The Crossroads

The Crossroads is an organisation legally founded in 2020 but operating informally since 2017. It is based in an urban villa 100 years old which is being transformed in an urban self sufficient eco community in Megalopoli Arkadias, Greece, a city striving to find a new profile as the current coal burning units to produce electricity are scheduled to close down permanently. Currently a transdisciplinary team is managing its transition into a self sufficient eco community and a complex agroforestry system in the aim of regenerating the biological and social eco- systems and thus actively contributing to building healthy livelihoods in harmony with nature and each other. It operates in an urban region of the Peloponnese predominantly characterized by a huge coal mining and coal burning industrial complex that covers a large percentage of Greece’ s energy needs but is scheduled to close down in the following years due to the devastating effect that has on the global climate crisis. Thus the last 50 years most agricultural and farming activities in the area have been abandoned and whole villages and vast fields have been sacrificed to the coal mining activities. Megalopoli shares these great issues with other regions of Greece (Ptolemaida) and Europe that based their whole economy on the production of electricity by coal mining and burning. Agricultural land has been systematically deteriorating and the atmosphere is heavily congested due to air pollution that affects humans and wildlife. In this context, The Crossroads, aims to provide an issue to the impeding collapse of local economy and the diversification of skills and employability of the local population that will face unemployment and lack of an alternative model of development in accordance with the SDGs and the Green Deal goals. On the cultural level The Crossroads shares local cultural treasures folk, mainstream, ancient and contemporary and empowers the local community that witnesses the admiration of the foreign young people for their everyday practices, rituals and heritage. Hopefully it will gradually become a local hub that spreads knowledge and practices for local and visiting volunteers from all over the world contributing to the regeneration of the area and the appreciation of the ecological and cultural potential of the land. Target groups are young people from Europe and the world interested in an alternative and sustainable future and the local community striving to find a personal, professional and regional way to overcome the shock of the impending closure of the coal burning power plant that has monopolised all economic activities in the small town and poisoned the land. In practice it: - runs workshops for young people (local and European) and accepts young interns allowing practical exploration and implementation of techniques and practices like natural building, permaculture, natural farming, agroforestry, healthy nutrition, zero waste lifestyle, renewable energy solutions, non violent communication, arts and group decision making techniques like sociocracy. It enables skills sharing and acquiring in everyday activities necessary on an urban self sufficient community and through specific workshops acts as a hub that connects young people with other projects in Greece and abroad. Cultural activities acquaint them with the cultural heritage of the region and helps them reflect on their own heritage and the ways to meet and collaborate. The goal is to support them to follow their intuitive learning path and deepen their knowledge in their topic of interest and to strengthen the community of eco-communities throughout Europe. The organization’s urban villa and farmland functions as an experimental research site that combines and integrates different design systems and approaches, such as bio-climatic building, green energy projects, recycling and reusing, permaculture design and agroforestry . Internally the team is composed of civil engineers, archaeologist