Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka is a network of more than 12,000 self-sustaining villages that focuses on participatory community development with no poverty and no affluence, agriculture, micro-banking, livelihood training, cross cultural-meditation, and pre-school development.

The Tanamalwila Living and Learning Centre located near two national parks in the Southeast of Sri Lanka, focuses on permaculture, species diversity, human rights and peace initiatives. It offers regular courses to community-linked people in Southeast Asia.

Auroville in India is a multicultural eco-city that has been endorsed by UNESCO. It has a wide variety of programs and receives visiting researchers, university students, and international volunteers. Programs exist in low cost building technology and sustainable living, food security and organic farming, training in architectural applications and town planning, environmental education, seed banks, medicinal plant gardens, traditional botanical knowledge, experiential education, philosophy, medicine and healing.

Auroville’s Forestry group works on land restoration and can serve as a training center for programs like the International Earth Restoration Corps.

Bija Vidyapeeth in India (means education for Earth Citizenship) near Risikesh is an International College for Sustainable Living at the Navdanya organic farm in cooperation with surrounding sustainable villages. The rich bio-diversity of the farm provides the context for education for earth democracy in which participants (80% local 20% international) learns from nature and each other, while they study, live, clean, cook and eat together. Programs also include yoga, practice of music and theatre. Founded and run by Vandana Shiva, teachers include: Satish Kumar (Resurgence), Edward Goldsmith, Sulakh Sivaraksi, Fukuoka, Fridtjof Capra, Jeremy Rifkin, Wolfgang Sachs, Brian Goodwin

Crystal Waters in Australia offers courses in permaculture design, environmental restoration, and community work. The UN Habitat Award-winning ecovillage features housing in rammed earth, pole structures, mud brick, domes, and straw bale. Demonstration sites exist for water harvesting, waste water use, rainwater collection, swales, dams, artificial wetlands, biolytic treatment, compost toilets, stand-alone and grid-connected solar power systems, heat pumps, cell grazing, land restoration, reforestation, orchard culture, wildlife corridor and rainforest applications. Crystal Waters has an excellent range of eco-systems, and abundant and diverse wildlife, which live in harmony and close proximity with humans. The Eco Centre is an ideal place for a genuine immersion experience and is linked to credit-earning university programmes.

Tlholego in South Africa is a small rural-based living and learning community that offers certification courses in permaculture, sustainable building technology, and ecovillage design incorporating local African traditions. Programs are being planned to train trainers in science, solar technology, biology, sanitation, herbals, ecology and household food security, in order to respond to the growing challenge of prosperity and poverty living side by side.

Findhorn in Scotland offers holistic education programmes. These include an annual ecovillage training programme, permaculture workshops, courses in personal development, spirituality, arts and crafts. Findhorn is part of a large organic community-supported agricultural scheme, and has its own currency and bank, uses renewable energy systems (solar, wind and biomass), recycles waste, including sewage treated in a reed-bed living machine system. It has many community-based enterprises and is creating a village of eco-sensitive houses. Findhorn is home to an award-winning reafforestation project, Trees for Life, and promotes an ethic of voluntary simplicity.

Zegg in Germany stands for Centre for Experimental Society Design and is a community sharing a common idea of peace and sustainable living. Zegg offers courses in ecological building and renovation, mud-construction, organic gardening, permaculture design, spiritual ecology, the arts, social communication, conflict resolution, social networking, strategies for peace, and environmentally sustainable enterprises. The Zegg annual summer camps offer courses on everything from child rearing to countering global consumerism and resolving planetary crises.

Damanhur in Italy is a community with its own currency, a diverse social structure, many successful businesses, organic farms, solar installations, and an experiential school for children. Damanhur offers courses in the healing arts, communication, personal and spiritual transformation, community building, and the arts, especially in mosaics, ceramics, painting, tiffany glass work, and weaving. There is research in fields such as color therapy, plant response to music, and subtle body acupuncture. Work exchange programs exist, especially on Damanhur’s farms.

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales is run by a small community of dedicated tech environmentalists with hands-on holistic experience and academic expertise. A wide range of courses that cover green oak building, solar water heating and installations, timber frame self-build dwellings, wind turbine construction, alternative building methods, eco-design and eco-construction suitable for practicing architects and professional builders who want to learn how to be more environmentally-friendly. Courses also include green woodworking, blacksmithing, working with living willow, and providing participants with traditional local knowledge.

If we want peace on earth, we need to get an idea of what peace is. So, more than 30 years ago a team of pioneers came together to create a model for a future world society in which peace is manifested and can be experienced as convincing and as possible. This led to the foundation of the Peace Research Tamera in the Alentejo in Portugal in 1995. Tamera is a deep ecology and spiritually oriented community, now reviving a desert area of Portugal through permaculture design. It is a place with the goal of becoming “a self-sufficient, sustainable and duplicable communitarian model for nonviolent cooperation and cohabitation between humans, animals, nature, and Creation for a future of peace for all.”

The Farm in Tennessee is oriented towards low-cost high satisfaction community living and self-reliance. It offers excellent examples of solar building design, micro-enterprise, large scale composting, food production, and regenerative hardwood forest management. The Ecovillage Training Centre at the Farm offers total immersion courses ranging from basic and advanced permaculture and village design to solar electricity, water treatment, natural building techniques. It provides a walk-thru visit to a straw bale dwelling, a dome, organic gardens, rainwater harvesting facilities, greenhouses, root cellars, a wetlands filtration system, and a solar car prototype. The Farm manages 400 acres of designated wilderness preserve, has a nursery for indigenous tree species, a forest mushroom laying yard, and many species of temperate bamboo. The community has outreach programs in Central and South America.

The Manitou Foundation in Colorado fosters a network for different cultural and spiritual traditions and runs the Earth Restoration Corps (ERC), a training of trainers program in earth restoration, environmental technologies, micro credits, environmental businesses, and meaningful livelihood for youth.

The ERC is dedicated to helping establish and maintain training programs in ecovillages throughout the world and the protection of indigenous peoples and traditional wisdoms. ERC teams have partnership programs with communities in India, Brazil, and the Philippines.

La Caravana is a mobile ecovillage working in Central and South America that uses theatre arts, workshops, conferences and bio-regional events to teach people how to take better care of the Earth.

La Caravana has inspired the creation of ecovillage networks and projects in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Jamaica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil and helped to create the Ecuadorian Women’s Leadership Network for Peace. International volunteers teach permaculture, ecovillage design, consensus decision-making, facilitation and conflict resolution, appropriate technology, natural building techniques and community development for positive planetary change.