Sieben Linden in depth part 1

Ok - finally some time to blog about my experience at Sieben Linden in depth.  Unfortunately I am a bit under the weather as the stress of hectic travel and cultural challenges has caught up with me... but what a beautiful place to be under the weather.  Last nite 5 different people stopped by to offer me hot tea and food in the bungalow where I am staying... such love and giving.


The team exercises here are world class.  They are advanced versions of things I used to do in the corporate world of team building.  My favorites are the 'forum': a very small version of a roman forum, where one person gets up and speaks their mind about whatever they want and the people act as mirrors back to them.  I readily participate in these, even tho my german is very basic. 

Today's topic was about money + economy.  We had an overview of the overall organization and cash flows, the cost control sheets, various internal jobs + payments, external jobs, etc.  We then broke into smaller groups and put in about 10 coins of various denominations.  The first exercise was to give money (no talking) to each other.  The second was to receive (only) money without talking. And the third was the ask and negotiate for money.  I was amazed that I ended up with almost double what I started by asking for money for starving kids in Africa. (i donated the proceeds to the 7L (which is what Sieben Linden calls itself)  medical center for kids).

 

Then we had a hour long meeting with the CEO of the overall ecoVillage and the CEO of the living business group.  They are divided into five sub groups here and have pretty rigid structures that have been worked out over 20 years on where monies flow to and from.  There's some built in flexibility, but the costs are distributed equally among members.   For people that make their earnings outside of 7L, they can donate their earnings to the village - or not:  totally flexibile.

Housing projects are difficult to start here.  They need a true champion and someone to spearhead it, start it and see it through.  Few do.  Larger projects are also a bit difficult since it required much discussion and input from the community. 

These seems to be a commonality that all ecoVillages have:  seeking input and agreement on major community-impacting projects, resulting in very slow change.

membership

I asked what Sieben Linden's waiting list was - and they said they had none... that it was us 16 sitting in the room (we each paid around 600 euros for this privilege).  Since all of their conferences, seminars, orientations, tours, etc are totally sold out months before they occur - i don't think this is true.  It's another cultural difference reflected in language.  How does one say in german 'how many people are waiting to get in, if they could'...   what is the pent-up demand?  It's probably in the hundreds.  But then again several people told me that most germans cannot and would not give up their cozy, habitual life in their city homes or apartments and willingly choose to live in the country where they would be expected to actively participate in a community. 

Part of Sieben Linden's success comes from their being extremely picky in choosing new members.  Of the 16 in this 'PIV' group, 6 will be chosen to attend a two week intensive orientation + preparation seminar.  From those 6, 3 will be chosen for a 1 year probationary period upon which they could move in permanently.  

During each of these phases, 2/3 of all existing community members must provide positive feedback for each prospective member.  In the last two phases, it must be 100%.