ESC: The Rise of the Community

We are a social cooperative which primarily started as an educational project to spread the know-how and ideology behind natural building and bioclimatic architecture, guided by the safe management of resources and energy. Nowadays, it has expanded to more holistic activities involving with many aspects of sustainable development such as renewable energies, alternative technologies, upcycling and recycling, food cultivation, harvesting and processing, permaculture, natural farming and so on. Our organization has been active in the field of youth and adult education for seventeen years. It has developed its own training methods, workshops, and courses and has organized multiple educational activities around sustainability and ecology. Apart from its action at a national and international level, it possesses a farm which is a field of experimentation and practical implementation of such techniques and technologies. In addition, a lot of our workshops take place there. We have also established a network of professionals, consisting of more than 1,500 volunteers for community building and green development. Our latest project is to create a model of self sustainable small farms supporting 10-15 people with incomes from eco-tourism, training and agricultural products. We are applying this model to our farm in Nessonas. Our cooperative numbers 7 persons, we have 3 more persons on our payroll and a network of 2000 volunteers.