A refuge. A place of re-membering. An ecoversity. A home.

Within the jungles of Northern Thailand, a multi-cultural community of changemakers are building a grassroots, female-run ecovillage/unschool for saving seeds and invigorating endangered cultural practices. It is a safe space where people fleeing war and the narrow views of modernity can relearn forgotten ways of living. It is an important place, for all beings, from all walks of life. And they need your financial help, to keep alive what remains of a dying world.

In this time of global upheaval, we need more than a protest against what we don't like. We need living examples that demonstrate what an alternative way of living can look like. Panya Forest, uniquely positioned at the crossroads of many in-tact cultural influences, is such a place, an active community where the hands-on, open-hearted, earthbound skills most necessary for tomorrow are on display today, for all to see. Skills such as how to live together cross-culturally, how to meaningfully manage conflict and orchestrate peace, how to thrive outside of capitalism, how to raise children as a village, how to live well with grief, regenerate soil, make beauty and exist simply upon the earth in ways that ensure well-being for generations to come.

Most modern people have forgotten how to grow food, how to treat water, how to build a home with natural materials, or even how to harmoniously coexist with other people, how to cook a meal from scratch, how to grow ones own food or save one's own seeds. At Panya Forest, we strive not only to keep the seeds themselves alive, but the myriad cultural wisdom-traditions encoded within each seed.

It is estimated that roughly 96% of all seeds on planet earth have gone extinct in the past 35 years. The same is true of the once vast array of unique educational systems and cultural narratives that have suffered from centuries of colonial/corporate domination that prefers a "fast food" approach to life. We are living in a time of rapid homogenization of dreams. As farmers, we know the soil can only be healthy when a diverse array of lifeforms exist below ground. The same is indeed true for humans. Diversity is what makes us strong.

We need to keep alive our seeds. So too, we must keep alive the countless beautiful understandings of what it means to be human that have kept humans resilient for millenia. It isn't that we need to find a better way to live, we need to allow for the other stories, that are already already here, to be finally heard, voices beyond empire.

So much has already been done here at Panya Forest. Once a thriving permaculture community, like so many other projects, it was crippled during the COVID years. But the spark did not die. Like a seed waiting for proper conditions to allow it to sprout, a vision set in motion nearly 20 years ago now resurfaces, in a new form. The foundation has already been laid. The people have already come. Now we simply need your generous financial support to help fuel the engine of cultural regeneration.

Because we live simply, we don't actually require much. We estimate that $10,000 USD can cover our expenses for one year. An entire community centered around preserving indigenous ways of being, a thriving forest grown by the hands of many dedicated friends from all around the world, animals, a school, a place of healing and of refuge.

Please help us. If you see value in this effort to not simply protest what is wrong with the world but to physically build the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, so that others can see and feel and experience it for themselves, we humbly request you to kindly offer what you can.

You are most welcome here. Come, anytime.

We hope to see you soon.

The Panya Forest Community

Chiang Mai, Thailand