Tamera – Healing Biotope I

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Tamera – Healing Biotope I

Located in 7630 Colos, Alentejo, Portugal

Mission Statement
The Healing Biotope I Tamera is a peace research project with the goal to create the model for a future society that is free from hatred, lies, violence and fear. Tamera should become an acupuncture point of peace, a greenhouse of trust, a prototype for an existence free of fear on this planet, a post-capitalist societal model and a place where the human and meta realm of life come together.

Community Description
Tamera is a Peace University, a model for a peace civilization and a research Station for a realistic utopia.
The project was founded in Germany in 1978 by Dieter Duhm, Sabine Lichtenfels and Charly Rainer Ehrenpreis. In 1995 it moved to Portugal. Today 170 people live and work on a property of 330 acres.
The founding thought was to develop a non-violent life model for cooperation between human being, animal and nature. Soon it became clear that the healing of love and of human community had to be placed at the center of this work. Sexuality, love and partnership need to be freed from lying and fear, for there can be no peace on Earth as long as there is war in love. The ecological and technological research of Tamera includes the implementation of a retention landscape for the healing of water and nature, as well as a model for regional autonomy in energy and food. Through the Global Campus and the Terra Nova School we are working within a global network on the social, ecological and ethical foundations for a new Earth – Terra Nova.

Housing
Status: We have land we have developed on
Area: 330 acres
Current Residence Types: Tiny house, Yurt, tee-pee, dome, treehouse, or tent, Mobile homes, RV’s, converted buses, Natural built structues, Lots to build on
Current Number of Residences: 170
Planned number of residences: 500
Planned Residence Types: Multi-family homes, Room(s) in a house or building, Tiny house, Yurt, tee-pee, dome, treehouse, or tent, Natural built structues, Lots to build on
Housing Provided: Included in Membership
Land owned by: The entire community membership
Additional Comments:
The site had very few old houses, which we renewed, then we started to build offices, guest and seminar houses with adobe, wood and straw, then workshops and a few residential houses experimenting with different styles of ecological building.
At that point the authorities approached us and requested a building plan for the next 15 years and a rezoning of the property. We are now (2016) started that process that will take some years. In that years we won´t build new houses. Most community members will live in yurts or caravans for that time.

Membership
Adult Members: 120
Child Members: 40
Non-member Residents: 20
Percent Women: 51-60%
Percent Men: 41-49%
Percent Transgender: 0%
Visitors accepted: Yes
Visitor Process:
Please find on our website the seminar and events calendar and choose, contact us via phone or email to register. On Saturdays during the guest season from April to November we have guided tours. Please don´t just come and surprise us with your visit, register!

The Guest Center of Tamera is meeting place, home and study space for a growing international community of people. We warmly welcome you to get to know Tamera, its specific projects and people, and especially the vision of a new Earth.

You visit an emerging new culture that rattles conventional thinking and behavioral patterns. In the following, we want to give an introduction as to what you can expect in such an unconventional environment:

We are working to take all areas of life back to our own responsibility. This also concerns the material supply of food, energy and water. We learn from the cooperation with nature what it means to live again in wealth and real abundance and receive nature’s gifts with gratitude. We meet all creatures, even the smallest, with mindfulness and respect. They, just as we humans, belong to the great family of life.

We invite all our guests to get involved in a simple life in community during the period of your stay. You will get to know a communitarian lifestyle, meeting over meals, working together and sleeping in dormitories. Our kitchens serve vegan meals from predominantly regionally produced and organic food. The night lights up with a sea of stars, but there are no street lights.
Open to new Members: Yes
Membership Process:
We are open for more co-workers, particularly in the areas of crafts, ecology, and technology. The process to find the decision to become a co-worker needs some time, and the profound knowledge of the basic ideas of community, peace work and life in Tamera.
Tamera stands as a new possibility for life for this whole planet. This possibility does not end at the gates of Tamera. All people that recognize the necessity of this work are invited to collaborate and join this work.

Additional Comments:
There are no religious or spiritual obligations, but we share meditation and prayer that shape the spiritual character of Tamera.
We do not follow any special spiritual path but are open to elements of many paths. Each individual chooses his/her form of spirituality.
On the Place of the Children, a free school is being developed.

Government
Decision Making: Modified Consensus (everyone agrees, with some exceptions or fallbacks.)
Identified Leader: No
Leadership Core Group: Yes
Additional Comments:
The responsible persons of the projects form a council. This council and different working groups prepare decisions. Those decisions are being approved by the plenary by modified consensus, not in a formal way, based on trust and solidarity and encouraging the best future ideas.

Economics
Dues, Fees, or Shared Expenses: Yes
Shared Income: All or close to all
Required Labor Contribution per Week: 36
Open to members with existing debt: Yes (some debt)
Additional Comments:
Tamera is based on a community of trust. This is also reflected in its economic structure. Money is, like everything in a community of trust, subject to the communitarian ethics: transparency, mutual support and responsible participation.
The community is regularly informed about all cash flow, economic projects and investments. All decisions are transparent; all community members are invited to the relevant councils. Tamera itself, with all its buildings and purchases belongs to “the community” – the legal figure is listed below.
Trust is not the result of paragraphs and articles. It is a human quality. The deeper the trust is among each other and the more one has embraced the political objectives of Tamera, the more he or she will take responsibility for the whole and move away from his previously private existence into a communitarian way of life. This also includes a responsible way of dealing with the subject of money. It is a challenging research topic to invent a monetary system that promotes trust and community and reduces competitive thoughts. We are currently navigating through a mixture of both communal and private property with the increasing orientation towards a communitarian economy.

The Legal Figure of the Tamera Economy

If we wanted to describe Tamera in entrepreneurial terms, we could say its product consists in building a global model of peace and information fields for healing; its profit consists of the knowledge that is passed to the world as help, its shareholders are all the people who want to invest their money, their knowledge, their labor.

Tamera is a communitarian undertaking. In the existing legal system, there is so far no elaborate legal form, which really captures the complex structure of a community. We have therefore developed a structure combining the form of companies and associations for our communitarian framework.

The property of Tamera and its infrastructure is owned by the company Ilos, Peace Research Center, Lda. The shareholders of Ilos are the registered associations “G.R.A.C.E.” and “Associação para um Mundo Humanitario” (AMH). The active members of the associations are the community members of Tamera.

The Associação para um Mundo Humanitario (AMH) is responsible for the environmental and technological research projects of Tamera: the Solar Village Test Field, the Water Retention Landscape, ecological landscape healing, the reforestation project, building alimentary biotopes and for establishing the regional network.

The G.R.A.C.E Association is responsible for the field of peace education, including the Global Campus, the youth school for global education, Place of the Children, as well as internal education and global peace actions. The Association also has a special training and scholarship fund for student peace workers from more impoverished countries. It is possible to sponsor students.

This structure is made up of a business, which is allowed to make profit, and a charitable non-profit sector, which finances its activities through donations and grants. Profits from ILOS are equally shared between the two associations.

Tamera has three monetary circuits:
1. Basic Household
This is the heart of the communitarian economy of Tamera. It covers all basic costs of the place and the people including services, repairs, maintenance, and supply. The Basic Household is funded by guests and the revenue from seminars, and from the Book Shop, the Support Circle and direct donations, as well as by the community itself. Considering the size of the project, this Basic Household is relatively low. It makes it possible that within the community there are no wages and labor costs. All co-workers work for room and board and receive a small monthly stipend.

The co-workers of Tamera take the responsibility for any financial deficits. They are therefore required to attract money outside of Tamera to compensate for any shortage in the Basic Household.

2. Loan Budget
The purchase of Tamera’s land and the initial investment were financed in part with loans. For several years we decided to stop using loans for investments, for political reasons. The Loan Household can be repaid with the help of interest-free exchange loans so that private loans that are due can be paid back.

3. Investment Budget
Funds donated here will go towards the individual project groups. Donations from the Investment Budget are used for building projects, the Solar Village Test Field, the further expansion of the Water Retention Landscape, food autonomy, landscaping, the creation of the International School “Escola da Esperança”, political actions, networking journeys, etc.

The “silent” costs incurred for each new investment – operating costs, costs for maintenance, spending on infrastructure, cooperation, planning and preparing projects – are not charged extra each time but are set at 30% of the incoming donations. This 30% is redirected to the Basic Household, which carries these silent costs.

Sustainability Practices
Energy Infrastructure: We use both systems.
Current renewable energy generation: 50-75%
Energy sources: Solar, Biogas
Planned renewable energy generation: Almost All, around 90%
Current food produced: Between 26-49%
Planned food produced: From 50-75%
Food produced locally: Almost All, around 90%

Lifestyle
Common Facilities: Common House, Garden(s), Greenhouse(s), Vehicle Share, Library, Workshop, Outbuilding(s), Swimming pond or pool, Outdoor Kitchen, Large Scale Kitchen, Tractor & Farm Equipment, Stage or Auditorium, Fire pit, Swingsets & play areas, Recreational vehicles, Gym or sports area, Internet
Internet Available: Yes, community provides it
Internet Fast?: Yes, it’s fine.
Cell Phone Service: Good for most people.
Shared meals: Approximately all meals
Dietary Practice: Mostly Vegan
Dietary Choice or Restrictions: No – people may eat however they wish.
Special Diets OK: Yes
Alcohol Use: Yes, used occasionally.
Tobacco Use: Yes, used occasionally.
Additional Diet Comments:
In the future workshop Tamera a department is under construction for a sustainable, decentralized and a complicity-free diet for the past several years. We want to show that it is possible to build a model region, where the people can once again provide for themselves. As it is a real living alternative to the useless mega systems, it is, in principle, transferable to many other regions of the world. The fundamental ideas and principles, which provide orientation in this model, refer to:

Regional (decentralized):
As much food as possible comes from our own gardens or from the regional network of our neighbors and friends, or at least from Portugal. Only in special cases do we engage in the international fair trade market.

Seasonal:
We live with the rhythms of nature and learn to live more and more with the gifts and fruits that are given to us in their respective seasons.

Complicity-free (long term):
The way we deal with plants, how we cultivate and harvest, how we treat animals and the earth should not be not exploitative or harmful, but enriching and healing. “Sustainability” in the deepest sense is that which is not directed against the cycles of life, but cooperates with them. In such systems there can no longer be any losers. The nature thanks us for this approach with stable, high yields, healthy food and an abundance that re-opens our human soul and nourishes us.

Preferably Vegan:
We forgo animal products in the community kitchens of Tamera; but leave it to a personal decision whether or not to eat dairy products or eggs. We have agreed to not eat meat, fish and poultry in Tamera for the time being because we still have no real answers to this topic. We are however continuing to research on the question of whether animals will be part of our diet in the future. We are thinking about how humane animal husbandry and slaughtering could look like in a new culture. Even though this topic is very charged due to the violence of traditional animal husbandry, it is about making decisions based on authentic experiences, not driven by dogmas.

High Quality Food:
What really nourishes us? What food makes us not only satisfied, but alive and healthy? It is often not the amount or the material ingredients, but light and soul power, as well as the joy of cooking and eating that make up a true “food.”

To order to implement these fundamental ideas, we work in the following areas and combine them into a complete system:

Permaculture:
A variety of fruits and vegetables, edible and medicinal herbs, spices, olives and almonds are grown and harvested applying the principles of Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture. Grains and legumes are to come in the next few years.

Seed Saving:
The practice of seed saving is in alliance with Permaculture. The seeds collected are from our land, adapted to the regional conditions and hybrid-free. A seed garden and accompanying seed bank were created in Tamera.

Regional Network:
In cooperation with neighboring farmers, beekeepers and others we produce fruits and vegetables as well as rice, grains, chickpeas, beans, honey, olive oil, eggs, cheese, bread and more. We share our knowledge of Permaculture, Water Retention Landscapes and technology – and learn from the experiences of local farmers. The aim is towards a cooperative in which many people from the region can participate in the new food cycles again.

Shopping and Coordination:
The entire supply, purchasing, operation of various cuisines and the establishment of the regional network are coordinated by Lina Wrobel and Birger Bumb.

Processing Kitchen:
The Processing Kitchen is run by Ina Voigt and Petra Mockert. It provides all necessary preservation and finishing steps. Here they produce, preserve and store herbs, teas, jams, dried fruit, vinegar, olive oil, canned tomatoes, spices, sauerkraut, chutney, soaps and shampoo.

Most of the processing is done with solar energy in the form of Scheffler Mirrors, solar dryers and cooking boxes. Through this process, biogas is produced from the kitchen waste.

Common Spiritual Practice(s): Ecumenical (accepts all religions or spiritual practices), Eclectic (integrates multiple religious or spiritual beliefs), Not a particularly spiritual or religious community, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan, Sufi, Native American, Paganism or Earth Religions, Atheist, Humanist
Spiritual Practice Expected?: No
Education Style(s): Home Schooling
Expected Healthcare Practices:
In the current “Posto de Saúde,” medical practice, we doctors and health practitioners are already collaborating with the thoughts mentioned. Whenever possible we do this with the orientation of how the healing powers of life can be strengthened in the individual, a group, or throughout the community. A large Centro de Saude is planned, in which far more healers from various specialization fields can practice across disciplines and parallel using the basic healing thoughts of Tamera. People from the region can then find holistic support here.
Healthcare Options: Partial, Special, or Limited Community Plan

Source: https://www.ic.org/directory/tamera-healing-biotope-i/
             http://www.tamera.org/