2025 & 2026 - thank you and outlook

Thank you 2025
Team upgrade Galicia
Jonas (check out his wonderful Newsletter written from Galicia!), Jolle, Valerie and Walter + Magnus and Sara joined the team in Galicia last year. So, now we have much more capacities and ressources on the ground, which has already been an immense relief felt by Manolo and us. We could not ask for more amazing partners in crimes and can't wait to properly introduce you to them. With the arrival of them into the team, last year was full of deep communtiy building processes, some of it moderated, but most of it simply chaotic. Such a growth in just a few month of time brings a lot of movement into the project, challenges and questions around responsibilities, roles, the grief of letting go of one cycle and the beauty of welcoming another, and of course: communicating honestly about it all. Yep, what a year of growth on all levels! Because of these internal processes, we were not able to host volunteers - and we are so sorry for our scattered communication about it to a lot of you, who were interested. We kept postponing the decision concerning our volunteer positions and ended up "taking it unresolved throughout the whole season". Never again! However, it was the right decision to be fully present with internal processes going on in the project. We noticed an immense tiredness from the past years holding so much. A tiredness that you somehow only feel when other people come in to hold it with you. So our bodies needed this year of recovery and more inward processing. It felt like a year of the village becoming more of a home, instead of solely being "our project". Friends and partners who we already knew from the last years came back and we warmly welcomed their mutual care and support. Highlights at the end of the year were hosting the Rewilding Week of our core-partner Sylvester Rewilding and hosting our first Erasmus+ group with a beautiful program (see more below). Feeling grateful for the community around this project we have grown in the past years, that starts holding us and the project so beautifully.

More team and it's thyme growth!
We are so excited that our fantastic Sara officially joined the it's thyme team after having lived in Galicia with us for a while already. With her experience and skills around storytelling, writing, design and everything creative, she already did some cool first Newsletters for all of you and will also host a new it's thyme podcast, where Julia, Hannah and her will be sharing the latest News from the Hub and chatting about sex, drugs and regeneration, haha. Anyways, there will be a proper introduction on the NEWS and TEAMS page soon. Julia and Hannah also founded a Spanish S.L. called Borderless Solutions, which will be from now on the legal entity for all business activities for it's thyme: consultancy services for now, however, we have many ideas for the future to diversify our income streams to help regenerate our systems! Next to the Galician NGO "Pouquiño a Pouquiño" that we founded 1,5 years ago with Manolo, this is our second legal entity created on the it's thyme mission.
We became part of the network "Initiative Regenerative Marktwirtschaft" in Germany, joined its first meetup in our hometown Münster (first picture below on the left) and were also part of the Social Entrepreneurship School in Münster again (second picture below on the right). It still feels very wholesome and rooted to be part of the regenerative community in our hometown in Germany, that we still feel so connected to.

System Change for Lovers
Something else happened: Hannah dared to go out with her first online course System Change for Lovers last April. 14 participants and 6 Speakers joined her mission and held space for her to go through the transformative experience of sharing her vulnerable learnings about the oppressive systems, their influences on her and the world as well as regenerative practices that help her transform these influences and systems. She actually is still integrating all the learnings and will write a full reflection about it when she feels like she is done integrating. She said that she had never felt so much shame while and after sharing these topics, making it clear to her how deeply rooted shame is in speaking about the power structures of our systems and our truths and how important it was that she finally DID share. She's coming out of it stronger and more dedicated to speak, share and dismantle these patterns than ever!

Outlook 2026
Hope Hub Network
Thanks to the new teammembers in Galicia, we have more capacities again to focus on other things too at it's thyme. Hannah focuses on the Hope Hub Network vision from this year on again. She is currently working together with a foundation to get an initial funding to create the structures for a proper network, with a legal entity, processes and community moderation in place, so that all the transformative places that we have connected with and interested people can connect and unite for topics such as fundraising, communication and PR, community building, joint program development and more. The goal is to have accessible ways to support and join the global movement of local Hope Hub building, meaning: environments where people learn to live and thrive in harmony with nature, have access to accessible housing, nutritious food and a community that cares. We believe the world needs this network and the visibility of all the amazing places and people working on the ground - Hannah is ready to hold space for them to become visible and organized! The first step will be a 1-2 year process of building a solid foundation with the places, partners and people we already know and trust, connecting them and making their places and events more visible. And once we find working routines, processes and ways of supporting each other in this first group, while becoming more visible in the meantime, we open it to the rest of the world.

Educational Offers
Educational Offers: We want to turn the lessons of the System Change for Lovers course into shorter, more digestable videos for a self-paced watching and learning experience. This way people can get the theory with some practices through the videos and meet in our (planned) monthly Hope Hub Network community calls to actually practice a regenerative culture in real life, share their gifts and show up in organising bottom up change. If anyone is very good with the logistics of setting up a smooth online course, please reach out, we could need your support :-).

Consultancy Offers
We have received a lot of interest in our work, especially around our bottom up community approach, which focuses on creating a collaborative culture of belonging. We know that PROPER community building and culture building is the most difficult yet essential part of creating systemic change that lasts and that truly holds new principles. That's why we offer consulting to all who want to become partners and practioners in cultivating such as culture. We even got nominated (we still don't know how that happened) and have won the title Best Regenerative Community Consultancy 2026 of the Spanish Business Awards by the Eu Business News - Yay! As we will give a regenerative leadership workshop for the Gateway49 programme, join a circular carbon economy congress and have an exciting appointment with potential funders, we will be in Germany in April. Oh, and since we are at it, come and listen to Hannah sharing about learnings from the Hope Hub for organizational development and leadership at the Online Navigate Kongress in March! See what she and Daniel will talk about, but it is in German: https://navigate-kongress.de/programm/zurueck-in-die-zukunft-erkenntnisse-vom-feld-fuer-nachhaltigen-erfolg/ .

Galicia on the Ground
The NGO for the Hope Hub in Galicia is getting its own website in Spanish and English, so that all communication around the Hope Hub/ events/volunteering/updates will go through there from this year on. We will also open membership possibilities as we have received a bit of interest from people in the region to support and join the NGO. It will also help with communtiy building, organizing and fundraising.
The two community houses are still waiting to be built, ideally by the one and only https://www.biotonomy.com/. We are still fundraising for that and might get lucky this year! The overall village plan is also still in the process and requires a lot of mindfulness and expertise. However, a group of Sustainability and Development students from the Santiago University will support us from April on, conceptualizing their idea of "the village of the future" in Galicia. Until then, we are trying to figure out the land and housing governance and ownership model we want to go for, connecting with pioneers in the region to learn from them. Also, there is a new regional consumption group, that we are part of, and a local seedbank women project that we joined as well. Seeds sprouting everywhere. The gardens and food production will be on again this year with the goal to feed our community and guests and maybe even start selling on a local market! Walter is the man for that - he also wants to introduce a small herd of grazing animals into the agricultural system.

Furthermore, thanks to Jonas and his Bioregional Weaving Lab Community, we will participate in the "Leading Multi-Stakeholder Collaborations" learning journey, facilitated by Ashoka and CoCreative to network and deepen our methods, tools and leadership within the team to enable systemic and inclusive collaborations. There are some plans in the beginning of more groups wanting to come to experience our Hope Hub for a week or more - and we are excited to make that happen, after a beautiful experience last September with our first Erasmus+ group with 12 people. We are also planning some workshops, events and retreats on the ground, with most of it probably happening in July, August and September, but nothing is fixed yet. We have not decided about volunteer management yet. What we know is that, if we chose to open for volunteer positions again this year, we can only host people who are camping. But this year, we will let all of you know what programme is happening here before the season is over again, haha, we promise! Thank you for your understanding and we will keep you updated.

ONE LAST THING TO SHARE: We are still trying to reply to all E-Mails that we have received throughout the last year, however, if we missed yours and it is still up-to-date, please send a reminder. We are trying to find a new system so that we are not working over our capacities and are still able to properly take time for all of you, our community. We are forever grateful for all of your support and interest.

Lots of love,
Hannah and Julia - on behalf of the growing it's thyme community