Balkan Earth gatherings: reMembering Communities with Land

PROJECT PROPOSAL

NOVA SPIRALA BALKANA

Community Regeneration Through Earth, Memory & Collective Resilience

Nova Spirala Balkana is a community-led regeneration project developed by Majka Zemlja – Balkan Healers, focused on rebuilding relationships between people, land, memory, and local ecosystems across the Balkans.

The project responds to a growing crisis of disconnection:

• disconnection from land,
• disconnection between generations,
• disconnection from traditional ecological knowledge,
• and disconnection from collective forms of resilience and care.

The Balkans are a region of extraordinary biodiversity, deep cultural memory, and strong traditions connected to land, food, water, medicinal plants, seasonal cycles, and communal life. However, decades of war, economic instability, migration, urbanization, ecological neglect, and social fragmentation have weakened many of these living systems.

Nova Spirala Balkana was created to help restore them.

The project combines ecological awareness, community gatherings, education, local knowledge, and trauma-informed regenerative practices to support both environmental and social regeneration.

Rather than approaching healing and ecology as separate fields, the project recognizes that: healthy communities and healthy ecosystems grow together.

Core Areas of the Project

1. Community Gatherings in Nature

The project organizes seasonal gatherings in natural locations across the Balkans, including mountains, rivers, forests, and historically significant ecological sites.

These gatherings reconnect participants with:

• local ecosystems,
• biodiversity,
• natural cycles,
• traditional knowledge,
• collective care,
• and embodied relationships with the Earth.

Activities may include:

• ecological education,
• nature walks,
• traditional knowledge sharing,
• community dialogue,
• creative workshops,
• local food preparation,
• river and land awareness activities,
• and collective regenerative practices.

The gatherings also serve as spaces for rebuilding trust, cooperation, and social resilience across fragmented communities.

2. Earth-Based Education & Ecological Literacy

Nova Spirala Balkana develops accessible educational programs connecting people with:

• regenerative living,
• ecosystem awareness,
• watershed understanding,
• biodiversity protection,
• soil and food systems,
• medicinal plants,
• and sustainable community practices.

Special focus is placed on younger generations who are increasingly disconnected from land-based knowledge and ecological participation.

The project seeks to make ecological awareness practical, communal, and culturally rooted rather than abstract or institutional.

3. Trauma-Informed Regeneration

The Balkans continue to carry visible and invisible consequences of war, displacement, social collapse, and collective stress.

Nova Spirala Balkana integrates trauma-informed approaches into community regeneration by creating spaces that support:

• reconnection,
• nervous system regulation,
• collective dialogue,
• cultural remembrance,
• and rebuilding trust between people and place.

The project understands regeneration not only as environmental restoration, but also as the restoration of human relationships and collective resilience.

4. Preservation of Cultural & Ecological Memory

Traditional ecological knowledge in the Balkans is rapidly disappearing.

The project works to document and preserve:

• local stories,
• land-based traditions,
• herbal knowledge,
• seasonal practices,
• community rituals connected to nature,
• and forms of collective care that historically supported resilience in the region.

This work helps bridge generations while protecting valuable ecological and cultural intelligence.

5. Building Regenerative Community Networks

A long-term goal of Nova Spirala Balkana is to support the emergence of decentralized regenerative networks across the Balkans.

These networks aim to strengthen:

• local cooperation,
• ecological stewardship,
• community resilience,
• knowledge exchange,
• and grassroots regenerative infrastructure.

The project prioritizes accessibility, local participation, and low-cost community-led models that can grow organically over time.

Use of Funding

Funding would support:

• organizing community gatherings and workshops,
• transportation and logistical support,
• educational materials,
• documentation and media production,
• ecological awareness activities,
• support for local facilitators and organizers,
• small-scale regenerative infrastructure,
• and the development of long-term community programming.

Vision

Nova Spirala Balkana is rooted in a simple but powerful idea:

regeneration begins when people reconnect with the Earth, with each other, and with the living memory of place.

By rebuilding these relationships, the project seeks to support a more resilient, cooperative, and regenerative future for the Balkans.