http://www.BioCongress.org

Twenty-five years after the first Continental Congress, this year's Congress is poised to help catalyze tremendous synergy for the growing global sustainability effort!

Hosted by the Farm in Tennessee CBCX will be held on The Farm in the Swan River watershed of the Cumberland Green Bioregion, Summertown, Tennessee. Founded in 1971 by a caravan from San Fransisco, The Farm started as a spiritual community that has served as a model for sustainable development and community living for over 35 years. The Farm now encompasses over 2,000 acres, houses many ecologicaly-based businesses (including the Ecovillage Training Center), and hosts bioregionally-related events of many kinds year-round. Holding this event at a successful ecovillage will allow participants to experience life in a permaculture-designed village full of earth-friendly housing, cooperative forestry, and consensus-based decision-making.

Featuring a Certification Curriculum in Bioregionalism Congress organizers are weaving in content that reflects the cutting edge of the bioregional movement, such as Transition Towns, within a Certification Curriculum in Bioregionalism, a toolbox of workshops and speakers focused on building, sustaining and re-localizing communities, reinvigorating culture and arts and organizing for ecological restoration, economic prosperity and policy change.

The proposed curriculum will cover the following topics:

Bioregionalism

• History of the Bioregional Congresses
• Decentralization and Ecoregional approaches to sustainability
• Reinhabitation and Ecocentric philosophy
• Decision-making: inclusion and empowerment
• Action learning
• Pageantry and Celebration
• World Café

• Bioregional grassroots community organizing and stewardship
• Strategic planning
• Bioregional right livelihood
• Group process and consensus-based meetings
• Community-making through the arts, ecological
• Outreach and Web-tools for organizers
• Event planning
• Rites of passage and other ceremonies

• Transition Town Movement
• Ecovillages
• Permaculture
• Renewal Energy/Energy? Conservation
• Re-storying the Landscape and Communities
• Relocalizing Education

• Landscapes and Bioregional Mapping
• Orienting to Watersheds
• Ecoregions
• The Seasons and Migratory Patterns: Charting
• Planetary Connections
• Reinhabiting the Body: Health, Wellness and Restoration