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  • Greenheart

    Greenheart is a movement promoting environmentally sustainable principles and practices, personal evolution and social transformation.
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  • Casita Verde

    Situated in a beautiful valley near the village of San Jose in Ibiza, La Casita Verde is a model ecological centre that is operated by volunteers and open to the public on Sundays.
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  • Greenheart Music

    GreenHeartMusic is a music platform based in Ibiza, Spain. Presenting artists of different influences who express their connections to nature through their music.
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  • Guía Verde a Ibiza y Formentera

    A bi-lingual directory to Ibiza and Formentera of local groups, businesses and services that offer or use environmentally friendly practices.
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  • QL Studio › Websites Made Easy

    Quinta Linda is a low-impact living space and website design studio based in Portugal.
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  • Greenheart Resonancia

    An educational and fun programme of practical, stimulating experiences discovering sustainable and respectful habits in order to face the realities of climate change.
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  • Green Ibiza Tours

    Our Green Ibiza Tours provide responsible tourism holidays in Ibiza offering a full programme of eco activities and nature happenings.
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  • Greenheart Traveler

    With the aim of promoting the Greenheart message around the world, travelling members of the rapidly growing Greenheart family will write blogs and add photos of their travels.
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  • Ibiza Gold

    The Greenheart Carob project plans to rejuvenate an important traditional economic activity, as well as motivating many local land owners.
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  • Fundación por el Futuro
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  • Tienda Greenheart

    At the Greenheart Shop you can find out about responsible consumption and ecological happenings in Ibiza. Featuring our very own Greenheart clothing range made from ecological fabrics and with fair trade considerations.

A Blog for November

As you can see recently from our ever evolving website, we are heavily into children's visits to Casita Verde these days and if all goes well with the local authorities and the banks etc, we'll receive some sponsorship to go on with the project into the future. (The first ten visits have been sponsored by our own 'Fundación por el Futuro', as well as by the local island council). In this way, we hope to pass all the children of Ibiza between the age of 8 and 12 years old at least once through some kind of environmental education programme at our centre. This should result in a gradual rise in collective consciousness across the island and eventually begin to effect the voting public, who may then realise what a good idea it is to conserve what's left of their once more beautiful paradise. At the same time, some members of our Greenheart team are participating in wonderful new eco-building schemes which include all the right elements for a sustainable future, whilst others are involved in Eco-tourism projects for Ibiza which should help to improve our survival as a popular resort. In Chicago a couple of weeks ago, our foundation just opened another 'Greenheart shop' selling fair trade products. The foundation for the future is also finalising the preparation of a musical play about the Greenheart movement, due to be shown for the first time in Chicago next spring time. Last week, we just had the local tv here again (IB3) to do some interviews about climate change for a programme series dedicated to different problems in the world - yet another connection to the world outside the island - all exciting stuff which has got to lead us to somewhere nice in the end for sure!

This year we also made quite a few successful fund raising dinner parties for other organisations, as well as a few more lively awareness raising parties, and hope to continue this trend into the future. We have recently bought a low powered FM radio transmitting system for reduced impact sound distribution around the centre and are presently working on some environmentally orientated video material in readiness to do some more ambitious 'conscious party' events leading to a permanent midsummer event for the whole island. Next year, we plan to do a weekend Gaia festival event study at Casita Verde on the 21st of June and invite both the local press plus a few interested politicians, so we can convince them to do a much larger event in the Hipodrome of San Rafael in future years. (Perhaps then, some tourists will come here in the summer to a conscious party event instead of just to get pissed and stoned for their entire holidays - we live in hope!) Anyway, it's a nice project and for sure means we have to practice our partying skills throughout the study period.

Apart from the serious fun scene, we'll be doing some video stories for our music company website, giving a new feeling to the business of pushing 'message music' from Ibiza as we have been trying to do with our first three GH Music CD's - Back to Nature, Time to change and Open your heart. Our fourth CD 'Together as one' which is dedicated to recycling, will go on line for half a year before being recorded on plastic and will hopefully be supported by a video track which we are now in the process of producing. Our fifth Cd 'Heading towards the light' will not be printed on plastic at all, will for sure be supported by some nice graphics and will be dedicated to the 'evolution of planetary consciousness'. - Again, all exciting stuff

In addition to the 'Green party' study, the 'music story' and the constant evolution of the Casita Verde as an environmental education tool, I am personally engaged in studying the production of a carob syrup we invented in Casita Verde last year and which we are hoping to produce on a much larger scale (see 'carob revival project' on this website). This should add a lot of power to the very necessary change in how Ibicencos view their agricultural possibilities. My part in this project together with other members of the Greenheart home team, after co-inventing the cooking process and pushing the whole study programme, is to take care of the marketing of the final product, whilst two other partners look after the local production of raw material (an Ibicenco neighbour) and the invention of products related to the evolution of the product market (my restaurant owner friend from the Basque country). Hopefully it will work out financially effective to be part of the team developing these projects, so that those who are participating can receive some compensation for their work.

Here we seem always to be busy but somehow it's really not like working in a so called 'normal' environment and yet we get lots of things done without straining ourselves or getting too stressed out. Everyone is encouraged to do their best job in whatever they choose to take onboard. As everyone's abilities are different, there is nearly always a wide variety of 'skills' amongst our permanent staff and visitors. It's just like living on a small ship with a Captain and a group of officers (I was in the merchant navy for more than twelve years, so got the idea of how it works to live on a ship). Casita Verde is basically run as a non profit environmental association or NGO (non government organisation), everything functions relatively well and we have a lot of fun doing our daily activities, which can range from cooking, sewing or gardening to editing web pages or installing electronic equipment. We are not connected to the rest of the world by wires or tubes, only radio signals and the natural elements, plus of course our 'camino' onto the island road system. We still need to be connected by that umbilical chord to the 'system' but gradually we are becoming a new and far more autonomous form of existence, especially when viewed by the public eye. We live like royalty on our little paradise island at Casita Verde, receiving each week up to 160 guests from all over the world. (It's little wonder I don't need to see the tv or read newspapers to stay in touch - any more and I'd be receiving an overdose!).

Since June I am doing the main cooking job both during the week for our resident crew and on Sundays but have to say that I thoroughly enjoy the work. I am constantly surrounded by beautiful young people who come to help us, so never feel alone in the kitchen and for sure receive a whole lot of energy from my little 'Greenheart angels' (it's also a great way to stay popular with everyone!). Throughout the year we've enjoyed beautiful weather every Sunday (even through the heavy rains of October) and received many many people who brought us their own sunshine to help us appreciate and share the nature. For us, the universe is unfolding as it should, we are enjoying being cells in the body and have a right to be here. We only have to continue learning respect for our own body and we can sail on into the light of tomorrow, knowing we did our best for ourselves and for the next generations of humans to inhabit the Earth.

Hey I'm no monk but with total respect for the logical local guidelines, as a modern human being, I would like to live according to my own concept of what is right, what is acceptable and what is wrong and the people who live here with me share many similarities in their view of our evolving world. It's therefore important for us to continue inviting new people into our movement who really appreciate the role we have accepted to play and who will therefore make a very special effort to participate with their individual energy in this life saving process we are all engaged in. I must choose carefully our crew members for everyone's benefit. We have no wish to enlarge our centre beyond it's natural limits but this does not exclude our global presence as a real light in a wounded world. As far as we can, we welcome onboard everyone who is capable and willing to lend their skills to a rapidly evolving global project, in which 'Greenheart' has an important role to play.

There are no apparent limits as to how we can apply our personal skills to the multitude of productive possibilities our organisation has to offer, so it really does depend on each individual and their belief in both themselves and their connection to the universe. All I know is that we are human beings and therefore have a collective responsibility to look after the body we were given to inhabit (It's everyone's body so we should all work to keep it in good condition as far as we are able). For me, the truth is quite simple and becoming more simple very day as I tread ever closer to my own appreciation of the light inside my head. I now have no doubt that there is a very bright future for the majority of the world if only we can persuade everyone to move right now.
I actually gave up reading the newspapers or watching tv many years ago, even after installing 2,500 satelite tv systems here in Ibiza. Both the tv and the newspapers are potentially great systems of communication but producers of so much unnecessary information that you leave no space for your own imagination to give you any help with the concept of life. This is bad news, because what you most need is a good connection to the universe, not a load of noise in your head which blocks your mind from rational thinking.

Personally I more or less know all the important things going on in the world (as far as I'm concerned that is) and more than anything I still have time to think about who I am and what I have to do in this life I've been given to live. (I think you know what I'm talking about there!).

Oh if only we could mend the human/planet disconnection with good intentions! If we could only appreciate what real participation is all about, we could march on with dignity and peace of mind, each one doing their best effort to harmonise with the rest of our world - all for one and one for all - (as they used to say in the old days), to see where we're supposed to go next!