Yana Ludwig is one of our most beloved guests on the Inside Community Podcast. In honor of her new book, Building Belonging, we are re-releasing episode 004 of Season 1: Finding Co-Founders and Creating Cooperative Culture with Yana Ludwig. The episode focuses on creating a cooperative culture when starting an intentional community, finding your people, and coming together with the like-minded visionaries that will be your co-founders. Her new book Building Belonging takes this conversation a step further. The book is both a practical guide for how to start a residential intentional community and is a collective framework for addressing the racial, social, ecological, and economic disparities affecting all aspects of the living experience for humans, land, and its co-inhabitants. Building Belonging is now available for pre-order at www.ic.org/building-belonging. Get your copy today!

Yana Ludwig is cooperative culture pioneer, group process trainer, and consultant and anti-opression activist who has lived in community for 25 years. She is the former Executive Director of both the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, and Commonomics USA, an economic justice organization, and currently serves as the Executive Director of Leadership Eastside in Washington. Yana is a dynamic, compassionate and thoughtful speaker and teacher, committed to creating a world that supports the well-being and vibrancy of all beings. Her writing includes ⁠Together Resilient: Building Community in the Age of Climate Disruption⁠ (published under the name Maikwe Ludwig) , ⁠The Cooperative Culture Handbook⁠ (co-authored with Karen Gimnig), and numerous articles in Communities magazine. She has spoken on Tedx and hosted the Solidarity house podcast which centers on policy, culture and law. She was also a candidate for US Senate in 2020, ultimately placing 2nd in a crowded Democratic primary field.

You can learn more about Yana and her work at ⁠www.yanaludwig.net⁠.

Podcast listeners get 20% of Yana's books and other ⁠FIC bookstore ⁠purchases with code INSIDE20
Yana’s online course, ⁠Starting an Intentional Community⁠, has been made into an on-demand course ideal for people just getting started with a community project or dreaming of starting one. Podcast listeners get 30% off FIC courses with code INSIDE30

If you want to learn more about finding YOUR people or any aspect of building community check out the Inside Community Podcast sponsor, The Foundation for Intentional Community. FIC is an incredible resource center with weekly events, online courses, classified advertisements, an extensive bookstore and lots of free educational materials. You can learn more about FIC and access show notes at ⁠ic.org/podcast⁠. Your financial support of Inside Community helps us to continue to create meaningful and exciting content and I hope you’ll consider donating through our website while you are there.

Follow the show and see inspiring images and videos of community life on Instagram ⁠@InsideCommunityPodcast⁠ - I’d love to hear from you there! If this content has been meaningful or useful to you, please subscribe, rate and review, and share with your friends and folks you know who are curious about living Inside Community.

Episode 133 - The Witch of Lupine Hollow