SIBREC — Social Inclusion in the Baltic Sea Region through Ecovillages and Communities

How can we build more social inclusion in the Baltic Region? How can we deal with challenges and struggles the society faces and how can we help each other?

SIBREC project funded by Swedish Institute and led by non-profit organisation Relearn Suderbyn brings together practitioners and researchers, community-builders and universities from Baltic Sea Region in order to explore together models and methods of social inclusion in communities and ecovillages. We bring closer to each other the community life and academic research, we collect information of needs and opportunities in the region, we connect people and facilitate the birth of further initiatives. Our question is how various communities can help marginalised groups to become an active part of the society and how we can mainstream methods from ecovillages to the broader society. We believe that the eco-communities have an immense potential to help socially-excluded groups, those who are often left aside. Our focus areas are wide: people with physical and mental disabilities, immigrants and refugees, children with learning difficulties,  rural youth, burnt-out employees and other groups whose voices are often not heard. 

We do not try to protect marginalised people from the society by building shelters.
We try to include them in the society to become an active part of it. 

The ongoing project is a one year seed-project with the aim to prepare a rich soil for future initiatives. SIBREC is being built upon physical inspiring meetings, study visits and both academic and non-formal research about communities, social inclusion methods as well as practical opportunities in the region such as available funding, contacts in different sectors, best practices, political and social background. Nevertheless one of the most important processes in the project is the creation of intersectoral network – connecting people from different work areas together to find solutions for common problems.

SIBREC has met in Riga, Latvia in St Petersburg, Russia and in Järna, Nordic anthroposofic centre in Sweden. The 12-15th of June 2016 SIBREC had its meeting back-to-back with REALS Conference, another Swedish Institute project, run in the Baltic Sea Region and bringing together grass-root initiatives from Ecovillages Movement, Transition Town Movement and Permaculture Movement in the region. 

The next meeting will be hold in Vilnius, in Mykolas Romeris University
with the focus on research and new initiatives on October 20-21st 2016. 
The meeting in Vilnius aims to bring together academia and practitioners
to focus on research and innovative models of social inclusion through intentional communities. The application is open through email  info@suderbyn.se.