Descrizione dell'organizzazione

SUMMARY
The Regen Association is based in Puglia, Italy, officially registered as an Association, under this name, in 2019. Previously, Regen was known as Naumanni and La Mandragora associations, founded by its members in 2012, with running activities since then. More specifically, in Palombaio we have an educational and demonstration centre that runs regenerative agricultural projects and trainings for young people and adults. Regen aims to regenerate the social and natural environment and induce changes in the long term from a sustainable development perspective by focusing on empowering young people to take initiative and giving them the right tools to acquire every knowledge and skill they might need once back to take their own path. More broadly, we aim to stimulate young people and adults to become more aware and responsible for the natural world. That is, why we also want to empower ourselves and other workers with powerful tools for supporting young people in finding their way to a sustainable living and cooperative attitude. In order to make our work more efficient, we apply networking and cooperation and, therefore, we are actively involved in local institutional networks as well as non-formal local and international networks. We have partnerships with local, national and international organizations in permaculture e regenerative agricolture.

GOALS
1. Promoting sustainable lifestyles by spreading Permaculture principles and strategies, Regenerative Agriculture techniques, knowledge about healthy organic food production, techniques to build light and ecological structures, and all actions which are respectful of humans, the environment and its biodiversity;
2. Spreading the values of peace, cooperation and equality whilst respecting differences;
3. Developing educational activities for children, young people, and adults through the themes of active citizenship, sustainability, innovative technology, cooperation, individual and community empowerment and peaceful conflict resolution.

TARGET
Our first target group of reference are young people between 18 - 30 years old who have an interest in the themes of ecology, permaculture, agroforestry, regenerative agriculture and who would like to develop in this direction in the future. We also deeply believe that everything is connected as we can observe through nature, where different ecosystems show such intertwined relationships, for this reason we apply a holistic methodology. This is why we also refer to another target of young people (18 - 30) who have an interest in tamatics health, nutrition, yoga and self-awareness would learn and develop their skills exponentially in our community. Finally, we aim to reach as a secondary target group, disadvantaged young people, migrants, members of minority groups and young people facing unemployment or in an early stage of career orientation.

ACTIVITIES
Regen runs a wide range of activities in the field of environmental issues, climate change, permaculture, soil regeneration, agroforestry and natural farming, and social inclusion. The main activities of Regen are as follows:

A. Running workshops for young people and accepting young interns, allowing practical exploration and implementation of techniques and practices like permaculture design, natural farming, agroforestry, healthy nutrition, zero waste lifestyle, renewable energy solutions, natural building, non-violent communication and group decision making techniques like sociocracy;
B. Enabling skill sharing and acquiring, both in everyday activities necessary on a farm, like woodwork, farming as well as digital media skills, and through specific workshops about these topics;
C. Connecting young people with other projects in Italy and abroad, by supporting them to follow their intuitive learning path and deepen their knowledge in their topic of interest and to strengthen the community of eco-projects throughout all Europe.

The activities are possible within our project due to the fact that the team is composed of environmental activists, experts in permaculture, agroforestry, water and soil management, natural building, medicinal plants, psychology, organic farming practitioners, communication managers, architects and youth workers. The association is also enriched with the collaboration of many volunteers and active supporters both from Italy and the rest of Europe. Moreover, we embrace a lifestyle that is in sync with a deeper connection to nature as Mother Earth and our soul, with an eye to embracing all this knowledge and expertise through holistic teaching. The organization functions as an experimental research site that combines and integrates different design systems and approaches, such as permaculture design - Bill Mollison, David Holmgren-, keyline design - Yeomans -Regrarians platform - Darren Doherty - and the work on soil from Elaine Ingham, on agroforestry systems - Syntropic agriculture of Ernst Götsch.