HOPE - Learning, Healing & Resource Centre

In light of the ongoing influx of e-mails and phone calls we are receiving here at Khula Dhamma Community (KDC), it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a mounting demand for guidance and support in building harmonious, self-reliant communities.

We feel that the time is now fully ripe to engage in a conscious co-evolution where we purposefully and collectively move towards exploring the ways for global transformation.

Our calling to serve humankind and Gaia, in the best way we can, has thus crystallised: To actively facilitate and nurture the movement towards conscious, natural and community-based living. To create the platform, we are inspired to found a Learning, Healing and Resource Centre designed to share skills and understanding with others who seek to restore the Earth and her people. With a wide variety of innovative courses, retreats and conferences that promote personal and cultural transformation, we will aim to consciously co-evolve through collectively exploring and implementing creative solutions to the challenges of our time.

By building the learning centre in the heart of our community we are expanding upon our vision of sharing the essential experiences and joys of ecovillage living within the very environment they are practiced and celebrated. Accordingly, we call this endeavour and the centre itself: Home Of Providence & Ecoliving or HOPE.

All who come to HOPE will be fully immersed into a stimulating learning environment where everything from the accommodation to the food have grown from an unwavering commitment to natural and health-conscious living. Through balancing theory, practice and personal development we aim to create a uniquely integrated experience. Moreover, the exceptional benefit for all visitors and participants will be to taste the magic and diversity of a blossoming ecovillage- HOPE-fully inspiring many more to engage in the collective flow towards the emergence of an awakened, abundant society.

We aim to begin running workshops towards the end of 2009, following our hosting of South Africa's first Ecovillage Conference in September.

Here’s a short list of the types of workshops and retreats we will be hosting:

• Spirit & Body (Meditation, Yoga, Healing retreats, Vision Quest, Massage, Nutrition, Natural medicine, Dance, Capoeira, Music, Theatre, Circus)

• Ecology & Living (Organic gardening, Seed saving, Ecovillage building, Natural building, Appropriate technology, Water & Waste management, Bee keeping, Surviving peak oil, Food preparation)

• Social & Communication (Natural childbirth, Child education, Co-Creating, Collective decision making, Xhosa learning, Conflict resolution, Intercultural harmony, Group wisdom)

• For Children There will be 3 – 7 day camps with most of the above activities presented in an accessible and fun-filled way. The two age groups will be 7-11 and 12-16.

By providing an exceptional and congenial setting with all natural, eco-innovative facilities and delectable, wholesome food that is largely produced and prepared on-site, we hope to attract national and international facilitators who are pioneering their respective fields.
Furthermore, we have already begun to initiate outreach programs aimed at informing and empowering rural communities. All courses and conferences will accommodate for participants from these communities through scholarships. As HOPE grows, so will our supportive and humanitarian embrace of rural community.

“Enlightened collectives will fulfil an important function in the arising of the new consciousness… [they] can be a vortex for consciousness that will accelerate the planetary shift.” – Eckhart Tolle (from A New Earth)