East Bay Cohousing - Berkeley/Oakland/Emeryville/SF

March 7, 2010 2:00 PM - 5 attended

Dancing Rabbit EcoVillage: Slideshow with Community Founder (South Berkeley)

Long Haul (map)

Selected By: Raines Cohen

4 photos of this Meetup

Uploaded by: Betsy Morris

Join Dancing Rabbit EcoVillage founder and Raines' fellow FIC boardmember Tony Sirna for a slideshow and discussion of the intentional community he helped launch. Learn how this band of Bay Area pioneers created new community in rural Northeast Missouri, living ecologically sustainable and socially rewarding lives, and sharing the skills and ideas behind that lifestyle.
Free for current East Bay Cohousing supporting members; otherwise, $10 cash/check at the door. This is our first EBCOHO event at The Long Haul, a wheelchair-accessible community space near Ashby BART, across from La Peña and The Starry Plough; lots of bike parking out front.

Unique features of Dancing Rabbit that California Cohousers can learn from include:

Natural building, with straw bale and cob construction, allowing many members to build their own homes
Renewable energy, tapping sun and wind power to operate off-the-grid
A biodiesel-powered vehicle cooperative pool
An internal economy with its own currency, barter, and an income-sharing subgroup
Design for growth, with plans to reach 1,000 members through villages and neighborhoods
Biodiversity enhancement via wildlife habitat preservation through clustering and restoration through native planting and permaculture, tree planting, and more.

The Dancing Rabbit Vision
In 1997 the DR Land Trust (DRLT) purchased 280 acres in the rolling hills of northeastern Missouri. We are now 12 years deep into pioneering and constructing buildings while planning and developing community structure. People's social and economic needs are met primarily on-site and locally, though a few support themselves doing web work or off-site consulting. There is an ever-increasing emphasis on internal economy, including a lot of barter and a well-used internal currency. Eventually, we see 500-1,000 people living in our village, with businesses and homes surrounding the village green.

As you might expect, ecological sustainability is the primary focus of our long-term vision and our daily lives. Residents agree to follow ecological covenants and sustainability guidelines. We build our homes using alternative techniques such as straw bale and cob, powering them with renewable energy from sun and wind. Vehicles at DR are owned cooperatively and powered by biodiesel. Overall, we eat an ever-increasing amount of local, organic, and in-season foods, including many home-grown vegetables.

We strive to be good stewards of our land, with much of our acreage reserved as wildlife habitat. In the grasslands we are reintroducing native prairie plants to help revitalize our region's biodiversity. We have planted over 10,000 trees to restore our land to its pre-settlement ecology, stabilize the riparian zone, and provide a sustainable source of wood for our community in years to come.

Diversity is an important element within our human population as well. Our village is composed of individuals, families, and an income-sharing community. We look forward to having other subcommunities join us, and encourage the development of cohousing and cooperatives. To allow for economic diversity and simple living, we keep lease rates and membership dues low and have no buy-in fee.

Raines Cohen
Don't worry if you didn't make this event; I recorded this talk (with Tony's permission), and got the presentation, so we can show it again another time. Learn more and see additional community images at the Dancing Rabbit EcoVillage website: http://www.DancingRabbit.org/

Posted March 8, 2010 at 3:05 AM
You must be a member to post a comment. Join or login.

5 attended

Event Host

Raines Cohen
Cohousing Coach and Aging In Community Author, Co-Organizer
Event Host

Betsy Morris
Cohousing Coach, Organizer

+1 guest
A former member
A former member

Your organizer's refund policy for Dancing Rabbit EcoVillage: Slideshow with Community Founder (South Berkeley)

Refunds offered if:

the Meetup is cancelled
the Meetup is rescheduled

Payments you make go to the organizer, not to Meetup. You must make refund requests to the organizer.

Close this

Berkeley, CA

Founded Oct 22, 2003

Read more about us…

Future Neighbors and Cohousers
1,525
Group reviews
108
Upcoming Meetups
6
Past Meetups
559
Our calendar
Optional supporter dues

$100.00 /yr; $250 for groups/sponsors
Follow us

We're about:

· · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Organizers:

Optional supporter dues

$100.00 /yr; $250 for groups/sponsors

This covers: Supporting members get event discounts, Cohousing Coaching, a book, introduction

Payment is accepted using:

Amazon Payments
Cash or check - “at meetings, tours, workshops and other events that we put on (but not at our partner events that we sometimes cross-post here).”

Your organizer will refund you if:

Your organizer closes their Meetup Group
Your organizer removes or bans you from their Meetup Group

Close this

Imagine lively people-scaled communities dotting the San Francisco Bay Area - places co-created by their residents for raising kids, for retirement, for growing food or simply living well by sharing more. The Bay Area already has ecovillages, and cohousing neighborhoods, resident-owned housing cooperatives, and group houses -- real world places where we can live more sustainably through a more cooperative way of life. You can have both privacy and community when you know your neighbors on purpose, in day-to-day relationships based on common vision and values.

East Bay Cohousing (EBCOHO) is a Bay Area-wide MeetUp. We connect a wide variety of kindred spirits and resources. We support individuals wanting to learn more, forming groups looking to create community together, and members of existing communities. We are mostly in the East Bay and San Francisco; others are from the North and South Bay, Los Angeles, Nevada, and other parts of the US and Mexico.

There are over two dozen cohousing communities in the greater Bay Area, (more cohousing in Oakland than any other U.S. city). There are also dozens of other emerging and long-established intentional communities. EBCOHO members have recently bought or rented homes in cohousing neighborhoods and cooperatively owned apartment buildings in Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland , Pleasant Hill, Grass Valley, Santa Rosa, and Nevada City. We have members living in Swan's Market Cohousing, Triple Point, Temescal Commons, Berkeley Cohousing, Parker Street Coop, Berkeley Town House, Addison Court Coop and established forming groups like East Lake Cohousing (formerly North Oakland Cohousing).

Extra bonus for 2012: The National Cohousing Conference is coming to town in June!

We host EBCOHO events for members, and link you to other events featuring a global network of friends and allies: pioneers in cooperative culture and sustainable communities: urban farmers, affordable housing developers, green builders, and creative visionaries in the movements for more open, user-friendly and collaborative technologies, economies, and governments. There's a global reinvention of communiies going on - both on the ground and online -- and the Bay Area is one of the world's epicenters.

EBCOHO has more events than our MeetUp-based home page can show fully, so please click on our Calendar to see more. Join for free to get involved! There's no charge for basic membership, but supporting members get discounts on some events, including socials, and workshops, cohousing books, and Cohousing Coaching.

Join us for an orientation, for social events, discussion, talks with exciting speakers, and hands-on workshops to learn the tools for developing good group relationships, and the real estate development process.. Find others who share your vision for supportive neighbors. Do it for yourself, for your family, for your parents, do it for the Earth! Make 2012 the year to deepen YOUR community connections.