Page 13 - C.A.L.L. #46 - Summer 2020

Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community, Canada

Generally, really well. We held emergency meetings as soon as the B.C. government
announced the COVID-19 restrictions, first, using social distancing, and then, via Zoom. We
followed the Jamaica Plains Cohousing model as our guide in setting up protocols, moving
through stages one through six as the crisis worsened.

We have two nurses living here who gave us good advice on disinfecting, social distancing, and
other information we needed to keep our vulnerable community members safe.

We set a schedule for disinfecting all the touch-points in our building - door handles, light
switches, entry phone, mailbox, elevator buttons, etc. - and established a buddy system so
that all the residents had someone they could call on for help if needed. We set up a buddy
family system so that the children could play together and still maintain the protocols. We
let families with children who had to work from home use some of the common rooms as their
work-space, with the condition that they had to maintain and disinfect them after every use.

There were tensions. Some people were critical of the efforts of others, and accused them
of "not taking this seriously." One of our facilitators worked with them to explore their
concerns and see if a solution could be found.

We are fortunate in that we live on a large property - 4.37 hectares - and the weather was
absolutely gorgeous, so people could get outside as our provincial health officer advised for
walks, exercise, and gardening without violating social distancing rules. We also have
experienced, well-trained facilitators who guided us through these difficult times with good
humour and grace. We started out in an atmosphere of fear and anxiety, but as time passed,
we adjusted. I feel incredibly fortunate to be living in such a supportive community during
this kind of social upheaval. It bodes well for the future.

Boekel Ecovillage, The Netherlands

At Boelkel Ecovillage we are in the process of building our own houses. The climate crisis is
still continuing, so we are also continuing.

All our meetings are now held online. Each month we have a meeting for sharing information,
and on average about 30 people attend from all over the Netherlands. The first online

meeting was attended by 45 interested people and now, three weeks later, almost 400 people
have watched it on YouTube.

The children love that they can play together all day without going to school. As for the
adults, we still work together on our temporary community centre, but keep a distance of
1.5m from each other. We have one person who has Corona and we take good care of him with
dinners and shopping. We have not made any rules or regulations regarding Corona because
we see ourselves as very responsible people and as such you don’t need to make rules.

13