The Garden of Eden Project is one way to help your community take local action towards local and global environmental improvement. One tangible way to address climate change is to plant trees. Not only this, it is an opportunity to bring a community together to design and create a common project that is eco-friendly, sustainable and will give back to the community in years to come.

The Brussels Community Land Trust is an integrated housing model allowing poor households in Brussels that are not longer able to access to decent housing or social housing to enter a long-term housing project and become owner of their own living. This not-for-profit model has been coined as one of the best housing models in the world by UNESCO in 2008.

The first month of meetings of coordination groups in Tekirdağ, İpsala, Malkara, Pehlivanköy and Muratlı has been completed following Responding Together training 6 March. Each city/town has gathered volunteers to form the coordination groups. In the cases of Tekirdağ, İpsala, and Malkara, the core of these groups is formed by the members of the Citizens' Assemblies established by the municipalities. The groups aim to represent as widely as possible the different social groups present in the towns/cities.

Meeting with Muratlı Responding Together Coordination Group

Meeting with Tekirdağ Responding Together Coordination Group

Meeting with Malkara Responding Together Coordination Group

Meeting with Pehlivanköy Responding Together Coordination Group

Meet Ipsala Responding Together Coordination Group

Tekirdağ is a coastal city; it is the capital of Thrace with about 150,000 inhabitants. Its co-ordination group is the Citizens' Assembly, created in 2009 in accordance with the Turkish law. It started its participation in the Responding Together project in March 2013.

Palermo is Sicily's cultural, economic and tourism capital with approximately 850 000 inhabitants. Palermo's Re Federico Co-working Space is a partner organisation in the Responding Together project. Its objectives involve identifying and strengthening innovative practices of pooling together local resources to tackle impoverishment and inequalities in Sicily. By facilitating such initiatives, the project aims to strengthen cooperation and enable common paths of work between citizens and public institutions alike.

Cluj is a Romanian city of about 400 000 inhabitants. Its coordination group was created in 2010 and the 2nd cycle of SPIRAL was carried out in the period 2010-2012. A first meeting of the "Responding together " project was held in December 2012 during which it sought to set up a methodology to unleash creativity and to expand the coordination group.

Responding Together meeting with citizens and local public officials

Date: May 16-18, 2013

To participate, please contact Malcolm Cox - malcolm.cox à coe.int

Social Workers Network Responding Together actions proposals

A self-managed social center built in an occupied abandoned factory that has lead to several initiatives : new forms of welfare for Italian and migrant population, innovative types of co-production of renewable energy, collective solutions to produce income for young temporary workers, and new practices of democratic management of resources on the base of a common pool of knowledge and competences.

An Association of women coming from many different countries and pooling their resources in the creation of a collective and self-managed educational institution designed to accommodate children aged from a few months to 12 years in the context of structural inadequacy of public services.

In September 2010, some workers of the corporation Eutelia Information Technology in Rome, after having been made ​​redundant as a result of the crisis that hit the company, decided to create an urban garden community cultivating 3000 square meters of land owned by the Province of Rome, for consuming and selling agricultural products, thus continuing to work together and maintaining the visibility of their dispute for the workplace.

In the last year in the city of Rome, different experiences of urban gardens have arisen as a form of opposition to unemployment and increasing poverty but also to overbuilding, cementation, and privatization of public territory. Here below are two of the main initiatives.

Some associations and social centers of the district of Garbatella in Rome, with the participation of many citizens, decided to occupy an abandoned area in order to create a common garden.

Repairing all together and learning from others in a cocoon atmosphere. Once a month in Brussels, people can give a new life to broken items and learn how to repair them with enthusiastic skilled volunteers. Tools and Equipment are available for reparation as well as cakes and coffee.

Communities of Wallonia responding together: action proposals

Cabo Verde: Casa do Meio (Porto Novo – Santo Antão) Houve um beneficiário que não conseguia instalar gota a gota porque o terreno não estava desbravado. Então a Comunidade ajudou-o a fazer esse trabalho, o que permitiu a instalação de tal equipamento.