Page 16 - Communities Respond to COVID-19

groups to interchange services and products to keep village economies alive and neighbors working
together."

Toña Luisa Osher
Unnamed Ecovillage, Texas, USA

We are not doing anything different.
Mana Gardens, Hawai’I, United States

Very few people are on the 89 acres owned by Mana Gardens LLC. I practice social distancing. Some
others don’t. Communicating is much easier because we don’t have to see each other in court anymore
and risk repetition of the trauma of past encounters. The court paperwork is processed much faster
now. Communicating on paper through the court has given us more time to understand what each other
is trying to say and to think things through before we say them. There is less trauma-survivor réaction,
less acting from a place of fear of each other. We face a common enemy, the virus. People still visit the
89 acres and use my address to establish residency in Hawaii and get on welfare. The gate is left wide
open most of the time. So anyone can move in and camp out, at least until someone finds them. I don’t
think anyone’s going to have a major public event.

Elisabeth Green

Blueberry Hill Cohousing, Vienna, VA, USA

Early in the pandemic season we had many discussions about how to keep our common house safe and
how to make common meals a safe experience. Soon, though, we ceased having activities in the CH.

Our meetings are all on zoom and they are well attended.

We meet every night - without fail - at 6pm for Happy Hour on the greenway. About 8-15 people attend
and we socialize for 30-45 minutes. We meet rain or shine, and we capture every evening in
photographs. We had one week long ""fashion week"" where the young people dictated how we would
dress (many complied). We have celebrated birthdays and anniversaries outside, generally 6' apart,
clumped by household. This gathering has somewhat defined who is ""in"" and who is ""out"" by who
joins every time, who joins often, sometimes, or never. We are very curious how this will shift
relationships once we are all able to be together - i expect it will deepen the ""founders"" vs
""newbies"" split some have worried about.

Anna Newcomb

Blueberry Hill Cohousing, VA, USA

We have stopped cooking common meals, stopped having meetings in person, continued to have
outdoor work days with social distancing, started to have Zoom meetings, had an uninterrupted series
of outdoor Happy Hours at 6 PM on the greenway, and we don't let anyone who is not in the community
use the common house for gatherings anymore (except for the delivery folks who still have access to the
bathroom). Instead of indoor common meals we have started to cook for the community in our houses