Raising awareness of the global challenges societies face today - global warming, environmental deprivation, economic failure, and political collapses - has a great impact on the development of alternative solutions to what mainstream organisations propose. The solutions, as vast research indicates, may also come from Community-Led Initiatives (CLIs) and its formed networks. The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) envisions a world of empowered citizens and communities, designing and implementing pathways to a regenerative future while building bridges of hope and international solidarity. GEN Europe applies a five dimension map to a regenerative world, it constitutes economy, culture, social, ecology, and integral design being the connector of them all. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are vastly adopted by European Union (EU) States through its policies and funding lines. There is a link between what EU’s directions for SDGs and what ecovillages practice in their daily activities. Therefore, GEN Europe, through its national and local members, are constantly granted EU-level funding lines, such as Erasmus +. These funding lines are turned into educational projects teaching what ecovillages develop in diverse localities, which are materialized through platforms, courses, incubator programs and methodologies. This paper examines how GEN Europe mobilizes resources through EU funded projects to promote and diffuse its regenerative innovations to CLIs spread throughout Europe. This paper also critically reflects on the paradox between the projectification of GEN Europe’s workforce, derived from the constant participation in EU-level grants, and the network’s aspirations to generate systemic change in society. This paper uses data collected through complementary research methods, which are participatory action in an Erasmus + project along with GEN Europe and other CLI networks, participant observation, in-depth interviews, and document analysis. This research is developed through triangulation perspective, using a theoretical framework, inspired by grounded theory method, and the use of mixed methodological approaches in qualitative research (Charmaz, 2012; Flick, 2014; Flick & Flick, 2011). The main conceptual frameworks used to analyze this work is the Grassroots Innovation Movements developed by Smith et al., (2017). This study is also informed by the four images of projectification developed by Jacobsson & Jałocha, (2021) The implications of this study point to the importance of the knowledge created and transmitted through EU-funded projects. It also examines the dangers that arise from having a workforce based on short period grants, such as the possible misalignment of the core goals of a CLI network.

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Community-Led Initiatives,Global Ecovillage Network,projectification,regenerative innovations.

• Sociology - Social Sciences
• Political Science - Social Sciences