The Development of a Pagan Ecovillage

Building an ecovillage requires careful planning, structured governance, and collaboration between stakeholders. This article outlines the foundational process of developing a Pagan ecovillage, drawing from experience in rural development and cooperative housing models. It highlights key steps in governance, incorporation, and community engagement essential for a successful ecovillage project.

Forest and Meadow met in 2016 in an online permaculture group and became best friends right away. This was when Meadow was still living in British Columbia and Forest was in Manitoba, Canada. They both had separate dreams of building an ecovillage, so they decided to do it together. Within a year, Meadow moved to ON and stayed a few days visiting Forest in Brandon on the way.

After a couple months of working on and selling a rental property, Meadow moved on to Nova Scotia. There she found and bought the house they now live in together in Pubnico. By 2020–right smack in the middle of the pandemic—Forest moved here so they could start their journey of building ecovillages. That’s how they started their first nonprofit, Edgewood Ecovillage (aimed at ages 50+). They had planned on donating the majority of their land for this purpose. Meadow became an unpaid volunteer (Chair) on the board, while Forest applied for grants and did the work through Forest & Meadow Villages (FMV). Luckily Meadow had experience running nonprofit boards for years, while Forest had a Masters in Rural Development, so this setup actually worked quite well, and their lawyer approved of the arms-length arrangement. However, although they were donating the majority of their land for the ecovillage, they did not plan on living in Edgewood (for various reasons).

Forest and Meadow wanted to use the same methods to design a village where they could live. Their dreams were not just to build ecovillages, but to live in one; specifically, a pagan village, so they could be among likeminded individuals… among friends. So they first created the online group, Atlantic Pagan Ecovillages, on Facebook, and the nondescript “PIC” (Pagan Intentional Community) title as a temporary name so they could recruit board members.

From there the concept of a pagan ecovillage was carried forward as a collaborative effort between individuals with a shared vision of sustainable and community-oriented living. The objective was to create a village that not only embraced ecological sustainability but also fostered a like-minded community. This project was envisioned as a cooperative initiative where governance structures would be established to ensure long-term viability.

An initial framework was developed based on best practices from nonprofit and cooperative housing models. The approach was informed by experience in nonprofit board governance and rural development expertise. This structure aimed to balance community involvement with the necessary administrative and legal requirements for successful implementation.

Meadow did not want to be on the Board of Directors this time around. This pagan village idea was their “baby” so she wanted to utilize her real estate investing and project management experience for FMV because it was too much work for Forest to do all the work by himself again. They wanted to place themselves in a position so they could act in an Advisory role to the board; for training how a board works and should be run.

They envisioned the board, and the general pagan community, as coming together to show interest and get involved rather than all of the responsibilities being on the shoulders of the board alone. Technically, the board is there to vote on decisions that have to be made (under advisement by FMV, the engineers, architects, and lawyers, since funders have a thousand rules of their own, and pose limitations as well).

FMV has learned lessons along the way, and as advisors and consultants they wanted to offer some of their time for free (not just paid), and also bring resources to the table for a pagan ecovillage.

At this point (as of this writing), the ecovillage is named at NUANS and is awaiting incorporation as the next step. Then the real work begins…

—

Next article: Structuring the Ecovillage Governance Model

Back to Blog