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The Villages of Life

The Villages of Life

Whether you can live tomorrow is decided today.

Don't believe us? Look.

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted.
Fertiliser supplies are becoming scarcer or more expensive.
Harvests are falling.
Fields are short of workers.
El Niño is setting in.

Check these facts

It is still just a crisis. We hope.

Tomorrow, we will still be able to eat.

Surely. We hope.

And this is where you have a choice to make.

Not a small one.

Not a choice about an investment, a house or a career.

A choice that can decide a life.

Perhaps more than one.

The lives of those you are responsible for.

You can carry on as you are.

Or decide to understand.

And prepare.

The world is changing without waiting for us.

We often wait for a decision, an election or a technology to improve our situation.

But meanwhile, the world keeps changing.

And problems do not come one at a time.

  1. Heat worsens drought.
  2. Drought weakens harvests.
  3. We pump more water.
  4. Water tables fall.
  5. Trees suffer.
  6. And the cycle feeds itself.

The danger may not be a catastrophe.

It is the accumulation.

Understand why

And you — what do you do?

You know how to work.
You know how to earn money.
You may know how to lead, build, teach or care for people.

But if tomorrow there is not enough food:

what do you do?

Do you wait for someone to solve the problem?

Do you run out to find what is left?

Do you go gathering wild plants in the woods?

And then?

Stop for a moment.

Really think.

If you do not have an answer, there is nothing unusual about that.

That is exactly the question we have been working on for more than twenty years.

And the solution may be right in front of you.

On your own?

If you do not think about it for long, the answer seems simple.

A few supplies.
A garden.
Water.
A little energy.

And you do not need us.

But think a little further.

Who grows your food?
Who brings the water?
Who repairs things?
Who provides care?
Who protects you from the heat?
Who cares for the people you love?

And surviving is not enough.

You also need to learn, laugh, love, raise children and be glad to get up in the morning.

All of that takes skills, working hands and healthy people.

That is why a Village of Life is not three families hidden behind a fence.

It is about 500 people.

Children and teenagers.
Hundreds of adults able to act.
And those who, after giving so much, also have the right to enjoy Life.

But you do not bring 500 people together with a snap of the fingers.

How do you begin?

So what do we do?

We come together.

Not to talk. To live.

One grows food, another cares for people, another repairs things, another looks after children or older people.

We share hands, knowledge, water and tools.

We learn what we do not yet know.

Alone, we will not last long. Together, we can endure.

That is a Village of Life.

Becoming strong

To live tomorrow, we must be alive and strong today.

A food crisis can be serious without the shelves being empty.

We may keep eating.
But eating less well.
And gradually receiving from our food less of what our body needs.

Yet it is precisely our physical and intellectual capacities that we will need to face what is coming.

We want to act on both times.

Living today

Preserving and strengthening what allows us to live now.

Staying strong.
Keeping our physical capacities.
Keeping our ability to think, decide, work, and help those we love.

This path will lead to the solutions we are developing for today.

Preparing tomorrow

Building the conditions that will allow us to keep living if our environment becomes much more difficult.

This path leads to the Villages of Life.

The Village

How a community organises itself to live.

500 people.

Children, teenagers, adults, older people.

Among them are the Inhabitants: they are the ones who live, work, decide and keep the Village alive.

And some of them take on a role for a time.

  • The Initiator

    They get the Village started and bring the first people together.

  • The Coordination Circle

    It organises the community's gradual formation: it welcomes future Inhabitants until the planned size is reached, then organises the selection of those who can join the Village after that.

  • The Mutual Security Circle

    It keeps one question in view: will we still be able to meet our vital needs tomorrow?

A Village is not alone

Because no community can do everything on its own.

  • Solidarity between Villages
  • Villages born from other Villages
  • Shared projects
  • The Pillars
  • The Companions of Life
  • Exchanges
  • Specialisations

Protecting the work

So that what has been built remains in service of Life.

  • The Architect / Founder

    He conceived, built, tested and passed on the work.

    He does not run the Villages.

    When the work can live without him, he steps back from operations.

  • The Founders' Circle

    These are the people who took part in the project's birth and sustained it over time.

    They preserve its memory.

    They do not govern the Villages.

  • The Guardians

    They protect the reason the work exists.

    They make sure, in particular, that it remains:

    • accessible to everyone;
    • not turned into a business;
    • faithful to its human and moral rules;
    • in service of Life.

To guard is not to govern.

We are not asking you to believe us

You do not need to retrace those twenty years before you can use this work.

We will simply show you what we have built.

Then you can examine it from every angle.

Challenge a choice.
Suggest something better.
Explore a question further.
Or decide to take part.

Start simply by discovering how a Village of Life works.

We are not selling this idea.

If this work can help a child, a family, thousands of people to keep living, we have no intention of turning it into a business.

What we have learned is yours to use.

Take it. Use it. Improve it.

Discover the Villages of Life

20 years of work to answer one question: how will we live tomorrow?

Understand our approach — new tab

Inside the Village

The functions that keep a Village alive day to day.

How is a Village of Life born?

One person decides to act.
Others join them.
Little by little, a community forms and organises itself.

This short film will show you how a Village of Life is built, from the first decision to its full organisation.

Watch the film

  • The Initiator

    Watch the film

  • The Coordination Circle

    Watch the film

  • The Reliability Circles

  • The Circle of Elders

  • The Circle of the Wise

  • The Circle of Mutual Aid

  • The Inhabitants

  • The Guardians of Knowledge

  • The Guardians of Resources

A Village is not alone

What connects the Villages to one another.

Protecting the work

What guards the work without directing it.

The Network of the Villages of Life

From the work of one Village to the network, and what that changes for people.

  • GAÏA

  • The Network of the Villages of Life

You can go much further

This page is not meant to contain twenty years of work.

It is a doorway.

If you want to understand the assumptions, research, choices, proposed solutions and the work behind the Villages of Life, you can explore them in more depth through La Vie Demain.

Here, first of all, we want you to understand one thing:

We cannot stop the world from changing.

But we can learn to depend less on what is becoming fragile.