For some time New Utopia has dabbled in the business of building brands and only recently found it’s passion to create communities during our most recent project, Hona Wellness, in Dominical, Costa Rica. Hona organically became a community hub for the local ex-pat community in the greater area. We’ve hosted numerous events including sound baths, ecstatic dance and cacao ceremonies. We had charity concerts, farm to table dinners and numerous different workshops in wellness all creating an atmosphere of like minded people coming together and connecting. The results were more than we could have imagined and it spoke volumes to how important it is to provide a space for the community to gather and grow together.
From this launch pad New Utopia is now involved with multiple sustainable and regenerative community projects around the globe with Om Sat Community in Costa Rica and the Conscious Gems project with locations in France, Sweden and Sri Lanka. We have recently partnered up with a tech development firm, EntermediaDB, to build a community platform linking projects and people worldwide. This platform, Open Institute, is currently in the beta test mode but is quickly becoming a powerful tool to help community centered projects organize and find resources in collaborators and funding. Recently we have come on board with Entermedia as their in house marketing team and community manager to help grow their community of clients, partners and developers.
We never thought we would be in the tech sector but this new direction is exciting for our team. As the world changes our communities in which we are individually a part of are becoming as or more important than money in the bank. During this time of COVID the economy has screeched to a halt and it’s out online and local communities that have provided for us whether it be comfort, resources, or information. It’s what we call social capital and it's a core value of our organization. In each of these projects we are working on from the tech to the land we are exploring the gift economies and time banks. EntermediaDB for over a year has billed and paid their developers and now their marketing team with a points system. We are working to incorporate this into the online platform to create a cashless trade economy for use in the individual communities and projects.
We are excited to be on the cutting edge of the future of online and on the ground communities. At no time ever in history have we seen the importance of this social capital than now. If you would like to learn more about our platform or get involved with your project please visit www.openinstitute.org.