The Corona crisis is confronting us with a massive financial bottleneck.
PLEASE HELP US TO CONTINUE OUR WORK!
In these times of global crisis, Tamera, like countless other projects, is facing a challenging situation. In 2020, we haven’t been able to receive guests and students, a main source of income for us, which has resulted in a significant financial shortfall for this year. To be able to continue our research work and offer it to the world, we invite you to support us in this fundraising call for 2021.
The Tamera Community, November 25 2020
The Tamera Project was founded over 40 years ago to develop a model for a nonviolent society. Guided by this political and humane founding impulse, we have since then followed the Healing Biotopes vision: to develop answers to the great inner and outer questions of our time and to bring the human world back into harmony with the matrix of life.
Since its foundation, the project has gone through many phases, growing from a small pioneer group in the 1970s and 80s to almost 200 community members in 2020. Four generations are now living together in Tamera, several thousand students have let their lives and their community undertakings be inspired by Tamera’s work and the Healing Biotopes vision, and many political activists have visited Tamera as a place of contemplation and inspiration in the midst of the complexity of our shattering global situation.
We turn to you, our network of friends and supporters, at this moment and ask for your help. In order to deal with the drastic change in our financial situation, caused by the Coronavirus, and to continue the restructuring we have begun, we will need about €800,000 in the coming year. If you can, we ask you to support us here.
As for many of you, the Corona situation has presented us with great challenges. We were forced to cancel our entire guest season in 2020, which, along with the donations we receive, has been our financial backbone for many years. At the same time, we had the luck and blessing to be able to fall back on the reserves of a large donation we received two years ago; the generosity of our sponsors has carried us through this special year. We are deeply grateful for this and for the buffer that we were given as a gift.
At the same time, the abrupt breakdown of normality has accelerated many changes that we were anyway anticipating. As a community, we are faced with the task of developing a new master plan for Tamera. Solid social, but also infrastructural and financial forms need to be found, also as a possible example for the situation of many other communities. In this sense, we have used the unexpected free space of this year to give attention to the inner processes of our project. We would like to give four examples to show you the complexity of our community work this year:
- In autumn, 14 project carriers including the founders Sabine Lichtenfels and Dieter Duhm got together for one month in an intensive working period to focus on elementary processes of our community and the vision of Healing Biotopes. How can we build the necessary visionary, human and professional coherence between leaders at the core of the project so that the whole project moves in a unified stream of power? How does the wealth of experience gained in recent decades carry over into the current generational change? The work of this group and its transfer to the entire community body will be a core part of our work through the winter months.
- In the research topics of love, sexuality and partnership, the power of intergenerational cooperation is becoming evident. While the founding generation is fully present with all its experience, a group of new leaders is forming, taking responsibility for the project of the Love School. In August, we had a Love School project time to address the issues at stake in this area. As love and sexuality is such an essential part of our research in Tamera, this time felt crucial for the future of our work.
- A new team is currently working on financial and administrative structures for Tamera. How do we expand the culture of a radical gift economy, which was taken for granted in the early years, with the professionalism we need for a community of about 200 people? How do we generate a reliable income without unconsciously falling prey to capitalist structures? Here too, we are at the beginning of a process that will accompany us for many months to come.
- The lockdown in spring 2020 once again demonstrated the urgency of regional autonomous supply systems. Since April, we have started to intensify the production in our gardens with the strength of the community and our ecology team, and we are increasingly involved in building regional agricultural networks of solidarity.
A guest season in 2021 is difficult to predict, and we do not expect to be able to open the doors of our community as in previous years, which leaves us with another year of financial uncertainty. While we are also working on making a part of our seminar offerings available online soon, this will not be a financial pillar for Tamera in 2021. Given this uncertainty, we predict that we’ll need €800,000 to carry us through the coming year.
We address all those who appreciate and love us and our work: If you can support us, please do so! Like many projects, we are facing an existential situation. We are grateful for donations of any size, and donations of €1000, €10,000, €25,000, etc. are an enormous relief for us. Joining our Support Circle with a monthly donation also helps us to build a solid foundation of financial security for the time to come. We will contact you again soon especially for this purpose. Follow this link for one-time donations and this one for the Support Circle, or contact us directly at finances (@) tamera.org.
With your support, we are dedicating and investing all our strength to developing peace villages that contribute to the healing of this Earth in cooperation with the great forces of life.
Thank you for your solidarity and all the support we have received throughout the past four decades!