are LOCAL communities that work closely together with other communities around the whole world, using communication technologies to bootstrap all sectors of local life – towards resilience, beauty and quality of life.

The idea of the Global Villages Network is to bring together architects, community activists, communication designers, administrators and politicians, researchers and experts in many fields to promote the development of liveable habitat.

The Network is based on the belief that the village is the most sustainable form of life, that it can help solve many human problems otherwise neglected or unsolveable in an immediate, small, human scale.

It is further based on the belief that we need to and we can reinvent the village in a time when cities seemed more attractive and that we can create global support systems to enable actors in villages to fulfill the roles that this local capacity requires.

The Global Villages Network was formally founded at the Third International Global Village Symposium in Vienna, but neglected for a long time. Look at the founding declaration:

http://www.give.at/give/gvn/gvndraft.htm

It was never totally abandoned and the personal relations grew with new events, and when Gleb Tyurin from Archangelsk asked to build up a supporting entity for a possible project in Russia, efforts were started to formally recreate it and fill it with life.

For some time we were using a Social Network on NING as a tool to bring people together.

http://globalvillages.ning.com/

The goal is to create a conference and physical come together soon. We started a meaningful cooperation. More soon.

Our intermediate sites:

* Vienna core group: http://www.give.at
* NING venue: http://globalvillages.ning.com
* Yahoogroup: http://groups.yahoo.com/globalvillages
* LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=3197648
* Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=120509750784
* Wiser Earth http://www.wiserearth.org/group/globalvillages
* XING: https://www.xing.com/net/globaldorf (german)