After 10 years involved in self-developing Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage, marked for me with some serious and in retrospect unnecessary growing pains that cost us dearly, I'd like to recommend an invaluable resource I wish we'd had earlier. It’s an online course excellent for forming communities who want to avoid some of the painful process pitfalls we experienced, but at least as valuable for anyone disturbed by the state of our world and interested in human and planetary sustainability.

It’s been almost a decade (seven years) since we traveled to the National Cohousing Conference in Boulder Colorado to learn about how to build our own community in Nashville, Tennessee. We’ve come full circle now with the Conference to be held in Nashville this week.

Back then two of us traveled to Boulder and met two other individuals from Nashville, also attending. They were taking a driving tour through the southwest looking for cohousing. We were surprised to run into other Nashvillians in Boulder that weekend!

A few days ago, to my amusement, I learned that cohousing shares a lot of principles with many African cultures. This happened over (way too many) drinks with a filmmaker called Alan O’Hashi following a dinner party at a cohousing community in the small town of Memel, amidst the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa. In fact, I also found out that this is the first and only cohousing community in South Africa (and I assume for most of Africa?) (Why???!).

Several PDX Commoners are attending the National Cohousing Conference in Nashville. Here's what's motivating them to attend:

"I plan to concentrate on sessions related to creating caring, supportive cohousing communities. In PDX Cohousing, I hope to help create a framework where any of us can ask for and receive support during short term illness, some chronic illnesses, and even end-of-life situations."
- Susan Fries

Grace Farm is a group of friends, with an average age of about 35, who have been exposed to community living through a few different experiences and have been motivated to potentially start our own cohousing community. The 10 founding members of Grace Farm have experienced community living most notably from our time at Bethlehem Farm, an intentional community in the mountains of West Virginia with a mission of service and outreach to the people of Appalachia.