Meet the 15 Selected Demonstrators of the Regenerative Communities Fund

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Permaculture Dalmatia is a community-led organisation that has been active in Croatia for over ten years, supporting regenerative practices and collective action. Rooted in permaculture ethics, they work with citizens to co-create local solutions for biodiversity, food systems and social cohesion, contributing to a just and inclusive transition at community level.

Project:
As a Demonstrator within the Regenerative Communities Fund, Permacultura Dalmatia will act as a community-led connector between urban and rural communities, showing how regenerative practices can be accessible to all. They focus on community gardening, seed saving and biodiversity as practical entry points for collective action, social inclusion and climate resilience. Building on its Festival of Gardening in Dalmatia, Permacultura Dalmatia strengthens community capacities through peer-to-peer learning, public gatherings and local policy dialogue. By sharing tested methods, stories and tools, they support emerging Pathfinder communities and contribute to systemic, community-led change aligned with the principles of a just transition.

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Vestigium is a community-led organisation based in Zagreb, Croatia, active since 2011. They work at the intersection of sustainability, culture, and social inclusion, creating open community spaces where citizens come together to learn, share skills, and care for their neighbourhoods. Through urban gardening, zero-waste initiatives, eco-markets, cultural programmes, and educational workshops, Vestigium empowers people of all ages to take part in building resilient, just, and regenerative communities.

Project:
The project Living Lab for a Fair and Regenerative Community transforms Vestigium’s community hubs in Vrbani and Brezovica into practical Demonstrator sites for regenerative, community-led action in urban settings. The project shows how everyday practices—such as urban gardening, composting, circular economy exchanges, and inclusive cultural activities—can strengthen social cohesion, reduce environmental impact, and support a just transition.
Over the project period, Vestigium will host workshops, community events, peer-learning visits, policy dialogues, and a public showcase as part of the European Day of Sustainable Communities. In collaboration with Croatia’s 3R Hub, the project will support Pathfinder communities by sharing knowledge, tools, and real-life examples of citizen-led regeneration. The Living Lab demonstrates how small-scale, inclusive initiatives can inspire long-term ecological and social change in cities.

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Village House Kehrä – a space for meeting and learning.
Kehrä is a community-owned house in the rural town of Karjalohja, in Southern Finland. It’s a meeting place open to everyone, offering local services and organizing activities for all ages. Kehrä offers rental spaces for offices, meetings, events and courses.

Project:
This project aims at developing Village House Kehrä as a sustainability center and a local center of influence. Kehrä will serve as a living learning site for individuals and community groups that engage in local sustainability action. The communication outputs and project events increase people’s awareness of sustainability related opportunities and ideas, and enables network building. It builds people’s capacities for fundraising and successful implementation of community action. Kehrä demonstration site will participate in communication campaigns and policy advocacy work led by ECOLISE and the national FFF hub Jalotus. Kehrä will host two policy events with local policy makers.

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The Omavara Association offers a seven-month training program in Eastern Finland focused on communal self-sufficiency. Participants learn practical skills to secure essential resources—such as water, food, and heating—with minimal reliance on industrial energy. Omavara Association has inspired many to pursue sustainable livelihoods and embrace regenerative ways of living.

Project:
The CORE (Convivial Regeneration through Communal Self sufficiency) project aims to broaden the reach of the exceptional regenerative and sustainability model created by the Omavara Association. The School of Self Sufficiency (Omavaraopisto), run by Omavara Association, demonstrates ways to live well in a deep sustainability. Backed by the Regenerative Communities Fund, Omavara ry will expand participation, host exposure visits, and increase publicity, encouraging people to join a just transition movement. Activities will take place in half a dozen ecologically and communally revived farms in Rasimäki village in Eastern Finland. They set the stage for a convivial regeneration where abandoned farms experience ecological and communal revival.

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Created in 2022, the Cité des Transitions is a network of +100 organizations committed to ecological and social transitions in Marseille and its region. Their goal? To accelerate the transition of the territory towards a just, democratic and resilient model, which respects the living.

Project:
By supporting local initiatives and cooperation, Cité des Transitions wants to contribute to a regenerative and inclusive economy. As a RCF Demonstrator, they aim both to share their experience in highlighting citizen-led initiatives for a more resilient and democratic world, and to leverage the expertise of the Ecolise network, with particular attention paid to projects with underserved communities in Marseilles.

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L’Hermitage is a rural third place located in Autrêches, Picardy (FRANCE) dedicated to ecological and social transition. It hosts economic, cultural, and citizen-led activities and fosters collaboration between local residents, collectives, associations, and public partners.

Project:
As an RCF Demonstrator, L’Hermitage acts as a third place for experimentation in community-led transitions, providing retreat and seminar facilities that combine collaborative workshops, project development, and network building. Located 1h30 from Paris, it allows testing rural dynamics while remaining connected to national networks. The project is guided by the “3 Zeros” strategy — zero exclusion, zero carbon, zero poverty — structuring actions with residents, youth, local authorities, and partners. The aim is to develop concrete practices and generate transferable lessons for other territories and RCF network sites.

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The Jardin des Traverses is an organization who manages an agri-cultural third place, located in a former railway station. It connects neighborhoods through shared pathways, edible plantings, food hub and workshop, combining ecology, culture, and social life. It invites residents to walk, grow food, meet, and reimagine the city as a living ecosystem.

Project:
Jardin des Traverses is a third place, who develops a food hub designed to close the loop between production (market gardening), processing, direct distribution, and on-site food services such as a restaurant. It is also a shared cultural and fabrication space hosting makers and artists in residence and welcoming a wide range of experiments .
The place is open to both the neighborhood, volunteers and professionals—researchers, artists, and practitioners—the project fosters urban ecology and social transition. Jardin des Traverses will support citizen empowerment and contribute to broader transition movements in close collaboration with its partners.

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Oasis du Coq à l’Âme is a 26-hectare living-lab ecosystem in rural Charente, France. Home to around 25 residents, it functions as an ecovillage, educational campus, third place and ecotourism hub, exploring ecological, social and human transitions through daily practice.

Project:
As a living Demonstrator experimenting with an economic, social, and human transition, Oasis du Coq à l’Âme operates around three main pillars:

• Citizen engagement and inclusive participation, already reaching over 800 people, including a number of marginalized groups, will continue to expand through workshops, training sessions, visits, and educational activities.
• Support for Pathfinder communities will take the form of hosting them for immersive stays, sharing tools, and peer learning based on ten years of grassroots experimentation.
• Advocacy and visibility for a just transition will be strengthened through political dialogue, events, and local awareness campaigns.

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African Way works in regenerative education from a lens of global learning (indigenous wisdom, conscious action research, project-based learning in peri-urban regeneration, climate awareness, youth livelihoods), developing curricula around topics that can bring genuine impact in sustainable living.

Project:
African Way leads a new dawn in African European relations through socio-ecological collaborative economics, bridging digital and generational divides. They organize intercultural Permaculture Work Camps involving Refugees and marginalized youth.
African Way’s Ecolodge project focuses on ecological building techniques as climate action beyond reductionist metrics and market-driven solutions, restoring land, waters, ecosystems, and communities from the claws of capitalism and colonialism.
Their Ecolodge Demonstration Center in Burgau showcases living examples developed in Better World Cameroon. Rooted in justice, solidarity, and community stewardship they interweave Ecolise principles with the Spirit of Ndanifor, building ecological consciousness as a navigational tool for systems change.

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Ananda Kalyani is a pioneering Integrated Rural Development Master Unit in central Portugal, dedicated to spirituality, service to all and holistic regeneration. It serves as a model and educational hub for 21st-century regenerative living, integrating ecological restoration, culture, education and community resilience in harmony with nature.

Project:
Ananda Kalyani will act as a living model of holistic regeneration, rooted in Integrated Rural Development and a regenerative relationship with nature. Located in the bioregion Cova da Beira, they will focus on practical landscape and watershed regeneration, improving water retention, soil health, biodiversity and local resilience. Through hands-on ecological work, co-design walks, education and community participation, they aim to serve as a real-life laboratory whose methods, learnings and impacts can be documented and shared as a replicable resource for other rural communities.

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Palombar – Conservação da Natureza e do Património Rural is a Portuguese association based in Uva (Vimioso), working for over 25 years on nature conservation, landscape regeneration, cultural heritage and community-led rural development in inner mountain regions of northern Portugal.

Project:
REGiMont – Mountain Landscape Regeneration Center aims to strengthen collaboration and trust among initiatives working on landscape regeneration in Northern and Central Portugal, fostering a movement that is focused and empowered to achieve social and environmental resilience.
Its goals are connecting initiatives working in ecological and social regeneration and bio-construction across Minho, Trás-os-Montes, Serra da Estrela and Galicia; creating the conditions for interpersonal relationships that enable collaboration; supporting collective capacity-building and strategic alignment.

Activities:

• Three in-person events
• Online sessions focused on shared challenges and opportunities
• Co-creation of a Collaborative Toolbox
• Submission of at least three joint funding applications
• Community engagement moments

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Asociación Juvenil Urban Green Club is a youth-led non-profit in Granada working on urban agroecology, community gardens, composting, and environmental education. They create inclusive green spaces where residents can learn regenerative practices, build community, and take local action for climate justice.

Project:
As a Demonstrator in the Regenerative Communities Fund, the Quinta Alegre Project builds on their everyday work caring for and activating a public urban garden in Granada. From this shared space, they will host peer-to-peer exchanges and Pathfinder visits, run hands-on workshops, and organise annual European Day of Sustainable Communities events with local policy dialogues. Their focus is on inclusive participation—especially women and young people—learning by doing, sharing responsibility, and building real community ownership. By documenting what works in practice, they aim to offer a replicable, grounded reference for other cities.

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Espacio Ubuntu is a non-profit association based in the Valles Pasiegos (Cantabria, Spain) cultivating community-led regeneration through gift-economy practices, intercultural exchange, and experiential learning. They host gatherings, residencies, and collaborative projects that strengthen social cohesion, ecological awareness, and local resilience.

Project:
Through the Head, Hands and Heritage project, they aim to strengthen their role as community-building facilitators and regeneration practitioners in the Valle del Pas. The project will deepen their listening to the territory to identify the often-unseen regenerative wisdom embedded in local culture, while also sharing contemporary tools and approaches for social and ecological regeneration. Acting as a bridge between ancestral knowledge and emerging practices, Espacio Ubuntu seeks to support fairer, more sustainable and meaningful futures rooted in a rural context. Their programme includes local showcase events and policy dialogues within the European Day of Sustainable Communities, as well as community fairs, Giftival-style gatherings and regenerative trainings integrated into public events. They will document good practices through oral stories and practical tools to support replication and inspire wider engagement, particularly in underserved and marginalised communities.

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Espai Ambiental is a non-profit workers cooperative that works to achieve regenerative communities where justice, ecology and all lives are at the center. They do this by promoting processes that cause cultural changes, activating and accompanying the creation of community and socioeconomic initiatives at a local level.

Project:
Their project seeks to promote community-based ecosocial transition processes, implemented in both urban and rural areas. Building on their urban communal projects in Barcelona (pioneering experiences in ecosocial transition training and community economies), rural community-led initiatives, and their capacity to influence public policy for community management, Espai Ambiental will carry out three main lines of action: Demonstrating community-led management schemes; Training activists and community leaders; Influencing public policies through dissemination of community-based management schemes. The project will be implemented in collaboration with their second-level entity ECOHUB, and involve their partner organizations Resilience Earth and XES (Catalan Solidarity Economy Network).

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La Ventana de Almócita is a non-profit cooperative based in Almócita (Spain) that collaborates in communication and social media for rural entities, promoting rural life, community participation, and cultural, social, and environmental projects through close, honest communication with its own identity.

Project:
Almócita has a rich history of regenerative initiatives over the last couple decades. Braiding Presents addresses the project fatigue and fragmentation within this vibrant context. Their vision is to weave these threads—from agroecology to community art—into a cohesive, resilient fabric for the entire community. By strengthening connections and documenting their journey, they aim to consolidate Almócita as a living reference for a just rural transition. They will host immersive visits, create storytelling routes, and foster inclusive participation, transforming their village into a demonstrator hub that inspires pathfinder communities and safeguards cumulative knowledge for lasting impact.