About us

 

Our mission is to offer changemakers with the appropriate tools to bring social change.

Our vision is communities that thrive in time and their members can fulfill their dreams.

A lab for community life

Community Lab is a lab of tools for community life. It has a multidisciplinary approach helping communities thrive. It provides spaces for transformation and for communities to reach their full potential. Spaces where people feel safe to be part of collective processes with the guidance of experienced facilitators.

Community lab embraces its vision with:

  • Permaculture: For regenerating natural and social ecosystems
  • Sociocracy 3.0: An open-source toolbox for self-organized groups and communities that want to be efficient
  • Facilitation: The art of connecting the groups with is vision, while taking care of its members and the process.
 
In order to achieve our goals and serve you, we have a network of collaborators and collaborating projects, working together on each specific case. 

 

Our projects

Facilitation.gr

The first ever in Greece training especifically on group facilitation. Community Lab in collaboration with Stathis Mavridis (https://iiface.org/profesional/staci-mavridis/), certified by iiface, we established facilitation.gr which trains facilitators since 2022 with anual circles of courses on facilitation. More info at facilitation.gr  

Kissamos social spot - The healing farm

Permaculture design and implementation on a public land of the municipality of Kissamos in the region of Chania. The implementation takes place in collaboration with Kissamos Social Spot aiming at creating an educational farm accessible by wheelchair and people with special abilities. More info at social media of Kissamos Social Spot.

evolving cycles

Community Lab collaborates with the non-profit of Evolving Cycles in order to empower two permaculture projects. We are managing a European Solidarity Corps project for 2022-2024 on volunttering at permaculture farms. Evolving Cycles and community lab is working on the directions of networking different permaculture projects around Greece and set the base for collaboration. More info at evolvingcycles.com 

The founder

Christos Karystinos

Designer, farmer, educator, facilitator Christos Karystinos has been trained on how to teach permaculture according to the book Permaculture Teaching Matters of Rosemary Morrow and currently is finishing his diploma in Permaculture with the Italian Academy of Permaculture focused on designing of ecovillages. His experience in ecovillages (Sunseed Desert Technology, Lakabe, Auroville, Los Portales, Comune di Bagnaia etc) and permaculture projects around the world have taught him that the regeneration of the land is directly connected with the regeneration of the social system around it. He lives and works in the suburbs of Chania, Crete and supports the permaculture project "eleutheroxwrafo" in Garipa, Perivolia. He has experience in teaching permaculture design course for more than 200 hours and he is organizer of the anual circle of courses on facilitation in Greece. He studied Electrical engineering in NTUA Athens, with a thesis on off-grid renewable microgrids and he transited from a life in Athens to a life in rural Crete in a community setting.

Our path

Our path started in the political movements of autonomy and global justice in Athens. It evolved to theories and practices around building a new paradigm, apart from just fighting a the old one. Permaculture, non-violent communication and communitism came to answer the question: “how will this new paradigm look like?”. The need to try the “solutions” we found, we found ourselves in eco-villages, groups of people that want to practice their utopias in small scale. The seeds of our experiences is community lab, seeds of community in Greece.

 

Are you interested in our services?

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