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 field

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

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.

Our path

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.

 

Our VIDEOS

Are you interested in our services?

Contact us

contact