Looking forward to Compassion Camp 2021 with Steve & Terrie at Earthaven Ecovillage

Transcript from Video:

Steve: Hi folks! This is Steve Torma from Asheville, North Carolina and Earthaven Ecovillage.

Terrie: I’m Terrie LeWine and I’m from Philadelphia and I’m at Earthaven Ecovillage.

Steve: So, here we are today, spring equinox. We’re sitting here with our lovely flowers here at Earthaven. We are dreaming about Compassion Camp this summer, hoping that you all might want to come and join us. This is our third year, and we’re planning to have a wonderful time together.

Terrie: I love Compassion Camp because it brings people together from western North Carolina and beyond. It’s really a dream of people gathering in a way that they can share intimately, get to know each other, and learn a few skills along the way.
What are some of the things that are highlights for you, Steve?

Steve: Well, non-violent communication, which you and I both care so deeply about, it’s a core part of what we do at Compassion Camp. But, there’s many other things. Many other issues, related to how to create more peace, and justice in the world, and loving relationships, and inner peace. We also have a lot of fun.  We try to create a safe container where people’s needs to be taken care of are really respected.  And we do singing, and we do creative movement things.
What about walking around here? What do you think?

Terrie: What people have said (we often do tours of Earthaven, people sleep here in tents and inside indoors) you really get a sense of the life that is happening here at Earthaven. A sense of being connected to the earth and why that’s important too. So Compassion Camp, while it really is steeped in non-violent communication, it’s really morphed into all things compassion. What are ways we can care for each other? And care about each other?  And develop sustainable relationships, that feel really good? So one of the ways that has happened is through connecting with the people of the land here.

Steve: I really think of compassion as the medicine for our time. Learning how to just push out further, and further who we can care for, and care about not only the humans, but the beyond the human worlds. At Earthaven, if you’ve never been here before, there’s some really beautiful parts of nature that you can have access to, streams, trails, trees. So if this sounds interesting to you, we’d love to have you join us.

Terrie: One of the things that we’ve done, and we’ve grown into over all the years, is how we do leadership. It started out that we would have a few of these classes, NVC classes and things that are prepared by people who already teach.

It’s also an opportunity if you have something or some skill either that you want to ask for to kind of be immersed in a group, or that you really want to practice your own leadership skills or co-leading skills. So, we have open source (what we call our version of open source) technology, where in the beginning is when we decide what’s going to happen here. It’s designed and it’s decided by everybody who is here together. So it isn’t decided by us. That’s something that’s really important to me and it makes for a really interesting well-rounded group of topics that we can explore together.

Steve: To create a teaching – learning community. People who come together to share their talents with each other. So that we collectively become more connected, more intelligent, more skilled, more compassionate.  So, look forward to having you join us. Thank you, folks.

Terrie: Oh, a couple other things that you might want to know: One is that your kids are welcome here. We have a robust program for young people. And one of the things that people report is the food here is so good.  A lot of the food is off the land, it’s grown off the land. Most of it is cooked by people here on the land. So it’s a nice place to come to get a good meal as well.

Steve: Thank you folks, thanks for watching this. see you soon!