Ananda Kalyani

Ananda Kalyani is a pioneering Integrated Rural Development (IRD) project of Ananda Marga dedicated to spirituality, local development and holistic regeneration, encompassing environmental, economic, and social aspects. Our aim is to serve as a model and educational hub for sustainable and regenerative living in the 21st century.

Nestled in the heart of Portugal, near the Serra da Estrela Natural Reserve, Ananda Kalyani has been transformed from a lush, abandoned valley into a vibrant, habitable space over the past few years. […]

Our property spans 50 hectares, featuring wild forests, a picturesque river, scattered ruins, small springs, and wild fruit trees, and 11 hectares of certified organic agricultural land. […]

In 2010, we set out to find land in Serra da Estrela to build and establish an Ananda Marga Master Unit in Portugal. The dream was to create a model integrated development project and blissful community for collective spiritual practice, self-realization and service to all beings. That dream is what we now call Ananda Kalyani. Our community has grown over the past 12 years from a small group of visionaries and an overgrown and desolate land into a recognized Master Unit, GEN European ecovillage and ERASMUS+ Partner. We host youth exchanges, training courses, events, workshops, and retreats, and have formed lasting connections with a global Ananda Kalyani family.

https://anandakalyani.org/about/

Theory of Change

They take a Neohumanistic approach, see https://neohumanisteducation.org/resources/articles/what-is-neohumanism/ which is linked from their website. They seek "regeneration on multiple fronts: spiritual, cultural, environmental, political, social, and economic".

Keywords

spiritual practice; regenerative living; self-realization; service to all beings; community building; deep ecology; social activism; local economy; conscious lifestyle; personal development/self-development