Page 25 - C.A.L.L. #42 - Spring 2017

With currently approximately 170 people living permanently in Tamera (including around 20 children)
and thousands of visitors and volunteers coming to Tamera every year during the summer season, less
than 20% of required food consumed in Tamera is produced on the land. However, Tamera’s aim is not
food self-sufficiency. Even though Tamera has the land area, seeds (produced on the land), water
systems and soils to be self-sufficient, the focus is not on food production (but other areas – elaborated
upon below). Rather, Tamera helped develop a local and regional network of sustainable food
producersto provide for most of the food needs of Tamera and other local communities. Tamera is 100%
self-sufficient in its water needs, 80% in energy needs.

Researching sustainable energy
Another research focus for Tamera is in the fields of sustainable energy and living systems. The research
is undertaken by a sub-community of around 30 residents, who put their research effort into appropriate
technologies and techniques for urban water
management, urban high-intensity farming, solar
and biogas systems and more. For example the
sub-community called Solar Village uses an
outdoor (covered but no walls) community
kitchen, utilizing a commercial-scale solar oven
and a biogas system that uses all kitchen and
green waste from the village. All of these systems
have been designed and built by and within the
community using simple technologies. In this
way, Solar Village demonstrates integrated
examples of alternative living to our current
outdated fossil fuels based systems, while
emphasizing sustainability and transcending the Biogas tank fuels the kitchen using food and green waste.
industrial complex with its conventional “green”
solutions.

Trust, truth, transparency
Tamera’s community structures are built around creating and maintaining a community of trust, truth
and transparency to achieve peaceful shared living, and on a larger scale to create communities and
societies without violence and wars. This model is based on the idea that the issues that arise in small-
scale communities are a reflection of the issues facing the entire world. The basis is to transform our
personal and community narratives from violence, separation, exploitation, destruction, selfishness into a
regenerative culture of love, peace, cooperation, connection, care and restoration. These are, of course,
very ambitious aims that some might say are unrealistic. Nonetheless, this is Tamera’s core project -
working together as individuals and as a community internally and externally to create pathways and
tools to achieve these goals. Tamera, like many other intentional communities, is a very good example of
an incubator and laboratory for different ways of being in the world, experimenting with the creation of a
regenerative culture of creating and living community and for sustainable one planet living.

One of the tools used in Tamera for both personal development and community building is the forum.
The forum is a form of sharing circle, but much more. It is a guided and facilitated open space for deep

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