End of the Year - THANK YOU 2024

Dear Friends and the it’s-thyme Family,

With hearts full of gratitude, we reflect on a year full of exciting developments – all thanks to YOU! 💚 Without your generous contributions to our fundraising campaign at the beginning of 2024, our dream of creating a regenerative village and educational center for lived regeneration in Galicia wouldn’t be where it is today. From the very start, you believed in us and are literally the foundation of our stonehouse-village! This is a thank you letter to all of you!

We had intended to follow up on the crowdfunding campaign in February 2024. However, the year has been a wild ride that shook up both us and our plans and we could not keep up with the speed we had promised so please find - only now - the summary info on your donation presents at the end of this newsletter. With so many people suddenly watching us – both locally and from afar – we wanted to get everything we promised and envisioned off the ground! We didn’t do everything, but thanks to your support, we’ve achieved great things, and this year will be even bigger 💚!

What we achieved in 2024

1. Local Community-Building
Community work and sustainable integration into the region are the heart of our project. We’ve invested much time and energy in building trustworthy relationships through direct encounters with the local community. This includes regular coffee or cocoa dates with neighbors, attending village and school festivals, sharing a beer with the mayor 😉, participating in public events and singing traditional Christmas carols with the local women. We understand that our arrival and of our guests initially caused some skepticism: “Who are these new people “from outside”, and what are they planning to do with this abandoned village? Can we trust them?” That’s why we’re taking the necessary time to be as present as possible for their questions and wish to get to know us. With our first presentation at the local cultural center, we’ve set an important example of transparency, exchange, and local integration. We’re excited for more community events in 2025! Our aim for this place is to be enriching not only for us but for the entire region!

What We’ve Achieved in the Village

Now it gets exciting and concrete! Thanks to your support, we’ve been able to implement some essential work in our Steinhaus village:

• Electricity and running water, compost and water toilets have been installed – and yes, even cold and hot outdoor showers, yay!

• We’ve set up a campground and parking spaces for vans and motorhomes.

• Our first provisional community house, Manolo’s house, is finished and has provided a cozy kitchen, dining table, and sleeping space for us and our guests.

• Our world’s best guests built a communal outdoor area with a fire pit and a large wooden table, bringing life to the place every day.

• We’ve purchased and set up a large greenhouse, and we’re preparing the soil to grow lots of delicious fresh food next year – to nourish our next group of guests.

• With two shovel loaders and an excavator, we’ve moved massive amounts of earth, created earthen terraces, cleaned all the ruins inside, and begun work on our future amphitheater.

• We’ve also started transforming a small stable ruin into our future café! We’ve put together a little Instagram-Video of the infrastructure work.

• Overall, we’ve been supported by 54 visitors from 10 different countries this year, who stayed between 3 and 100 days – from New Zealand, Romania, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany and more.
  Take a look at our 2nd video to see how the village is growing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuVZFg9AP90&t=24s ].

Last but not least, our village is not only growing through volunteer help and construction progress but also through new faces and people who can imagine creating a lasting beautiful home here. With a total of 11 potential residents, we’re taking this year to develop and test structures for sustainable growth, collective land management, and effective organization for the village’s further development.

Our learnings 2024

The year has taught us a lot, and we’d like to share our most important insights with you:

1.) Things don’t always (or almost never?) go as planned in the very beginning.
We quickly realized that a project this big and complex often requires very different steps than what we had carefully laid out before. And we experienced that Spanish culture already brings this certain flexibility: What “tomorrow” means today could mean “in three months” tomorrow. We’ve had to adjust, and just in the spirit of regeneration, had to learn how to work with the natural rhythm of life rather than pushing things through with pressure and stress.

2.) Financial resources are important – but trust and real connections are the foundation.
While financial resources obviously are necessary, we’ve learned once again that true friendships, a strong sense of community, and deep trust within the team are priceless. It’s these human connections that make the impossible possible. So, it doesn’t surprise us that we haven’t yet gotten to building the community house – instead, we needed to focus on building the community first. This year, we feel incredibly blessed by all the people who have entered our lives and will be by our side in the coming year. More shoulders, more hearts, and more minds, yes!

3.) Small steps, patience, and respecting boundaries.
It sounds simple, but it’s so hard to implement: Moving forward in small steps, staying patient, and respecting our own boundaries. The year has repeatedly reminded us of how important it is to pause, reflect, and calm our minds in the midst of sometimes overwhelming phases of the start of a project. Being grounded, setting boundaries consciously, communicating them, and returning to ourselves have been key lessons (over and over again) and make up an important pillar of regenerative leadership! Only when we’re in our own strength can the project be built on solid ground!

2. International Community-Building
Thanks to Lars Richter, our superstar filmmaker, we’ve been able to share our project with the world through beautiful videos and connect with many new like-minded people and visionaries globally. With 1,390 subscribers, 27,500 views, and many heartfelt messages, we’ve been overwhelmed by the response to our new YouTube channel! If you haven’t already, check out our first video and experience Galicia up close: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXspBJMBa28&t=155s"].

Through our international connections with similar places, we’ve set the stage for a global network of Hope Hubs. We’ve had truly inspiring encounters with the leaders of the 90-year-old World Fellowship Centers in New Hampshire and the inspiring farmer and visionary Walter from the 30-year-old regenerative farm Stillebeul in Germany. We will soon feature these places as other Hope Hubs on our website.

3. New Collaborations
We’ve entered into exciting new collaborations this year. We’re especially thrilled about working with the amazing team at Sylvester, who have big plans to restore a neighbouring eucalyptus plantation funded through their successful crowdfunding campaign! Together, we aim to take a stand against monocultures and for biodiversity and permaculture in the region, hopefully inspiring many plantation owners along the way!

What comes next?

2025 will be exciting!

1.) Right now, we’re reflecting on the year, responding to unanswered emails (yes, a lot of “laptop work” has piled up!), and taking the insights from 2024 to plan the next season. What’s already clear: We want to focus on the funding and building of the community house in 2025 to celebrate its opening ideally in Spring 2026. Cause we’ve already secured a generous budget for a spectacular opening celebration, yay!

2.) There will again be volunteer positions, though more limited and tailored to the specific needs of the project. If you’re interested, sign up for Volunteer list 2025.

3.) A podcast project in German with our new it’s-thymer and leadership coach Daniel Decker is in the works – for anyone interested in learning more about regenerative ways of living and thinking!

4.) The Hope Hub network grows! In 2025, Hannah and new team members will work on visualizing and uplifting other places of Hope, networking work and educational content creation to help other community spaces to work and grow regeneratively!

5.) We’ve made it easier for new donors and set up a PayPal page. Donations can now be made with just one click: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=AG922YRDKPNU4 – feel free to give it a try! ;-)

6.) In addition to donors, we’re actively looking for investors who believe in the Hope Hub vision and want to hold shares in our future Spanish cooperative or invest in other projects on the ground. We’ve set up an Interest list for those who want more details and potentially take part in the conversation!

Info about your donation gifts!

Since we weren’t able to process gifts through the crowdfunding platform due to not reaching our funding goal, we don’t have your email addresses. However, we know who selected which amount and gift. Depending on the gift, please get in touch with us if you'd like to redeem it or visit our website:

1. For everyone we have contact details of, we’ll send photos of the trees you donated. These trees were planted in the spring and have brought joy to us and the forest garden. Please send us your Email address if you haven’t received your picture!
2. All vouchers for Permaculture and Living Systems Thinking workshops are valid indefinitely.
3. Vouchers for stays at the Hope Hub will be valid once the community house opens.3.
4. The digital booklets on regeneration will be online in spring and accessible through our website.
5. The digital journey (meditation) is in production and will also be accessible via the website.

Please message to us if you have any questions about this. Thank you for your patience and understanding regarding the delayed processing.

We hope you had a peaceful end of the year and send winter greetings from Galicia. We’ll be in touch for more specific info, plans, and offers regarding 2025!

With lots of love,
Hannah and Julia with Manolo and the entire Galicia Team