IPEC

Thursday June 9, 2011
IPEC
I arrived and asked “hablas espanol o ingles?” and the woman responded “yes.” The receptionist, Lyla, is an Australian born Brazilian that grew up mostly on the IPEC ecovillage. She is probably my age, if not younger, and her mother runs the ecovillage. She was homeschooled here by her mom and now works with her mom to help IPEC operate.

IPEC is not technically an ecovillage – instead, it’s labeled as an eco-training center. IPEC holds courses for students, professionals, and people that are just curious about living sustainably. Most of the courses have the umbrella theme of Permaculture (designing your life to function in harmony with the environment). Some courses are more focused on specific topics like Bio-construction (or green architecture), natural water filtration, or natural waste management systems. There is a group of about 15 American university students on a summer program taking a 3 week permaculture class. The program is through an organization called Living Roots that I have heard about because Kibbutz Lotan in the Negev in Israel also has a Living Roots program.

It was so nice to find a group of young, enthusiastic Americans that share the same passion as me. Although I cannot participate in their courses during the day (since I am not paying for their program), I see them at meal times and enjoy see them just walking around the ecovillage. I hope they can give me a two day concentrated lesson about all they’ve learned so far while I am here!

IPEC is much more of a typical ecovillage set up than Santa Branca was. Santa Branca was spread out and new and modern. IPEC is like a small campground with a junkyard to use recycled materials for projects, earth domes to sleep in, an organic garden, compost toilets, and lots of benches made from clay and adobe. It reminds me of the Adam and Eve Ecological Farm in Modi’in in Israel, with a few things from the LA Ecovillage incorporated.

It’s a bummer that IPEC is mostly just a training center. I think this would be a lovely ecovillage where people could permanently reside and make a living off of the training programs. I will do some interviews tomorrow, Friday, and hopefully find out the visions of IPEC for the future.

In the mean time, I will walk around and try to comprehend the Portuguese written explanations of the compost toilet, water filtration systems, etc, and just relax and read my book!

Check out more photos here!