Find below the Invitation from Global Villages Network for preparatory meeting in Aigelsberg. Global Villages are local communities that work closely together with other communities around the whole world, using communication technologies to bootstrap all sectors of local life - towards resilience, beauty and quality of life. 

Call for the Global Villages Network Preparatory Meeting in Aigelsberg 10th of August, 2012

"Raising Cultural Autonomy and Integrity by Global Cooperation at the Village and Neighborhood Scale"

This is a call for the weaving of a long - needed network. It will take time and effort to do it, but it will be of utmost importance for our common future.

In many respect humanity is at a tipping point today. Decisions made today are creating self - supporting, self - accelerating dynamics. We begin to understand that we are aleady witnessing such dynamics. The rapid growth of urban areas, the globalisation of production, the burden on natural resources and balance are a living example how humans can influence the world and how a collective dream can carry forward enormous effects and impacts, wanted or unwanted.

We believe its time for an even better dream. We believe its time for a dream that will guarantee each human individual equal opportunities and access to the beauty of this planet. We believe that the reemergence and strengthening of local communities and their self - determination and autonomy is the key to such a future.

We are at the historical end of an economic and political system that has unfolded and manifested our global nature, but mostly by aggression and competition. While still the skyscapers are growing from Shanghai to Kinshasa, from Vienna to Buenos Aires, this feels increasingly like the growth of the nobilities palaces in the late period of Feudalism. An outdated system manifest itself in specious prosperity. The places and spaces it produces are not liveable, wasteful and spiritless. Still those places claim to be without alternative and the only possibility to house a growing world population.

Nothing could be more shortsighted. While humans are pent-up in cities, the vast majority of land is deteriorating, often turning lavish nature and carefully protected cultured landscape into industrial farmland or outright desert. 

So, in order to change the dream, we come together to explore the real potential of the vilage in the 21str century - the connected village, the integral village, the Global Village. We celebrate the growing insights into the complexity of the web of life around us, which gives new and exciting directions to the development of our technologies, that instead of just mimicking life can greatly support it. We celebrate this as an option for humans to return and bring their mind home after centuries of alienation from our true, resonating living ground. We celebrate this as a reunion in dignity where humans can live and thrive within natural environment without the burden of excessive labor and worries, without so many dependencies and sacrifices.

This opportunity comes from many sources.

• We have learned to work with nature, not against her;
• We have learned to share our insights with powerful tools of communication and exchange.
• We have learned to produce effectively in small scale with sophisticated tools, often the product of urban industries that empower us.
• We have learned about the spiritual wealth within each human.

Just a few out of a plethora of reasons why we think: the village is the optimal form of human development.

We do not want to abolish our often really wonderful cities, we want to create a new balance, a needed balance. Thats why we focus on the element that is so deeply neglected.

On August 10th, we will have the first dedicated meeting since 1997 - and yet this will be only a preparatory meeting to start preparing a bigger conference in 2013. We think the location that we picked to develop together with us is worth the trip. We have hot springs, rich monasteries, historical towns, interesting rivers, and much more that you can enjoy before and after or in between the meetings. We are suitable located with equal distance to many locations in Germany and Austria.

On the 10th of August, we will bring together developments from many parts of the world, highlights from our friends work, and we will look at opportunities and threats. On the following weekend, there is plenty of room for follow - ups if you choose to stay at the place or nearby.

For accomodation, please write to: office[at]geinberg-suites.com

If you want to participate and take part in the programme, please write to:  f.nahrada[at]reflex.at

The meeting will be in German with German to English and English to German translation

The full information in German is here http://www.dorfwiki.org/wiki.cgi?Aigelsberg/ZweiterWorkshop

Visit Global Villages Network at: http://globalvillages.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

Franz Nahrada