FOUNDER

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Cynthia founded Ecovillage Tours because she wanted more people to travel with her to ecovillages, experiencing ways of living that are both sustainable and fun! She has visited more than 200 intentional communities around the world, including the Vermont ecovillage where she lives in her self-built passive solar home.

When not globe-trotting to ecovillages with interesting groups of people, Cynthia works as the “community matchmaker” and director of CommunityFinders, offering programs to help people join and start intentional communities.

Formerly the co-director, Cynthia is now a spokesperson and educator with the Foundation for Intentional Community. She's a former trustee of the Global Ecovillage Network and former director of the youth ecovillage network, NextGEN North America. She holds a degree in Sustainability from Goddard College, as well as certificates in Permaculture and Ecovillage Design, and Yoga Teacher Training.

TOURS DIRECTOR

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Jess joined Ecovillage Tours because she was drawn by their mission to promote conscious living through visiting intentional communities worldwide. With almost 20 years of experience in international education, including 10 years of guiding cross-cultural service-learning projects for college students across Latin America with Peacework, Jess brings a wealth of expertise.

Prior to Peacework she worked at Manna Project International in Guatemala and The School for Field Studies in Costa Rica overseeing student and volunteer-driven community development initiatives. Jess holds a Master's in Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management and has worked with various grassroots organizations across Latin America.

Travel has always been integral to her life journey, evolving from external exploration to internal introspection, where she discovered yoga, meditation, and indigenous wisdom. This quest has led her to seek out conscious communities worldwide. Presently based in Bali, Indonesia with her partner and daughter, she is eager to continue her work connecting individuals with transformative centers for sustainable community living through Ecovillage Tours.

MARKETING DIRECTOR

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Mika believes that connection—in all its forms—is what brings true joy and meaning to life. As Marketing Director for Ecovillage Tours, she is focused on sharing the stories of people and movements around the world who are reimagining what it means to live regeneratively and in community. Mika’s approach to marketing is rooted in storytelling and the belief that wellbeing and sustainability flourish through genuine human connection.

Mika also does promotion and facilitation with the transformational plant medicine retreat organization she co-founded in Ecuador, Ayllu Medicina. She shares the practices and ways of being in communion with the Earth that have served her path, inviting people to connect with themselves and their purpose through meditation, purification, and ceremony.

Originally from Rhode Island and based in Ecuador for the last 13 years, Mika has collaborated with organizations including Global Citizen Year, Kalu Yala, The Wellbeing Project, and Amazon Learning. Her background living in ecovillages, in experiential education and community ecotourism has taken her deep into the Andes and Amazon, where she’s learned from indigenous elders, local projects, and guided young changemakers through cross-cultural immersion.

She is also the founder of Joyful Connection Co., a project dedicated to facilitating programs in mindful nonviolent communication and immersive travel experiences in Ecuador. When not hosting retreats or crafting stories, Mika can be found in the ocean, practicing yoga, searching for waterfalls, convening meaningful gatherings, or creating through art and music.

OPPERATIONS ASSISTANT

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As a Canadian, Olga was looking for a different way of life, one that offered a closer connection to nature and a stronger sense of community. After her husband joined an Ecovillage Tour in Costa Rica in 2025, their family made the decision to relocate to Alegría Village, an intergenerational intentional community that is home to more than 100 residents, including owners and renters, families, couples, and individuals from around the world. Today, she enjoys the sense of connection, collaboration, and belonging that first inspired their move.

In 2026, Olga joined the Ecovillage Tours and Community Finders team, where she shares the practical lessons, insights, and realities of community living with others who are exploring a similar path.

COSTA RICA DIRECTOR

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Jason has lead over 7 tours with Ecovillage Tours throughout Costa Rica and offers one-to-one community matchmaking support for those looking to move to the region.

Jason is the founder of Regeneration Nation Costa Rica, a podcast exploring who's doing what to bring Costa Rica toward environmental and social well-being. As a permaculturist with a background in business, he bridges ecologically-focused entrepreneurs with the 21st-century tools and business practices he’s found useful in his own endeavors.

After a decade of traveling, visiting intentional communities and permaculture projects all around North and Central America, Jason settled on Costa Rica as his home. In 2009, he co-founded Finca Fruition, a permaculture education center and homestead in CR. During his dozen years dedicated to that project, he hosted hundreds of guests, volunteers, interns, and students, produced events, taught a little, and learned a lot.

Jason’s been a dedicated earth steward for more than 20 years. His current mission is to promote & network regenerative projects throughout CR, hoping to enhance their potential to make their intended impact and thrive.

PORTUGAL + GREECE GUIDE

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Catarina is Lisbon-born and raised between rural Alentejo, the ocean and the tallest mountains. She has worked as a tour guide since 2017, sharing her deep knowledge of Portugal’s history and landscapes while engaging curious travelers to explore new contexts with knowledge and awareness. Beyond guiding, Catarina has a decade of experience as a dancer and teacher, exploring urban, traditional, and contemporary dance forms. She has performed and taught across Europe and Asia, and co-organized the Orchidaceae Dance Intensive in Lisbon, an annual gathering attracting students from around the world. 

Catarina has been working with a diverse array of community and environmental projects as communications manager and content creator. She’s an activist and co-founder of the Dunas Livres environmental association, focused on awareness and citizen participation in territory management. She is a core team member of the Ecoversities Alliance, supporting alternative education and regenerative livelihoods globally. As a facilitator and art-educator, she highlights EVOLVE, an embodied experience integrating art and science through movement workshops that connect participants with nature and our evolutionary history. She is now back to school in a PhD program on sustainability, with a project dedicated to the role of ecovillages in their bioregions, and is taking her first steps as a vegan activist.

Catarina’s diverse passions, from translating across three languages to organizing intentional events, make her a dynamic and inspiring guide for participants on an Ecovillage Tour.

AUROVILLE PROGRAM LEADER

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Daniel has spent decades exploring and supporting intentional communities worldwide.

Daniel is the Director of Networking and Partnerships of the Foundation for Intentional Community. Back in 1998, following his Ph.D. dissertation on Growing up in Intentional Communities, Daniel founded Living Routes, which ran study abroad programs in ecovillages around the world. In 2012, he started Earth Deeds, which offers online tools to account for our unavoidable CO₂ emissions. Over the years, Daniel visited over 100 communities and lived in many, including Sirius in Massachusetts, the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland, and Auroville in south India. Daniel is co-founder and past Board Member of Gaia Education and served as President of the Global Ecovillage Network from 2015-2019.

Daniel’s passion is to support the development of whole people, living well and lightly together.

PORTUGAL + GREECE GUIDE

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Mikey is a half-Greek musician, facilitator and event producer with a great emphasis on getting people together and creating meaningful connections. As a facilitator, Mikey aims to nurture human connections in group settings through integrated participatory methodologies. His facilitation experience started young with leading and guiding groups of children and youth in summer camps, and is growing to animating musical workshops and facilitating workshops in all sorts of contexts, focused on personal development and group dynamics.

As a musician, Mikey uses voice, guitar, and electronic instruments through live looping and sampling. He often incorporates voices of the audience, as part of his duo project À La Loop - something between a performance and a workshop, the duo record and sample the audience to create a track of music that is unique and exclusively ephemeral. giving people a special experience with the opportunity to hear themselves and express themselves in a new way and to create together, this leads to empowerment of the individuals and of the groups they have worked with. playing in various contexts, such as youth movement conferences, seminars for community leaders, team-building workshops, as well as street-performance.

He is part of BONA, an artistic collective for community event production who share skills for producing events and establishing connections between people. The resulting events, such as parties or festivals, are collectively created among BONA members and the local community of unexpected urban locations. Their main focuses are community, a sense of unity, and artistic creation, particularly emphasising music and visual art. BONA have developed methodologies to integrate groups to the location, to dream together, to be beneficial to the place and to the local community all through fun and interactive events. The collective organises about six events annually, each with a different group or community.

BALI PROGRAM COORDINATOR

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Kavitha was born as third generation into one of the world’s largest Ecovillage-Intentional community known as Auroville, in South India. She is Dutch and Indian by nationality. She studied Sustainable Development at Leiden University in The Hague. She later returned to Auroville where she worked in various fields of alternative education, alternative governance, and founded the YouthLink organisation.

Simultaneously, she had worked for the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), as Trustee and as Education Director for the Asia-Oceania regional network. She has also co-founded the Auroville GEN-Desk, and her central focus has been to conduct Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) certified programs, which she has now done for over a decade. She is also Permaculture Design certified, and has worked on project design and fundraising for various initiatives in Auroville.

Kavitha has now moved to Bali, with her husband and two children, where she manages the Retreats and Educational programs held at their Alaya Ecolodge. She also continues to organise Ecovillage Design Education programs, amongst other trainings related to regenerative practices, wellness, and local empowerment. Together with her husband and colleagues, they are working on designing an Ecovillage Learning Campus - as a space to develop new curriculum for residential programs relating to Ecovillage and Intentional communities.

Kavitha has been discovering Bali over the last few years, developing her network of like-minded people and projects. As a facilitator for the Bali regional program, she is excited to share with you some of her favorite sites in Bali!

SPAIN GUIDE

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Fernando is a passionate community facilitator and ecovillage enthusiast, with years of experience in the Iberian Ecovillage Network (RIE) and in regenerative projects across Europe. With a background in architecture, group facilitation, and community living, he has managed colivings, coordinated Erasmus+ youth exchanges, and created spaces where people feel at home and connected.

He lived for a period at El Molino de Guadalmesí, a community close to his heart where he still returns often to spend time, host, and facilitate projects. Deeply committed to sustainability, permaculture, and regenerative cultures, Fernando brings together his love for nature, food, and human connection to craft transformative experiences.  He believes in the power of community to inspire personal and collective change, and he is excited to guide participants through Spain’s vibrant ecovillage landscape.

His intention for this journey is to not only discover inspiring projects, but also to co-create a strong group spirit, share meaningful conversations, and have fun together, experiencing first-hand what it’s like to live in community.

ITALY GUIDE

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Safir brings over a decade of immersive community living to the Italy Ecovillage Tour, with a heartfelt passion for group facilitation and creating joyful, harmonious ways of being together in alignment with nature. His work draws from a wide spectrum of practices, including Permaculture, Sociocracy, Consensus, Dragon Dreaming, CLIPS, Social Permaculture, Open Space, World Café, Word Circle, Inner Transition, and Nonviolent Communication.

He has lived and learned within vibrant ecovillages and projects full of life, guided by master facilitators and fellow travelers on the path of community. Since 2012, Safir has been an active member of the Italian Ecovillage Network, where he once served as co-president and now focuses on community relations and organizational development.

His commitment extends globally through his involvement with the Global Ecovillage Network, where he co-facilitates empathic listening spaces at international gatherings. He is also a collaborator with the widespread community of Piumani, dedicated to shared values and mutual support.

Today, Safir works as a facilitator and trainer with both well-established and emerging community groups across Italy. With more than 25 years of exploration in the arts of inner transformation, he brings a depth of insight into body, mind, emotion, and energy—supporting meaningful connection, self-discovery, and collective growth.

ITALY GUIDE

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Giovanni brings a rich blend of experience in group facilitation, holistic healing, and conscious living to the Italy Ecovillage Tour. He has led Cerchi di Uomini (Men’s Circles), fostering shared leadership and empowering individuals to recognize their inner strength—a practice that continues to shape his approach to group dynamics.

A dedicated practitioner and teacher of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication and its couples-focused adaptation, IMAGO, Giovanni helps others cultivate deeper empathy and connection in their relationships. He is also passionate about Sociocracy and the dynamics of intentional communities, offering valuable tools for collaborative and effective group governance.

Giovanni’s background in holistic health includes training as a Reiki operator, BARS Access Consciousness practitioner, and Ayurvedic massage therapist. He has practiced Transcendental Meditation for over 14 years and shares a variety of meditative techniques, supporting individuals in discovering the practice that best suits them.

Since 2024, Giovanni has served as an Environmental Hiking Guide, integrating his love for nature with personal growth by leading transformative outdoor experiences that connect people with the land—and themselves.

SPAIN GUIDE

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After traveling the world as a digital nomad for 10 years, Rosanna became increasingly interested in intentional communities. Today, she spends much of the year living in and contributing to communities, primarily at Tamera and Traditional Dream Factory in Portugal, as well as in São Luís, a transition town.

Rosanna feels a strong connection with nature and is exploring what it means to become a guardian of the places we inhabit. She is particularly interested in systems change and the potential for regional networks to create new, regenerative ways of living that can offer meaningful alternatives to mainstream systems.

Her training includes intensive courses in Community Building, Permaculture, Conflict Resolution, Dragon Dreaming, Post-Capitalist Futures, and Ecovillage Design. But some of her greatest learning has come from living within communities, collaborating with them, and experiencing their realities firsthand.

Alongside volunteering, contributing to communities, and guiding tours, Rosanna works as an online community manager.

She approaches each tour with the same curiosity as the participants, knowing that every community offers something new to discover. She is excited to learn, explore, and share the journey with the group.

SPAIN GUIDE

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Karima’s path has long been connected to people, nature, creativity, and alternative ways of living. Over the years, she has lived in and collaborated with ecovillages, spiritual communities, and urban collectives in different countries, learning from the people and projects creating new ways of living together.

Alongside guiding, Karima is an Eco-Art Therapist and Qi Gong facilitator and has spent the past several years facilitating community and psychosocial projects with teens and adults in diverse international contexts.

These experiences shape the way she guides…with curiosity, openness, and attention to the human side of community life. Her approach explores not only what a community has created, but how people relate, collaborate, create, and find belonging within it.

For Karima, an ecovillage tour is an opportunity to meet the people behind each community, listen to their stories, ask meaningful questions, and discover what might resonate with each participant’s own path.

She believes every community has countless ways to teach, innovate, and inspire, and is delighted to explore them alongside the group.

NEW ZEALAND GUIDE

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Robina is an international community development facilitator, permaculture educator, organic food grower, pioneer resident of the 42-year-old Tui Community & Trust, and founder of The Institute of Earthcare Education Aotearoa (New Zealand) and SEED (South Africa & Brazil). She currently serves on the GENOA (Global Ecovillage Network Oceania & Asia) Council. Robina's work encompasses "midwifing" new initiatives, mentoring emerging ecovillages, supporting the social renewal of existing communities, facilitating long-term conflict resolution, and strengthening community culture within organizations. Along the way, she has produced community facilitation manuals, localizing food documentaries, and participatory process guides for collective action.

One of Robina's greatest passions is introducing people to inspiring on-the-ground projects and habitats that she sees as models for a sustainable future. Her favorite way of doing this is through crafting and guiding immersive educational tours that combine meaningful learning with time in nature. She has organized regional and national permaculture tours throughout New Zealand and has incorporated site visits and community immersions into every one of the more than 30 full permaculture courses she has taught.

Robina is excited to share some of the finest residential communities and ecovillages in her home region with participants on the New Zealand Ecovillage Tour. Every community on the itinerary has been selected through her decades of personal relationships and connections, offering a trusted door-opening into communities that are often private and rarely experienced by visitors.

NEW ZEALAND GUIDE

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Charley will be serving as both the bus driver and occasional cook for our 2027 New Zealand Ecovillage Tour, helping create a smooth, welcoming, and enjoyable experience throughout the journey. He previously served as a bus driver for Earthcare's Permaculture Tours and brings a wealth of practical experience in sustainable living, community development, and regenerative systems.

A resident of Tui Community and Trustee of the Tui Spiritual & Educational Trust, Charley is also a permaculture consultant and educator with Earthcare Education Aotearoa. He currently coordinates land and building projects at Tui and has developed extensive hands-on skills through decades of community living, including 30 years in a rural community in the Azores Islands of Portugal and 10 years sailing on his self-built yacht.

Charley has visited numerous intentional communities throughout New Zealand and Australia and brings a deep understanding of both the practical and social aspects of community life. Drawing on his background in psychotherapy, Nonviolent Communication (NVC), restorative justice, and sociocracy, he is skilled at supporting healthy group dynamics and fostering cooperation, connection, and resilience within communities. Charley is committed to the creation and stewardship of intentional community as a pathway to living in conscious relationship with all life, where the flourishing of each supports the wellbeing of the whole.

COSTA RICA GUIDE

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Paola Salamanca, a proud "tica," was born and raised in a vibrant city in Costa Rica. Her passion for nature, freedom, and adventure inspired her to follow her heart and relocate to the mountains of the South Pacific region. There, she deepened her connection with the healing energy found in the lush jungle, flowing rivers, and powerful sea, embracing a more harmonious and conscious way of living. Driven by her desire to explore and share her love for this beautiful land, she seeks to witness the wonders of nature and honor it in order to create and hold space for more conscious, joyful and transformative experiences, through movement, yoga, breath, love and connection.

COSTA RICA GUIDE

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Jonathan was born and raised in San Jose, Costa Rica. He is currently deepening his expertise in holistic, regenerative farming and natural building techniques, along with permaculture design, to contribute to the healing of Mother Earth and support human beings in reaching higher levels of consciousness.

After leaving his hometown of San Jose, he spent many years in tourism and hospitality, initially working as a property manager and concierge in Manuel Antonio on the Pacific coast. He later managed a small cabina-style hotel in Playa Chiquita on the Caribbean coast. During a period of personal growth, Jonathan discovered his passion for the natural world and became drawn to permaculture. Following this curiosity, he began connecting with various farms and communities around the country. He lived at Finca Fruition, where he gained firsthand experience in community living and learned about land stewardship and people care.

Jonathan continuously seeks opportunities to collaborate with like-minded people and places where his skills can serve a greater purpose. He is dedicated to building strong relationships and committed to ongoing self-improvement.

NORTH CAROLINA GUIDE

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These days Lucas grows community in a diversity of ways out at Common Ground Ecovillage (Eno River watershed, North Carolina). He helps lead up the CSA business based on the land, Full Table CSA, feeding over 80 households each week, year round, with some of the best veggies around. He makes decisions within the community’s sociocratic governance structure, cooks farm to table meals for big groups, sorts the compost, sings to trees, organizes educational events via Many Turtles Learning Collective, and tends the fire at wheel of the year gatherings.

He apprenticed at Rancho Mastatal (Costa Rica) in 2022 for a year of experiential learning and immersion in permaculture, natural building, agroforestry, and intentional community living. The profound experience of personal vitality, healthy community, and connection to nature gave him a visceral memory seed that he carries forward into his participation with Common Ground Ecovillage and all other endeavors.

Lucas believes the current polycrisis is an initiation moment for humans as a species. Pathfinding regenerative futures is his ongoing life’s work. Some of his other current devotions include bringing back uplifting camaraderie for all on the sandlot ballfield with the Eno River Possums, supporting important weather ritual work at Stone Mountain in Georgia, and caring for a nourishing home space with his wife Kara.

PACIFIC NORTHWEST GUIDE

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Through Ecovillage Tours, Sarah brings people into intentional communities built around shared resources, regenerative systems, and human-scale living. Real places where visitors can see what's possible when housing and daily life are designed around connection instead of isolation. Places she’s built relationships with during her time as a resident of the PNW. 

As a holistic nature connection guide, she helps people slow down and rebuild their relationship with the land itself so they can remember that we're not separate from the ecosystems we live within, but part of them. She’s learned this as a student of herbalism over the past decade, studying plants and ecosystems across the United States. 

Her own path started with homeownership over a decade ago, an experience that showed her how deeply our living arrangements shape our sense of stability and wellbeing, especially over generations. That question “How should we live for a sustainable future?” is what led her to become a regenerative-focused real estate agent supporting people on their own path to happy, healthy living. She believes how we live on land and with each other can be a source of healing, not just habit. This tour is an invitation to experience that firsthand.

BRITISH COLUMBIA GUIDE

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Daria Zovi is a Salt Spring Island-based organic farmer, educator, and vocal champion of community-supported agriculture (CSA). Born in Italy, she studied agriculture and environmental science in Europe before earning a BSc in Agriculture from the University of British Columbia in 1997. For over two decades, Daria has been a licensed organic farm and processor inspector throughout British Columbia.

Daria owns and operates Quarry Farm on Salt Spring Island, where she runs a popular 35-member CSA and specialty plant nursery under the Chorus Frog Farm label. Drawing inspiration from the cooperative models in her native Italy, she spearheaded the transition of her sole proprietorship into the Chorus Frog Organic Gardens Cooperative. Deeply committed to the next generation of growers, she has also been instrumental in developing local initiatives like the Neighbourhood Farmer Training program.

Beyond her hands-on farming, Daria is a deeply engaged advocate for regional food security and ecological resilience. She has served as secretary and the Island Natural Growers representative for the Salt Spring Agricultural Alliance and as a director on the board of the Salt Spring Farmland Trust, while also sharing her expertise on topics like soil health and cover cropping at local workshops. A steadfast believer in the social value of farming, Daria frequently emphasizes the philosophical choice consumers make when they buy locally, focusing on relationship-building with both the land and the community.

BRITISH COLUMBIA GUIDE

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Originally from Finland, Anna grew up in the Vancouver area and has lived in many of the towns we will be traveling to including Horseshoe Bay, the Comox Valley and Salt Spring where she has been living for over 20 yrs.  Her M.Ed. in Counseling led to work with at risk youth as well as a specialization in working with people struggling with Eating Disorders.  Group facilitation and leadership were a key part of these roles.  She has also been a business owner, and worked for 15 years in hospitality on Salt Spring Island. 

Anna has travelled extensively in Europe, Mexico, Southeast Asia, and most recently completed a cross country driving tour to the easternmost point of Canada and back to the West Coast.  Her participation in eco-communities comes largely through her daughter’s schools, including 7 years at the Salt Spring Centre School, and 3.5 years at the Green School in Bali.

Anna has a few places she’d still love to visit on the planet, including New Zealand, the Azores, Raja Ampat, and Australia, to name a few, but she’ll only get there if she can tear herself away from the pickleball court.

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