One day we had very little connection with our First Peoples communities and the next, literally overnight, we experienced the most extraordinary thing; we met so many different Aboriginal people from all walks of life and suddenly our paths took on real meaning for the first time.
The Valley Centre has been action-researching (which means, doing research through real life examples, trials, pilots and tests) observing and creating the process of sustainable community building. What is a sustainable community? One that lives within the natural systems upon which it depends, where creativity and resilience are key focal points, where technology supports and regenerates life and nature, where culture and healing is practiced for the deepening and levelling of our lives. So The Valley set about trying to find where and how is this possible. Having worked in juvenile justice, environmental campaigning, creative performance settings, film & television, eco-community movement, we looked from all angles at what it takes to build a sustainable community.
The overriding discovery was that when a person has a meaningful and lengthy capacity to connect and be in the natural world, then most of the issues and challenges we are seeing in our world today, will cease to exist. It is in the disconnection and removal from nature that people’s sense of self and the outside world dissolves and what we are left with is innumerable societal challenges.
In meeting our now partners, different Aboriginal communities and their Leaders, we found the missing piece of the Valley puzzle. A model purported by many of the communities we have been working with is; you learn who you are and where you fit in by your connection with country. A specific area of land that your ancestors called home, where you find your growth and truth and development. its very sensible, as it creates a simple world perspective, identity, connection to community and sense of self. This same model is championed by First Peoples all over the world in all different forms and expressions, but there is one defining feature; the real and tangible connection to nature.
With industrialisation and the expansion of cities, what we see is an immediate shift from land based economies and societies to thriving metropolises, which on the one hand provide us to access to health care and entertainment, are missing one critical factor; large tracks of nature and activities that connect us entirely and deeply with the natural systems that once dominated our vastly depleted earth. thus we lost our connection to land, and thus our connection to self and each other. We forgot to value what it meant to be out on the land working and bringing in an income for the family. We moved into apartments and lived in offices throughout the week, replacing socialising with down time in the natural world.
Thus connecting with our First Peoples’ of this continent Australia, who’s ancestors can be dated back over 70,000 years, they have been teaching us slowly and surely, what it means to have a connection with nature. not only this, but the multitude of stories that permeate around Mother Earth are deeply moving, bringing us every closer to an understanding of this ancient culture.
Obviously our work is not just sitting around the fire and yarning over a cuppa, we’re making some tangible plans towards enabling the re-building of communities from an infrastructure and technology perspective, that will then mean families can live on their country in safe, sustainable, resilient ways. This means bringing locally sourced power, food, water storage and purification, building houses, laying the foundations for communities to practice culture, heal their young people and enact the old ways on their land.
This process is simple and driven by the communities, funded by impact investors and philanthropists, and will see the empowerment, health and self-determination of communities into the future. We are right now focusing on Aboriginal communities, as we feel this is the right place to start, considering the 240 years of hidden atrocities enacted against all Nations across this continent, yet we will most definitely work with all communities that have a similar passion and need for this same process.
Which very simply is; bringing powerful contemporary technologies to enable the rebuilding of communities in a self-determined local economy model.
We are so honoured and are forever thankful for the opportunity to work with “The Mob”, as they affectionately call themselves and hope that many more communities will follow the lead of the first few trailblazers, working together and helping each other, for a more sustainable, resilient future.
ders, we found the missing piece of the Valley puzzle. A model purported by many of the communities we have been working with is; you learn who you are and where you fit in by your connection with country. A specific area of land that your ancestors called home, where you find your growth and truth and development. its very sensible, as it creates a simple world perspective, identity, connection to community and sense of self. This same model is championed by First Peoples all over the world in all different forms and expressions, but there is one defining feature; the real and tangible connection to nature. 
This process is simple and driven by the communities, funded by impact investors and philanthropists, and will see the empowerment, health and self-determination of communities into the future. We are right now focusing on Aboriginal communities, as we feel this is the right place to start, considering the 240 years of hidden atrocities enacted against all Nations across this continent, yet we will most definitely work with all communities that have a similar passion and need for this same process. 
