The Grace Foundation
The Grace Foundation raises funds and offers a way for people with resources – meaning money, knowledge and influence – to invest in the Healing Biotopes Plan. Based in Tamera, Switzerland and the US and rooted in strong ethical principles, the Foundation supports projects which help create Healing Biotopes, models for regenerative autonomy, and education in Tamera and the Global Campus.
“We believe that humanizing money is about putting it in service of humanity’s evolution. We believe that the alienation of the human family from its natural sources and the illusion of monetary value are intimately connected. Returning back to these natural sources – like earth, water, community, trust, home – means to restore our natural, inherent sense of life’s sacredness and a compassionate care for it. This process is at the core of today’s economic revolution. Our question is how money can assist this process.”
Vision
Walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in 2005, Sabine Lichtenfels and Benjamin von Mendelssohn had a vision to create a global foundation to redirect money into planetary models for a nonviolent society. Inspired by this, our co-founders Sabine Lichtenfels and Rainer Ehrenpreis set up The Grace Foundation in 2007. Currently directed by Benjamin von Mendelssohn, the Foundation helps to create Terra Nova by supporting a global network of Healing Biotopes to emerge on this planet. Investing in Healing Biotopes is a way to “humanize” money, as they develop alternative economies outside the constraints of interest, debt and exploitation, based on decentralized autonomy and regenerative design. The Grace Foundation is currently based in three locations:
- headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland
- a branch office in Tamera, Portugal
- The Grace Foundation America in Sonoma, California.
Values
The Grace Foundation supports emerging Healing Biotopes and projects that have the potential to develop into them, contributing to an emerging humane planetary culture. Beyond that, it provides a platform for people to support the manifestation of the Healing Biotopes Plan. A key focus is building long-term trust-based relationships and reciprocity with the grantees, donors and allies. The Grace Foundation supports projects that:
- Work towards decentralized regional self-sufficiency in water, food and energy, thus providing the complicity-free material base for a new culture.
- Give equal attention to inner and outer peacework.
- Accept and address love and sexuality as aspects of the dominant culture which are in particular need of healing. These issues must be released from the domain of privacy and brought into public discourse for the healing and learning of all.
- Support a spiritual practice which places the sacredness of life at its center.
- Create an economy based on reciprocity, communal sharing and giving – one in which economy and ecology are restored to their right relationship, with economy serving ecology.
Funding and Strategy
Specifically, there are three main categories for funding:
- creating the Healing Biotopes meme
- practical models for regenerative design and decentralized autonomy
- education, training and media work.
Since 2007, The Grace Foundation Switzerland has invested 1.6 million CHF (approx. 1.47 million euros). The Grace Foundation America has invested $157,000 (approx. 140,000 euros) since 2014.
Examples of Past Investments:
- Supporting various Grace Pilgrimages (235,700 CHF / approx. 217,000 euros, since 2007)
- Supporting the work of the Global Campus for its gatherings and specifically the base stations in Brazil, Colombia and Kenya (971,948 CHF / approx. 896,000 euros, since 2002)
- Improving Tamera’s guest area and hosting capacity ($40,000 / approx. 35,600 euros, 2016)
- Helping global activists to participate in a think tank on the Healing Biotopes Plan in Tamera ($22,000 / approx. 20,000 euros, 2016)
Support
If you want to speak with us about how you can help contribute financially to the Healing Biotopes Plan, please contact us at info (at) the-grace-foundation (dot) org.