.
Like this, the Community-Tours work like the logistic system, transporting all the needs between the communities! And the best thing: they are driving anyway because they want to visit communties - no extra fuels!
Join us, create a tour or join one. Like this you can grow and co-create the network with us!

How does it work?

You can use this website to organize a tour yourself, find people to take with you, that match your skills and interests and those of the places you want to visit. You can also find people that have buses to join your tour!
You can already see the communities that want to be visited, see what they need and find something to offer for your stay. You will get food and accommodation and a good learning experience!
On their profiles you can see what they need. It is always good to ask for more, as they for shure need more and their profile is out of date ;)

Then you can use our powerful search for everything to find experts, places, ressources, caravans, events and everything the community needs! Then you can contact the related people and places and visit them on your journey to finally fulfill the whishes of the communities. 
Like this we create the sustainable gift-network!

You can ask more people and communities to join our network, so we can find the right people and things, when we need them!

How to go on tour?

This is how you can take part in the Community-Tours as a pioneer of gift-economy, growing the network with us:

1. First you need to sign-up and fill out some information. That is your first and most important input in the gift-economy network. Only then we can see what you want and need and what you have to offer. Without this information we can not make the magic happen :) Just think about what you have to offer to a community or other people that they could find useful. Of course this could be gardening or natural building, but also filmmaking and graphic design are needed!
   
   If you have a bus available to take on the tour, please add it to your profile! If you don't have a bus, you can check the buses and their owners, to see if you would like to join one of them, because you have matching interests, or they have some skills that you would like to learn or they just seem like a nice company!
2. Register a Community-Tour or join an existing Tour
3. Have a look on the map to look for communities and projects that registered already and are waiting for visitors.
   We are growing this network alltogether, so we need to contact communities outside of this website and ask them if they want to try some gift-economy and be visited by you or someone else in the future!
   ​If you already have a community or an eco-sustainable social project in mind that you would like to visit and that could be interested to try out a little gift-economy, please contact them on your own and ask if they want to take part in this project and sign-up here.
   If you need inspiration what communities you could visit, that are not on this website yet, check out the eurotopia book or have a look here:
   http://gen-europe.org/ecovillages/europe-map/index.htm
   http://www.ic.org/directory/search/
   http://helpx.net/
4. If you ask a community if you can visit them on your tour, come with an offer right away what you would bring if you visit them. Speak about whatever you are good at or what you think might be useful to them. If you can't directly meet some need that they have on their profile, use the search in the website and ask around the other members of the tours.
5. The community should nominate a gift-economy ambassador that is responsible for the coordination and communication with our project.
   Then you should call the ambassador ideally by telephone to check if they filled out all the information on their profile, so we know everything that we need to make the best out of your visit.
    
6. There will be lots of questions as this requires a new form of thinking. We will collect the best questions and answers and good practices here. The idea is to ask what they need and wish for and what they usually need money for or great things that could be done with qualified volunteers.
   
   If the gift-economy ambassadors fill out the registration for their community and keep their profile updated, then we all know what they need and what they have to offer, so we can plan teams and routes on the convergence that bring lots of good stuff and help for them! 
   
   Here you can see all the places that have been contacted by others and that want to be visited by you.
7. Visit places and do your gift-economy magic :)
8. Let us know about your experiences by writing a reference to the community and blog articles (public notes in the caravan group) - Please try to write articles and make pictures, even filming if you can, to inspire other people with your ideas and experiences, so the take part in the co-creation of the network.
9. Organize a Communities-Convergence to meet and exchange with other travelers from the community-tours!
10. Share your ideas about how to make the website better with us.

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Recommendations

We recommend that the travelling groups preferably visit at least 2 communities during a Tour, to connect them with gifts and transport some knowledge.
It needs time to get into the structures of the community, people and tasks. At first it will be more work for the community, from the second week on, they can benefit from your help. So please stay at least for 2 weeks in a community.

If you and the community can manage, you can be a larger group of 10 people, and if you are experienced you can build a house in a few weeks!
But group processes take time and energy, so as a smaller group of 3-5 people you can integrate better into a larger community without being stuck with internal processes.

May the force be with you!

You know, young padavan, if you offer your lifetime and creative energy to this noble endevour, the universe will assist to create coincidences to make your whishes come into reality! 
Just trust and be careful what you whish for ;)
Good energies to everyone on the road, enjoy the trip!