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We aim to offer changemakers with the appropriate tools to bring social change.
We envision communities that thrive in time and their members can fulfill their dreams.
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:
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
Engineer of eco-social systems.
Christos Karystinos has been trained on how to teach permaculture according to the book Permaculture Teaching Matters of Rosemary Morrow and currently is on 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 manages the project “Healing Field” and cultivating olives. He has experience in teaching permaculture design course for more than 300 hours and he is organizer of the annual circle of courses on facilitation in Greece (facilitation.gr). 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.
He has been trained in Nonviolent Communication (as a youth worker), in Sociocracy (as a facilitator), in Facilitation of groups (basic training), in the theater of the oppressed (as a facilitator), in syntropic agriculture and permaculture (as a teacher), in non-formal education (Bridgedale 360 methodology, with Drama methods, nature work) and Erasmus + project writting according to the methodology of Yes to Sustainability Netowrk.
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.
