Building a Better World Through Joy, Belonging and Community

The Belonging Podcast by Elev8 Villages |Episode 023 | Kara Stonehouse

 What if joy not fear, guilt, or outrage was the key to creating lasting change?

In this inspiring episode of The Belonging Podcast, host Melissa Kaye sits down with Kara Stonehouse, founder of Love Organized, to explore how communities can create meaningful transformation through belonging, collective intelligence, spiritual connection, and joy.

Kara shares lessons from eco-villages around the world, the importance of conflict resolution, conscious communication, and her ambitious five-step framework for building regenerative economies and thriving communities.

Topics Covered:
- Belonging and human connection
- Joy as a catalyst for change
- Eco-villages and sustainable communities
- Conflict resolution and conscious communication
- Collective intelligence and leadership
- Love Organized framework
- Regenerative economies
- Spirituality and systems thinking

Whether you're passionate about leadership, sustainability, personal growth, social innovation, or community building, this conversation offers a hopeful vision for the future.

Connect with Kara on LinkedIn: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karastonehouse/
Love Organized:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/122863923
The Hague Center: https://www.linkedin.com/company/77635540/
Webpage: http://www.loveorganized.com,
Kara’s TEDxtalk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejjjeruh7hE

Learn More About Elev8 Villages:
Website: https://www.elev8villages.org/
Download your FREE Belonging Kit: https://www.elev8villages.org/FREEkit

💭 If this episode inspires you, don’t forget to LIKE, COMMENT, and SUBSCRIBE!

#belongingpodcast #KaraStonehouse #communitybuilding #joy #leadership #podcast

This podcast exists because we believe belonging is not a luxury. It’s a human need. Every story shared here helps us imagine a world where no one has to walk alone. 

If this conversation resonated with you, please follow, rate, or share the show with someone who might need it today. To learn more about the movement we’re building (or to get involved) visit Elev8Villages.org.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of The Belonging Podcast by Elev8 Villages - where belonging becomes a place we build together. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to the Belonging Podcast by Elevate Villages. I'm Melissa Kaye, your host, and today our guest operates from the belief that if greed and power can be organized, then so can love. She's the vision holder for Love Organized, and she's working to facilitate major systemic change through projects and spiritual healing to make a better world our new reality. I am so thrilled to welcome from France Kara Stonehouse. Kara, welcome to the Belonging Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Hi, Melissa, and hello, listeners around the world. I'm so happy to be here and share hearts together.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Well, Kara, I don't know you well, and I would love to get to know you a little bit better. What do I need to know about Kara? What grew you into the person you are today?

SPEAKER_00 0:59

I was the youngest in my small family, and then also when we went to the bigger family gathering. So I was always the little one, a little bit shy, a little bit scared sometimes. And even or a little bit in the clouds off in another beautiful world, living to the beat of my own drums. Sometimes I did feel like I didn't belong or fit in with the schoolmates, but I always knew who I am and who I want to be and how I want the world to be, and how I want us to be kind to each other and care about each other. So often I would be heartbroken, really, at how much that was not the experience of even in my nice town and my nice family. People were just not, you know, there's just a gap between what could be what felt right and true to me and what what we're really living. And then as I grew up, and what what's my job gonna be? I want to make people happy, I want to make the world better somehow, and maybe I could be a toy designer because I love design and art and science, and and then sort of learning what the industry does with plastics and garbage and extraction and and just being like, oh, like how do you live in this world? You know, always learning and striving to be like, well, what's what can you do? And how do you how do you do sustainable design? And when you try and do sustainable design, it doesn't work because it's not a sustainable system. So it's like, okay, so systems design and the and then spirituality started to open up as the deeper root of the issues, you know, in our society that we are, that our worldview is is separated, and and then that the separation from nature sort of causes all the separation from each other and and the and the planet. So yeah, so just sort of on that journey of discovery my whole life and always wanting to be a positive force somehow.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

What was the the bridge from where you were to having the idea of the vision of love organized?

SPEAKER_00 2:59

How did that develop? In some ways, all through my life, I was always trying to imagine what some what some way or something we could I could be doing or organizing or um, but the love organized started to come into form through my exploration mostly with eco-villages. So I went to Finthorn Eco-Village in Scotland, and um Joanna Macy was there doing the work that reconnects with us, these beautiful ceremonies where we're releasing our tears and our grief. And Rob Hopkins was there talking about transition towns and um Richard Heinberg, who had was talking about the peak oil and peak everything at the time, and he played his violin for us. And so this meeting, these great thinkers and organizers of our time and being so touched by them with those beautiful people in the beautiful space of Findhorn, and they run everything through spirit and like they listen and say, okay, and then and then do, you know, as spirit is is calling them. And and that was new for me at the time. And I felt quite a big, and they have this beautiful nature sanctuary there. It's like um, it's like a little hobbit house made of stone with a with a turf roof, and you go inside and it's all stone and they carved with the tree of life, you know, rainbows. And so I sat there and this little shard of light came in through the top hole and it just sort of hit my heart, and I just, you know, I just felt like cracked open and and I just felt like the gift of that, you know, flowing in. And um, and then I started turning life more towards spirituality and continued on with different sustainability things. And um, and through the World Unity Week group, we meet online regularly, who are all these thinkers in this direction who want peace and unity, and we're doing these projects and we get to know each other. And it just just through all these experiences and friends and ideas and reading, I just it just started to become clear to me like what are some of the downfalls of ecovillages that were they're trying so hard, but they don't have enough resources and people and infrastructure to be um they fall apart, you know. The even the the vision we visited quite a few ecovillages around the world. And there's a very similar story of the the founder or the visionary of the eco-village being sort of cast out or something not working, you know, um, or when the visionary dies, then the community struggles. And and so I was just saying, like, well, what you know, what's needed, what's what would make it really work for our lives, our modern lives today with all the power and tools that we have now. And so that's where the the five steps just started to congeal through some of these World Unity Week events. I would feel, I would just feel enlivened and stay up and sort of beef up all night and be like, yes, and then start writing, you know, through the coherence of the field that we're holding together.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Yeah, we can do this. Like this is trying to see solutions where a lot of people will only see problems. Such a gift to be a solution seeker. I want to dive into that a little bit more with some of your observations of eco-villages around the world. Um, let's start with maybe one or two of the best cased um eco-villages that you got to experience.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Well, Findhorn was definitely the best case because they were the most working for the long time. They had solar, they had uh windmills, housing, and the beautiful food uh preparation area and Clooney and everything, and was uh was really working so well for for so long.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Yeah, I'm gonna just break in for a second for my US audience. Um, where is Finthorn?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Oh, it's in Scotland, northern Scotland. Um, and I wanted, I read the book about it, how they used to make huge vegetables, and I and it sounded like a fairy tale. But then I got a chance to work over in England uh as an industrial designer working on sustainable design things. And my main motivation was like, oh, I'll go over there and then I and work and I can go visit Findor.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Um and we went to Oraville and it was it was close, like it had really big vision, and they were building it, and they had built this big Epcot globe where you go in and meditate meditate in there. And there were also a large area and then had little villages all around connected. And um uh we stayed in a forest where they were doing cashew nuts, and um, and so I think quite a few people had beautiful lives there, and and we could see some of the struggles they were going through as well. Um natural conflicts of living together and sharing the water and everything were just alive and present, and they're dealing with them like they're good conscious people, uh, doing their best they can. Yeah. And there were some really nice, uh, one uh one other one that was really quite well developed was a small community in Australia in Auckland, and they used to be a lemon grove, and they changed it into like two streets with, you know, 12 to 20 houses and a community center, and they were living there in a modern neighborhood type of way. So they were still they're more connected that to modern life than say Oraville or or even Finthorn. So that was a nice, that was a good transition place. I think they were doing quite well.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for letting me have a few moments in those beautiful spaces. As you went through these other communities, on the human side, what's the biggest breakdown? Like, is that uh the ability to communicate? Is that governance? What is it that creates the most friction in these types of eco-villages?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Um, I saw it showed up as a kind of an ego thing where people felt like the founder had too much ego, but not sure how true that really was. Like they were just trying to be a good leader. I think it's just the little things like they obviously like they're doing their best things, they're having community times together. They're I think we always fail a bit at a conflict resolution. We know we should do it, we know we should have good processes, and then we we don't, and we sort of shy away from actually having the hard conversations that we need to have, and then we do it through symbols and resistance rather than then really facing each other and being like, oh, here's the difficult thing we need to talk about. And I trust that if I bring it up with you, you won't get all mad and and yell at me. I find that even in our conscious, in our most conscious communities, it's still like, no, let's just not deal with it. And then it's like, well, then we just kind of drift apart and sort of don't trust each other and talk about each other, but don't really get through. Because um I love this concept, they say that when you're when you're just together all getting along, like at first, you're a pseudo-community or you're almost a community, you're just a happy people sitting in a circle together. But once you go through something together, conflict and are and are able to hold it and get through to the other side, then you're a real community. Like then you're then you're actually building that trust with each other. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Yeah. But how how much on our human side we don't want to dive into that hard part, the conflict resolution and everyone being able to say, I could be right and you could be right at the same time. And then what happens? And then how do we, how do we meet in the middle?

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

That's when organizing love and having joy comes into play, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Yes. Yeah, I think we've had such poor models on how to communicate and how to resolve conflicts. And I think we can build a culture where we normalize it, where we practice together with little mini tensions that don't matter that much. We practice that, get that language together and we practice it before it's needed. So we're practicing how to do our nonviolent communication, which feels so awkward at first. Like my need is, and my request from you is, and when you do this, I feel like it. So you sound this kind of feels robotic at first, but then you st when you really do it, then you go, oh, we now we understand and respect and trust each other. So that's worth it, you know. Whereas I if I, you know, I remember um um within my own family said, okay, let's use this conscious communication. They were just like, that's stupid. You know, like, well, like don't dismiss it too soon, you know?

SPEAKER_02 11:28

It's hard. It's just not, it's not our normal default. And is that through nurture or just the way we are as humans?

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Little both, I think. Little both. Yeah, it's definitely we have to build that culture. I think some native tribes had pretty good systems in place, and I think we forgot a lot of those. And they're not so hard to to get back in, but you just need the leaders to understand its value. It just yeah, it needs to be valued and practiced, and it takes time, and often we're just in such a rush to get things done that we forget and then it's true, and then it hooks us around the back, and then we everything takes longer because it falls apart because we didn't learn how to trust each other.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

You had you did a TED talk, and the thing that I really thought about for a long time after I listened to it the first time was that so often we try to fuel change through outrage or fear or guilt. Or just logistics. You know, like we look at a paper, this is what goes wrong, so let's do it this way. So but all of that feels very sort of sterile, or on the other side, the outrage and guilt part that doesn't feel good either. Your suggestion is that we reconnect and do this with joy as our main strategy. Um so can joy be a serious strategy for systems change?

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Yeah, I think it's the it's the root. It's the the only thing that's gonna work, you know. I think only love can save us now. I remember I was teaching a course with some teenagers about sustainability, and I said, well, well, put up your hands. And I said, If I if I push on your hands, what do you naturally do? He's like, Well, I naturally push back, you know? And if uh so if I'm telling you, you know, if I'm forcing someone to try and change, I'm pushing on them, you know, and or I'm shaming them, or I'm telling them they're wrong. And so you you your natural human response is pushback. But what if I, you know, like but what if I dance with you? Like, then what's your response? You know? And like, well, then we're dancing together, and then we're falling in love and we're trusting each other, and then then what if I dance you in a different direction, you know, and then you come with me. And so energy energetically, um, I think that's how people work. And um, there's this beautiful quote that always comes back to me that the human soul is like a frightened animal, it's like a wild animal. And so you you don't approach it like run at it, and and you sort of you coax it and you build trust with it and you and you feed it. And the soul needs to be deeply seen and to be heard and to be loved for who you are and what you are. And so when you when you give people the opposite, when you give them shame, they're never gonna listen to you. That you are now the enemy as soon as you shame them and they're gonna fight you all the way. And that's just such a big waste of energy, really. Um, and yeah, and so whenever I'm doing my spiritual work, the message is always to like open, open, open, like open your heart, help other people open their hearts and open your eyes. I think it's the only pattern that will really work to get us to build the culture that that we really want.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

How are you starting to build that culture within love organized?

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Yeah, so we're building um for the way we do our governance has it built in. So we're deep listening within our governance. So we we think through what we want to do, and then we uh we listen to each other's feelings, and then we also listen to the spirit of the project. So we meditate for a few minutes and say, here's our proposal. And are there any feelings or or insights that come from meditating for with the uh spirit of the of love organized um before we make this decision? And then sometimes we get some really clear feedback, like, no, it should be six holons, not four, you know, and then we go, oh, okay, let's take that into consideration, you know, or or like, no, actually, we're not ready yet to make this decision, wait until next week when we have some more information or someone else's present. And really listening, listening to that and starting the meeting with that listening as well. And there's something about that really relaxes the space in each individual, and then each person feels like something like, oh yeah, I feel like I really need to come up in my power today. And then we can share that with each other, or Emma can say something to me like, Kara, do you really mean it? I feel I'm feeling doubt in what you're saying. What's your like, what are you afraid of here? And then I go, Oh, yeah, I'm afraid, I'm afraid to really ask you guys to do more, because uh, you know, and then they say, No, like tell us what to do. We want to do more. And so then we find this through this sort of gentleness and safety for real feedback, then we can actually get somewhere together. And that's how they're empowered. And so, like one day the meditation just wouldn't stop. Like, we just didn't want to stop and talk and do the meeting. So we just stayed in meditation and then we ended up doing a ceremony for one of the members to really empower her. She's and we want her to be the leader of this whole on, and and she felt like really empowered by the group through this process. So we didn't, we didn't like rush through and tell her what to do, you know, and make plans, but we let the energy of life flow in through us and into us and and fill us up. And so that we, and that's actually faster and more sustainable in the end, I think, when really activating people.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Wow, what a great model. Yeah, I'm just thinking yesterday I was having a conversation with someone and we were talking about how we're so, and this is like in an entrepreneurial group, where we're so prone to think up here. Everything is uh, you know, a task, a list, a thing, and we're we're thinking that way. And we forget that we've been created to think with our body, to think with our, you can call them the guts, the soul, the the center of us. And that if we can drop out of our head into that and let it lead the way, instead of being just so to-do list oriented, and then like just having you what you just said, I'm like, wow, okay, so because this podcast is really thinking about belonging, you led me to this vision, like instead of us coming around a table to figure out uh solutions to a problem, what what how would we do it if we really believed we belonged to each other? Like we would listen to each other. We would not just everyone gets to, you know, talk for 30 seconds, but really listening to their body lane, listening to everything all the energy they're bringing into the space. It sounds like in that day, that one person on your team needed something different than was maybe on the agenda. And you just it created so much belonging in that space that you opened up to meet their needs. That's that's what I'm hearing. It's beautiful. Yeah. So how does how does belonging um play with joy?

SPEAKER_01 19:01

That's a good question. I haven't thought of it that way before.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

I feel uh when I'm learning and orienting towards joy, I feel like it's it starts with gratitude and sort of and that listening to like life and energy and and spirit, and then it's sort of and then joy has this like reciprocal kind of uh waterfall element to it.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

And um and I think when I'm when I'm in that space, I'm not I'm not worried about belonging as as much.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Like I just I'm feeling like I belong with the universe and and God and and like you have that that oneness experience. And so you feel deeply, so I feel deeply like home in my body and on earth and and I that and I feel like that's the the direction that I want to help guide people towards in life that humanity feels home again on earth, that we really belong here. Because I really hear that mythology happening a lot about of oh, which planet do I come from and I'm not from here and I don't belong because the world's so crazy, and um, but I really want us to feel like we we're of the mud here. We come, we've come up through the seawater and and we really belong here, and it's our job to steward the ecology and to live here and and and live here as if we belong. Um and when we do that, the result is joy, I think. Like when we're when we're not, you know, in modern society that makes us separates us and makes us not belong anymore to the earth and who we really are. And that's when we're depressed and sad and heart closed. And I think when we're when we're in our natural truth and really home, then that's when that's when the joy uh can can grow.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

How how do you or have you this can be like an example from your personal life, or this can be in related to the organizations that you serve, um, but how do you create belonging for someone else? What would be some things that you can help teach us or ways that you've created belonging that then can lead to joy?

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Yeah, I think I struggled with belonging myself, like in the high school kind of context. And when I see somebody being bullied and excluded, I would always feel like, hey, that's not right. Uh I we should all belong, you know, we should all be included and we should be kind all to each other. So when I I always love to post a circle and so that everyone has the space to share. And when I do the Ceremonies. Um it's a type of ceremony where we're all in it together. And so it's not that I'm leading the ceremony and you're receiving the ceremony, it's that we're in a shared space, each sharing a piece of it and coming in when it's when our time is right to bring our own power and healing into the space. And so people say, like, oh no, no one's ever asked, no one's ever invited my healing power into the ceremony before. And I think that yeah, and I think it's that empowerment that brings brings that belonging is what I'm trying to create. Because the my goal uh is to work with distributed power so that if each person's empowered to do their piece, then we can get a lot more done. And that's that's how it needs to happen.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Yes, let's let's stay there for a second, because that's rich stuff. Um so like bringing all the gifts to the table. Like there's not one person I need to extract little things from each of you to get this thing done, but instead, what do we all bring and how now does that work? And how do how does the leader or the vision holder how do we go about creating those spaces and seeing, I think sometimes people come and they don't know their gifts. So how can we, as I'm gonna just say we're village builders, whether in the uh human context of that or if in the like actual housing, but as village builders, how can we create those tables metaphorically where people can bring their gifts and we can somehow figure out how do all those pieces work together to solve this human puzzle?

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Yeah, I'm a strategic facilitator. So I've learned all the art of hosting practices, so that uh one of them is circle, and but then one of them is open space, and another is uh World Cafe. So just how to host a whole session where we have um bring the collective intelligence out from the group. And that's really important for me. So every time I I'm at a conference that isn't open space, I feel like, ah, we're not, everyone's not sharing and we're not getting the juice out of the and the emergence that we could out of this collective. Um and so um, yeah, so that's a really important element to me. When the strategy really comes out of the group, then it's then it's alive, then it wants to be activated. It's not just one person's thought that we're trying to get buy-in and then it doesn't really happen. Um and so we can make that collective impact framework happen. I hosted a um, I got funding from the from the Ontario um government uh uh foundation, the Trillium Foundation, and we invited in the city and the business people and the nonprofits, and we met together regularly and I had them on stage. I said, Yeah, well, you come and you speak and we share what you've done, and and then everyone's honored by that and they want to come and share. And then we have um collective dialogue together about okay, who what are all the pieces and what's the you know, different people brought different like key statistics about, you know, buildings are half the CO2 emissions in Ottawa, so okay, maybe we focus there more as a collective. And then so through each of all the pieces that everyone brought to the the whole, we could see together. That's one of the principles of of collective intelligence is help the system all see itself together. And so that's by bringing those different types of stakeholders together, and each person has a different perspective, and then we all get it together and we all go, aha. And that's my that's my business, is aha, graphic facilitation. And and then I draw a big picture of it. And I say, here's what we're creating. And that's another way to ground it and have it come in into form, and then people can see it and see what that what they said made it up onto this big poster that that I'm drawing about it. Um, and so there's we've created a learning program around some of these skills on the through our Cohere Plus program. Maybe I can give a link to that in in the comments below.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Yeah, absolutely. Please do we'll we'll include that in the show notes for sure. Talk to us just a little bit more about open spaces.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Yeah. Open space, uh, the first one I did was at Findhorn and they said it it's an unconference. So instead of getting five experts to come up on stage and talk for half an hour, which is very valuable and and interesting, that another day of the conference would be the unconference. And they'd say, okay, what important questions are you all holding? What important conversations do you all want to have? And then people raise up, take a piece of paper and say, I want to host a conversation on this, and then they put it up on the board. And then you say, Okay, and there's these five rooms, there'll be these five conversations, and then in the next time slot, there'll be these five conversations. And so the agenda is generated by the participants in the moment as part of the process, and then say, off you go, go have your conversations and come and come back to us with a three-point summary that we're gonna put all together, or come back with a song that you've made up about it, or you know, it's the better way the more creative you are with the harvesting, I find the better results you get. Um, the harvesting is called what we call like getting all the info coming out of the of all the discussions. And that's a way of empowering everybody again and and more, and there's more belonging because there's more voices that are being heard in the room and people feel you know, because that's the deep soul need. It's like, oh, I need to, I want to be heard, I want to say my piece and feel the energy building with the other people in the room.

SPEAKER_02 27:29

Yeah, there's there is something to be said about when somebody hears you or when you're seeing how much that does connect you to those around you, like that definitely brings in belonging. Which brings me back to joy. Talking about joy in relation to belonging, I'm just sort of uncovering this here live as we're as we're chatting, Kara, and I appreciate you letting us have space for this. I feel like joy could be an outcome of creating true belonging, but I'm wondering if someone is coming with joy, if joy can attract belonging.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Seem seems seems to follow, yeah. Right. Um, yeah, I mean, that's what I'm playing with, joy as as an attractor, uh joy at the center of what we're creating. I participated in the Hollow movement, and they had the sort of the four sectors, and they had in the middle impact, and I was graphic recording and drawing the picture, and just through what I was hearing and feeling through the event with all these beautiful musicians, beautiful dance parties, beautiful like play like pretend we're butterflies, pretend we're chrysalises turning into butterflies, like all these fun activities we do together in the conference. I when I was drawing it up, I put joy in the middle, joy. And then they went, Yes, yes, it's joy in the middle. And then they started writing about that and convening about that and showing and social media about that. It's like come for the come be part of this joy, you know. Do we throw this better party that people want to come to to build this new world together? Um, yeah, because so much of the climate narrative is is just about despair and uh shame and anger and grief and and rage. And those are all really important and true, but like deeply unattractive as well.

unknown 29:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Um those don't seem to build, those seem to dismantle or dissolve or destroy, but those things don't seem to build where joy feels a lot more possible as far as like building a better future. How could you build a better future or why would you want to without joy? So let's define for our listeners, I would love to hear your personal definition, not a dictionary definition on joy. Different than happiness, different than love, different than contentment. Where does joy come from? How do you how do you make space in your life for joy or how do you create joy?

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Yeah, I think joy is um for me it's an energy when uh being like super present and super um uh for me it's it's like uh picking a hot strawberry out of the sun in my back garden and eating it really slowly and then it explodes through your brain, and you just and like when you're really intentionally um tasting, letting that experience fill you up.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Now I want a strawberry.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

That's uh really, really present. Like just being real like even the the the smallest thing that it just isn't negative, but just could be even neutral, just being really present with it feels like that could help create some joy.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Yeah, like life, like when I'm in my garden like that, um, I think we need so little to experience so much joy.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

And we work so hard and we destroy so much to try and get a little bit of happiness and status and then feel terrible at the end when we could just slow down, teach each other to to just tune into our senses and just feel so much joy and needs to to consume so much less.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

Have you sit with that for a second? That's amazing. Um let's move ahead. Actually, we're gonna have to skip our whole monopoly section. So for my listeners, um, Kara has a TEDx talk that I will link below. Check this out. She tells a Monopoly story that is brilliant. And I had a similar monopoly story when I was young. And it was that moment, I think, of not knowing that this is part of my life path to create more belonging, to build villages. I would play Monopoly. I'm gonna tell you the short story and then we'll move on. Um and my sister and I under the table kept feeding other people money because my brother was winning and it was in a painful way, and he was loving it. He was loving that he had part, you know, he was loving it all. And I was so torn. Like it was, I think, the first thing I can remember feeling in my body that there shouldn't be such a disconnect of winners and losers. And it's it's so our society here, and it was the world I grew up in, and that just never felt right. Monopoly certainly sets us up to think that that's the only way it can be. And we know that there's other and better ways. And I love being in the world with you, Cara, where we can figure out how to create belonging and systems that include everyone.

unknown 33:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

So we gotta flip the board, flip the board and play a different game on the other side that's cooperative, um, caring for everybody.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

Yeah, absolutely cooperative and caring. I love that. So for the audience, please go in, listen to our TED talk because it's so enjoyable. Um, but let's move on a little bit. I want to hear more about your love-organized framework. I know you have a five-step framework, so go through that with us a little bit of how you how you set out to build the new while we're still living here with the old.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Yeah, so it's that well-loved quote by Buckminster Fuller that uh to change the system, you don't force people to change, you just build a new system that's just so much better that it makes the other one obsolete. So that's the focus of this project is to say, okay, there are a bunch of us who are ready. There are a bunch of us who are yearning for life to be so different and to be able to make a living with giving our gifts, giving our regeneration, uh, being kind and loving and not feeling like we have to give all that up to have a house and a mortgage and uh and a retirement. And people are experimenting in so many ways. And um what I can see is if we can coordinate all those people just at that next level, just above the eco-villages, in the regional level, so that we can be living in the city and having a regenerative currency that connects us all up across the eco-villages and across so that the farmer and the dressmaker and the four school person and the entertainment and the healer, that we can all work together to support each other better, so we can all thrive at that next level, make the business model work, and to get a little bit savvy together in cooperatives of owning assets together as well, so that we can leverage those assets to create more jobs in the regenerative economy. So I imagine a five-step big strategy that can create that bigger transformation that we want. So the first step is prototyping that system. If we can focus in one city like Toronto's emerging as a place where we're going to focus and say, okay, we have the Center for CSI, the Center for Social Innovation in Toronto. They have bought a building and they've been using it for regenerative purposes, and now they're at a point where they own the building. And so now it's an asset. And so now we can leverage that and we can gather together all those people I just mentioned and have them know each other better and have them have a currency so that they can do more with less money, basically. They share with each other in that in that bubble. And then that helps us create jobs. So we have this level of governance that needs to be done, all the things we talked about earlier about how do you do all that conflict resolution, all this creating new infrastructure and new systems and creating a whole new economy. That's work that needs to be paid. And there's often not a lot of cash to pay for those jobs. But this currency, it's a way that we're creating our own form of cash. And so we I'm gonna sort of make up this currency that's gonna be backed on assets so that it's a real thing and not just made up out of thin air, but that um now I can get a salary for being that new kind of governance person. Uh, and then and then with that salary, I can get my food box, I can put my kids in forest school, and I can get some clothes and some entertainment. And so then it's creating real wealth and value for my life. It's creating a job in creating the new economy. So it's like, so let's prototype that. So that's step one. Like, can we pull all those pieces together, do the minimum viable product of that? Can it really work? What are the limitations and how many people do you need and where does it fall apart? And so we want to play some games around that and have summer camps around that and get those technology guys working together around that, which everyone's ready to do and wants to do. And so we're getting grants to try and to have the focus to get all that together. And then step two happens kind of at the same time, we're creating these pod groups. So any, so not everyone is are those people who are going to be engaged in the technology and the sharing and the currency, but everyone wants to um, you know, explore their purpose, go to the next level, um, have somewhere they belong, have a place to rest from the stress of the current economy and experience a joy together. So we have these pod groups, this community that people can join to say, where are the people who are like making the world a better place? Here, here, come to loveorganized.com and meet Emma and join a pod, and maybe there'll be a pod in your area, or maybe there'll be a pod on um on the topic that you like to talk about, about eco-villages or something like that. And then it's a that's a regular space that becomes your home, your church, your um, your support group and your and helps you think through how am I gonna weave myself into the new economy? And maybe some jobs become available, and then maybe you get one of those jobs that we're that we're creating. And so then I can see youth then start to say, well, instead of going to university and taking that whole modern society track, maybe I'm gonna go this other way and I'm just gonna do the learning and earning in the regenerative economy instead and with and use my energy. That brings me more joy in in the end. Um so step one is the the prototyping, step two are the pods so that everyone around the world has somewhere to land. And we want the people in the pods to feel like they're getting enough value that they feel good about paying a monthly fee for that, just like you do in your church and your tithing to if you want a new world and taxes that create our cities and the streets, we need people to pay in and really commit to building this new world together. And then that helps us also to do the governance and pay the facilitators to make those spaces really good and really well held. And then the third step is that we have to um fund the system. So we have to get those assets into place. So we need some community bonds, so we get people, normal people say, give in 5,000 to this. We're gonna, if a bunch of us do that, we can buy a building together and then we can rent out that building and have an income, we'll pay you back real slowly with a low return, but we'll get to your m your the goal is to get you your money back and maybe a little more. Um but then we'll be able to use that asset to make more, to do that, to leverage it again for more jobs and more support for the regenerative farmers and everybody and governance and um and so that that's a lot of hard work, but it's a step that we gotta do. And then that way the regenerative economy, that our new bubble, will grow and grow over time. And then once we have enough capacity, we can start step four, which is bridging people over. So saying, come on, now there's jobs for you, and now your mainstream people go, I'm so tired, and so I just lost my job, there's no jobs because of AI. We've got something here for you, you can start building it with us. And then the last step is that the more of that that can build up and build up, then it can start to become the actual mainstream system where people say, I don't want my kids to go to normal school. I I love what's happening in the forest school because they're all talking about that. Those kids are just shining. Those kids are just thriving that are coming out of the forest school. How come our kids are like are like on their screens and those kids are like like look like this, you know? And then then people start to say, um, these principles that are being so successful in our town, I want someone to run with those principles and to actually get that into the real institutions. And then we start to see some bigger changes coming.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

And now you have a whole new reality that people can step into as their old reality is falling apart. Yeah, giving a real choice that's the path of joy. Hmm. Kara, the last hour sitting here with you, being present with you and listening to your experiences and your brilliance and your heart, that has truly brought me joy.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

Um Is there any question I haven't asked you that you wish I would?

SPEAKER_00 41:01

Um the only thing would be to just ring my my bell to hold uh a space sacred space together.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

Oh, let's hold a sacred space together. I just want to feel um the heart and energy of every person listening right now. Of you and me and and all your podcasts and all your podcasts, I guess and the field that you're building around the world to care for children who don't belong anywhere to give them a place where they're loved. Where they have a chance. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

Thank you to Kara Stone House for being such a lovely guest today and bringing us a little closer to coming back to ourselves. And thank you, listeners, for being here, being a part of a world that's kinder and a world that brings belonging. May we always build belonging together. Also, thank you to our patron, Dee Laughlin, for supporting this podcast and making it possible for these conversations. Until next time, go out there and create belonging for someone else.