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We aim in contributing to social transformation with regenerative tools
We envision communities that thrive and their members can fulfil their dreams
Community Lab is a permaculture services company. It has a multidisciplinary approach helping communities & individuals thrive. It provides solutions to how the land can be regenerated while producing healthy food and how groups and individuals can transit to a a more regenerative and community way of living.
Community Lab has a “home”, an educational permaculture field called Syntrofia(/Greek/: companionship, eating together). Syntrofia started in 2024, designed with the permaculture principles to host volunteers and courses and demonstrate syntropic agriculture to the local farmers. It is located in the community of Garipa, Chania next to other interesting innovative projects such as Free Field permaculture farm, Kariatzoules forest school and more.
In cooperation with the association Kissamos Social Spot and the Municipality of Kissamos, a permaculture design and implementation is carried out in a municipal area in Kissamos in the prefecture of Chania. The implementation aims to create a therapeutic educational field accessible to people with disabilities and students of local schools. The presentation of the permaculture design here
The 1st training in Greece on facilitating collective processes, the art of making our collective processes more effective, meaningful and truly equal. Community Lab in collaboration with Stathis Mavridis, a certified facilitator from the International Facilitation Institute of Spain, founded facilitation.gr that trains facilitators from 2022 with annual training cycles on the art of facilitating groups. More information on facilitation.gr
Permaculture consultant, teacher & regenerative farmer
Christos Karystinos lives and works in Garipa community, Chania, Crete, founder of Community Lab, manages Syntrofia Permaculture Project and more local permaculture projects. He uses R.Morrow methodology and he is affiliated with the Italian Academy of Permaculture. His experience in ecovillages (Sunseed Desert Technology, Lakabe, Auroville etc) and permaculture projects around the world (Latina America, Asia & Europe) formed his core belief that the regeneration of the land is directly connected with the regeneration of the social system around it. He has taught more than 30 non-formal education courses related to social permaculture, regenerative farming, art & facilitation. Council member of Evolving Cycles NPO (https://evolvingcycles.com), coordinator of Erasmus + and finance circle and actively promoting facilitation of groups in Greece. He uses methodologies and tools like Nonviolent Communication, Sociocracy, Facilitation of groups , in the theater of the oppressed, syntropic agriculture and permaculture, non-formal education.
Popi is a Project Manager at Community Lab, with a multidisciplinary background in EU policy research, circular economy, sustainable food systems, and environmental
education. Popi holds a Master’s in Urban Environmental Management with a focus on understanding the complexity of urban systems and sustainable transitions.
She worked at the European Parliament’s Research Services Unit on regional development, cohesion policy, climate change, and the just transition, contributing to high-level events and authoring a publication on urban agriculture.
Popi’s practical engagement with regenerative agriculture includes hands-on work on organic farms in the Netherlands and WWOOF placements. She further expanded her expertise through the Interreg NWE Grow the City training on circular urban agriculture, exploring innovative growing systems and sustainable business models.
Earlier, she worked with MetaMeta, a social enterprise focused on land and water management, contributing to climate-resilient projects under the Green Roads for Water
program. She supported field teams in Pakistan and Sudan through technical analysis, training materials, and communication outputs, focusing on nature-based solutions,
road-water harvesting, and the links between infrastructure, ecosystems, and community livelihoods. Living in the ecological community of Droevendaal further shaped her commitment to environmental awareness and collective living.
Community Lab idea was conceived at 2021 after the study of ecovillages and regeneratione examples in Spain, a country with simillar social and natural ecosystem of Greece. Our path started in the political movements of autonomy and global justice in Greece and it evolved to theories and practices around building a new paradigm in the rural, apart from just fighting a the old one at cities. Permaculture, non-violent communication and communitism came to answer the question: “how will this new paradigm look like?”. The need to find living examples of the answer, we found ourselves in eco-villages, systems that practice their utopias in small scale. The seeds of our experiences is Community Lab, seeds of education and design of regenerative communities in Greece.
