The Global Campus, an educational network for peace communities aimed at the creation of autonomous local communities in a global context, hosted a 4 week educational gathering in Tamera in June 2015. The event brought together 24 project carriers from Global Campus base stations in Brazil, Kenya, Palestine, Colombia, Mexico, Portugal, Germany, Israel and other countries.
In the run-up to the event, the Global Campus team at Tamera carried out a crowdfunding campaign in partnership with The Grace Foundation, which also involved people from the Global Campus stations with the intention to start decentralizing the funding process. The campaign raised the total funds needed for the gathering.
The intention of those 4 weeks was the creation of deeper trust (through community training and social techniques for conflict resolution) and to grow awareness of the strength of a global Healing Biotopes network for means of protection, international support and media outreach, achieving a power that none of the communities could have reached on its own. Also intended was the creation of the “Global Campus Council”: a council of shared leadership including carriers from all Global Campus projects which would hold regular online meetings for continuous exchange in order to understand and embed local action in the global context. The council was successfully elected and have held regular Skype meetings since.
The meeting served this global understanding through lectures on the geopolitics of the regions concerned and workshops on peace journalism, as well as training for autonomy (through biogas, solar-power and permaculture).
As another outcome we can name the creation of deeper bonds and alliance among participants/Global Campus base stations through mutual witnessing of each other’s work. The deepening effect of 4 weeks’ communal living among global activists and community builders while sharing struggles, questions and successes was big. It helped grow the awareness of the globality of local community struggles within a globalized capitalist system and move toward ever more solidarity across cultures, nations and countries (Brazil, Palestine, Colombia, Kenya, Mexico).
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