Working Towards a Better World

Of course, there are many ways to effect change in the world: political campaigns or lobbying, direct action protests and rallies, consciousness raising groups, etc. We applaud all progressive efforts at social change and try to support and encourage people at DR to participate.

We see the need in our world to work primarily outside the system to define and demonstrate new cultures, sometimes radically different from the mainstream. DR's primary social change goal is to demonstrate one possibility (certainly not the only possibility) of a sustainable lifestyle and culture. We also need to show how folks can get there from our current culture. In many ways just living at DR is social change work (see our DR Culture section).

The trick then becomes, "How do we let people know what we're doing here?" Our mission becomes one of education and outreach, working to change peoples' hearts and minds. We hope to do this by any number of means. So far we have work exchange opportunities where people can come for 2-6 months to live at DR and learn about sustainability and community while working on specific projects. We also peiodically hold workshops on topics ranging from strawbale building and earthen plasters to cooking. We hope to expand our workshop program as our infrastructure and human energy allows, someday having DR be a nexus for ecovillage education. While participating in an ecovillage project may be outside the scope of some of our website visitors we have compiled a list of things people can do to live a more ecologically sustainable life, right where they live right now.

We have also gotten ourselves some modest press coverage and hope to get more publicity as we grow. We've even had a few documentaries/videos made about us, one shown on a national cable network.

In addition we publish our quarterly newsletter the March Hare which is sent out to hundreds of subscribers. This is our chance to share with the world our ups and downs and new discoveries and ideas about sustainable living. Subscribe today.