Tamera - Peace Research and Education Center
From newborns to elders in their 80s, coming from diverse nationalities, cultures and religions, around 200 community members currently live at Tamera Peace Research Village and Education Center in the countryside of Southern Portugal. The leaders came together in 1978 to create an interdisciplinary research center, attracting specialists in bionics, architecture, food security and new technologies. Their clear mission is to empower people around the world to create centers where research of the ethical, social, sexual, ecological, technological and economic foundations of community are studied and to create a replicable model, sharing with the world a vision they call "Terra Nova": the vision of a planetary culture of autonomous and interconnected communities.
These interconnected communities are called "Healing Biotopes." The word “biotope” comes from the Greek “bio” (life) and “topos” (place). It’s a habitat where all life forms – humans, animals, plants, waters and other beings – co-exist in united diversity. The origins of the words “healing,” “wholeness” and “holy” are the same. To heal doesn’t mean to fix an illness or problem, but to overcome separation and restore the wholeness of life.
Biotopes are living examples that demonstrate how decentralized, autonomous communities can emerge around the world as the foundation for a new planetary culture, forming what they call the "Sacred Matrix".
Healing Biotopes synthesize different solutions in many realms into a coherent system. The realms of research include, building community, healing sex, love and partnership, self-change and healing our consciousness, raising children, cooperation with animals and all beings, restoring nature, regenerative decentralized autonomy in water, energy and food, new economics. They are futuristic centers for humanity to see and embody a new vision for inhabiting this planet free of violence and war.
Once an abandonned and desolate landscape, the pioneers of Tamera have transformed the land into an extensive edible landscape currently spanning 330 acres, with many buildings, gardens, roads, a children’s school and an education campus. It’s a research area of its own – manifesting great visions into a beautiful material reality. Around the lakes of Tamera is dense with diverse fruit trees, berry bushes, herbs and vegetables that feed the community. The food forests are crossed with shaded trails for walking. Solar collectors and photovoltaics produce most of Tamera's electricity and warm water. An experimental micro-biogas plant, lovingly called Hulda the Cow by the researchers, is fed food waste and compost and provides the energy needed at night and on rainy days. In the solar kitchen, a Scheffler Reflector (parabolic mirror) and different solar cookers produce the heat needed to prepare meals for about forty people at a time in the communal kitchen. Barbara Kovats, coordinator of the SolarVillage test field at Tamera, says that as long as large corporations control the supply of energy, water, and food, there will be injustice and war. They want to show how regional, community-based autonomy in food and energy can work not just at Tamera but by communities worldwide, especially in crisis areas where in cases this knowledge can decide about survival"
About 2000 peaceworkers, students and visitors come to Tamera's educational center each year and they continue to expand their education programs (online and on-site) to continue to research how it’s possible to live in a way that doesn’t disturb nature, but regenerates her.
The principle of abundance present in nature and its gift economy inspired Tamera in the development of its economic system. Just like every tree gives away its seeds, its shade and its leaves as compost, and won't charge for it or calculate what it gets back, Tamera's community members give each other their work without being paid, writes Ehrenpreis, one of the co-founders of the ecovillage. Tamera's economy overcomes the pattern of exchange-of asking what do I get for what i give? This principle requests a lot of trust, which only can be created in community. When community 'works' well, you will never really lack something you need. There is always somebody to help you, and there is always somebody whom you can help.
(excerpts from the Tamera.org website and Sustainable (R)evolution book by Juliana BirnBaum and Louis Fox)
A community member about to give birth
