Hi my friend,

I am sending this message because we have touched each other’s lives over the years or you are a friend of a friend. A year after my graduation from CIIS Expressive Arts Therapy, I moved back to Turkey in 2011. I lived in Istanbul for a few years. I have facilitated expressive arts therapy groups for collective trauma all around Turkey. In 2015, we moved to the rural area of southwest Turkey and have been living in nature with my partner and our son since then. We feel the importance of building a peaceful and creative community. We have hosted and organized many expressive arts circles, music gatherings, nature-based play groups for children over the years.

Last year, we had the opportunity to rent a beautiful land from our friend to create our vision of living in nature with respect and harmony with children. We have been building an eco art community farm. We try to practice sacred economy, host gift economy gatherings, and believe in solidarity. We are hosting expressive arts groups, music gatherings, and family camps with a good community of artists, musicians, masters, teachers, healers and travelers from all over the world. Our biggest motivation is to make this farm a friendly, safe and free place for children and give them space for alternative, nature-based education.

We have olive trees all over the farm, we are making our own olive oil, and we do permaculture. We are being conscious and sensitive about our consuming habits. We up-cycle, and make most of the things from yurts to the playground by ourselves. We are collaborating with a beautiful instrument and music workshop community Isik Kapisi in the same village. We are living with many animals, chickens, cats, dogs, donkeys, bees, turtles, butterflies and many different kinds of trees, flowers... We feel very blessed for so much beauty and abundance of nature. We do our best to turn this bliss into service and share our gifts with many visitors.

As we all know, to manifest a dream one has to challenge some difficulties. Our ideas are new (yet ancient) in this old country. Turkey has been going through difficult times (for years and years) politically, financially and socially which make our work/dream even harder. Because of this reason, we feel the importance of a place like our farm

where people get authentically in touch with each other and share their lights. We are at the beginning of our journey and we have so many beautiful projects we would love to share. As some of you know, the dollar has been rising dramatically in Turkey, and everything has been super expensive, especially for the last few years. We need a little kick to continue our projects this spring.

We need water tanks, showers, solar panels, some renewals for our communal kitchen to name a few. If you would love to support our dream, please make us a donation. How much doesn’t matter, so we can continue to burn the fire of being a human in this part of the world. Please visit our webpage to learn more about our farm Guzelgah and our vision.

www.guzelgah.org

Intagram: guzelgah.yakabag

FB: Guzelgah

Please feel welcome to visit us on our farm if your path brings you to Turkey. We are looking forward to meeting you here, to our conversations, music, dance, and possible workshops together. Thank you for reading/ watching. Feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions. Sending love and light from this side of the world.

Ezgi

PS: I am sending this message only to people (friends, colleagues, teachers...) I know that would support our dream as a community. We are not making a huge campaign but just asking for solidarity.