Interview with Hannah and Julia Eckert, founders of it’s thyme
it’s thyme is a regenerative initiative founded by twin sisters Hannah and Julia Eckert, who turned their passion for sustainability into a movement to create Hope Hubs—community and education centers dedicated to regeneration and ecological harmony. Drawing on their backgrounds in international development and leadership for sustainability, the sisters are working to restore ecosystems, foster community resilience, and offer transformative experiences through their Hope Hubs, with their first one underway in Galicia, Spain.
How did the idea for it’s thyme come about, and what inspired you to embark on this journey together?
After finishing our Masterstudies in International Development (Hannah in Grenoble, France) and Leadership for Sustainability (Julia in Malmö, Sweden), we both felt terribly worried about the state of the world and confused about our role in it and our next steps. We were supposed to kick-off our careers, yet we felt like we needed to change our lifestyles drastically in order to escape the extractive mechanisms of society. Instead we had a longing to contribute to regenerating our ecosystems and communities and become more happy and hopeful ourselves!
We decided to look for alternative career and life options and took one year off from “normality”, taking a 1 year permaculture course on a small farm in the middle of Germany and learning about healthy ecosystems and regenerative principles! We fell in love with life again: with the beautiful nature, with ourselves and the potential of our future. We saw a world where our systems and communities were back on track mimicking nature: diverse, cyclical and self-organizing towards increasing resilience, beauty and productivity. We understood that the connection to nature as well as a culture of deep trust and strong relationships are essential to our sense of belonging and our authentic self-expression. This year was so energizing and we developed such a strong vision and longing for a different future, that we both knew: we cannot go back losing this feeling! So that’s when we decided to found it’s thyme as a promise to ourselves to try everything we can to create new structures so that one day we will reach this different future for us and for everyone who wants! We developed the Hope Hub concept as a means to get there. We envisioned our Hope Hubs to be accessible community and education centers for regeneration, where sustainable solutions in architecture, construction, food production, land ownership and business models and practices are showcased and a culture of care, trust and reciprocity is cultivated. This would not only allow people to experience a more nature-aligned and relational lifestyle and become healthier again but also open up their imagination of what's possible and inspire them to act. Our Hope Hubs could become regional innovation hotspots and regenerative accelerators for all involved - we thought the concept in theory was amazing, haha!
What is so incredible to us is that 2 years after leaving the farm, we started co-creating the first Hope Hub by restoring a beautiful abandoned village in Galicia, Spain with the local owner Manolo who had the vision of restoring the village in a regenerative way! It felt like a destined match! We have connected to core partners to bring our concept to life and let us tell you: the Hope Hub will be already as amazing as we thought! The core of the village is a huge stone ruin in the center, which we are transforming into the community house and co-living space. Next to that, food forests, permaculture gardens, a café, an event and workshop space, camping platforms and wooden tiny houses, sauna, natural ponds and much more are in the planning!
The vision is to learn from the process of building up this Hub and then empower many more leaders to co-create globally connected but locally rooted Hope Hubs in the world through a learning platform and community consulting. Additionally it’s thyme offers regenerative leadership retreats and workshops for all who seek to create positive change in their own lives and ecosystems.What are the main challenges you've encountered along the way, and what advice would you give to someone who is just starting to organize coliving experiences?
As twin sisters, how do you feel your unique bond has contributed to the success of it’s thyme?
We know each other inside out, shared beds, birthdays, best friends, hardships and adventures since the beginning of our lives, still die laughing together, and are the biggest fans and cheerleaders for each other! We always felt deeply understood by the other and a sense of belonging in that.
We know that we could have never done the first two years after leaving the farm strongly committed to closing the gap between our dream and reality without the support of each other!! We told each other thousands of times that we are not crazy, to trust our gut feeling and to keep going, shared our income as educational freelancers with each other when times got tough for one of us, confronted family and friends reactions about our new longings and ideas together and laughed about the absurdity of our situation and shed tears of greatest exhaustion points and joy on our journey.
The fact that we had someone by our side who we trust 100 % and felt ready to tackle whatever challenge life threw at us literally changed everything - because with such a community everything becomes possible - and that’s what we want to offer to others as well! A safe and providing space to be yourself, dream as big as you can for a more beautiful world and life and then just freaking go for it!
Can you tell us about your first encounter with Manolo and how your collaboration began?
We met Manolo through our Galician mentor and mutual friend Alba, who we know from the EU-funded entrepreneurial Fellowship program THE BREAK in Spain. She sensed we would get along well and organized a visit for us. Alba introduced us and stayed with us for one day while we ended up staying for 2 and a half months with him: getting to know each other, the land, sharing our visions and bad jokes in Spanish. The first time we met him, it was super rainy, cold and he was busy working on renovating the first stonehouse, his home now, of the village with two friends. We didn’t talk much but all had a very clear feeling and knew from the very beginning that this is a special match. We share the love for our Earth and the vision of inspiring others to take care of her. After 2.5 months, we went back home to organize everything to move to Spain and came back to start the adventure of building our first Hope Hub and new home a few weeks later. It’s been 1 year and 2 months now since then.
What have been some of the most significant challenges you've faced while building it’s thyme, and how did you overcome them?
What was difficult was navigating the immense stress and overwhelmness as beginning freelancers who work on a big vision and don’t have regular incomes. Negative stress makes it harder for nervous systems to calm down and regulate. However, that is exactly what we needed to go through emotional healing processes that happen when you’re deciding to radically choose a more fulfilling lifestyle for yourself. We developed a new discipline and efficiency in our routines and work, which carved out more time for silence and self-care. We committed to practices that helped us relax and heal such as meditation, body- and earth based practices and surrendered into the emotional support of each other.
We already mentioned the tricky financial situation, especially in the beginning. We tackled that by minimizing our costs, sharing income and resources with each other and luckily being supported by friends and family quite quickly - by bringing us along on vacations (thanks mom!), inviting us for meals and dinners (thanks Julius!) or providing us with the still nice clothes that they would not wear anymore (thanks sisters!) - all things that saved even more costs and provided us with some luxuries during a very very frugal lifestyle. We know that we enjoyed privileges and know that without them it would have been much more difficult! We applied for several fundings but did not receive any until being here in Galicia.
How has the Living Systems Thinking approach influenced your work and the development of the Hope Hub concept?
Living Systems Thinking Approach is the core of it’s thyme. Living Systems is a fancy word for nature. It’s the intelligence and laws of nature put together as principles and patterns so that they become more tangible and applicable for us. Knowing of living systems and sensing the intelligence of nature more and more has guided all of our actions since the farm and brought us to the point that our lives and careers are in much stronger alignment with our inner and outer nature.
When we think in living systems, which means that we try to think like nature, and do embodiment practices, this new form of thinking including new habits and capacities become our new norm. We developed the concept of the Hope Hubs to do exactly that for all of us: provide the space for us to learn from nature how to apply and embody the living systems way of thinking - so that we can co-create new norms together that are in alignment with natural laws and boundaries. And yes, the development of the Hope Hub concept was directly influenced by our own process of learning and embodying a living systems way of thinking!
What does the Hope Hub Network aim to achieve, and how do you envision its growth over the next few years?
We envision many different independent Hope Hubs everywhere around the world successfully managed and held by local leaders and a self-organizing community, forming a global living network of people who are whole-heartly committed to co-create a more joyful, just and sustainable world showcasing regenerative solutions and systems. This network aims to offer, share and exchange regenerative knowledge, services and products, run educational programs, research or events together and form an entity that brings its research and demands into policy-making spheres.
We envision the network’s growth organically through connecting with people who want to establish or join a Hope Hub as well. Every Hope Hub’s journey will look different and take their unique time and conditions to thrive. it’s thyme aims to support the network through community building, educational resources, consulting and branding!
In what ways do you believe the regenerative principles and practices you promote can positively impact individuals, communities, and the environment?
Regenerative principles, if correctly practiced and embodied, transform extractive cultures that are resource-draining into cultures of care that store and build up resources such as soil, clean water, renewable energies, love, trust, compassion and more. Therefore everyone who is committed to practicing regenerative principles inside and outside of themselves will positively impact themselves and their environment.
Looking to the future, what are some of the long-term goals and aspirations you have for it’s thyme, and how do you plan to achieve them?
We want it’s thyme to be the biggest, most diverse and joyful network working towards a regenerative world with millions of people being either directly involved or somehow connected to or influenced by the Hope Hubs! We want to see thousands of independent Hope Hub spaces dedicated to regenerative practices, products and people, inspiring even more people through joyful offers such as summer camps, youth exchanges, team retreats, sport and cultural events, school and uni field trips and more, accelerating diverse regenerative cultures and structures.
We also aim to change the narrative about profitability of regenerative businesses and practices and prove that they provide communities not only with sufficient financial resources but also social and environmental profit!
We plan to continue developing a thriving first Hope Hub, collect all the learnings and transform them into resources for the learning platform and consulting. As each Hope Hub will be run independently by the local leaders and communities, it’s thyme doesn’t do the organization on each site but more so helping to set up the structures and leadership skills for them to run smoothly and then only engaging in networking, branding and potentially educational and further consultancy activities with them. It’s thyme aims to empower the Hope Hub communities to bundle all the research and learnings happening at the Hubs and integrate it into the learning platform, which then provides data for possible policy-making influences and content for our storytelling that aims at spreading a positive and joyful narrative about sustainability and regeneration.
How has being online (with your website, newsletter and social media) helped you spread the voice around this project with a wider community?
Being online has helped us to attract value-aligned people, who have become part of the closer community, donors, consultants or simply supportive peers and cheerleaders, who feel connected to our bigger vision and cause. 🙂 Having invested in our online appearance helped us to get some resonance from a wider community, make aligned connections and get to know and collaborate with people and projects from different parts of the world. Sometimes we are so surprised how people hear about us. You realize that our genuine efforts to share authentically our story and our work pays off. How? In a sense that words can travel quickly around the world and touch and inspire people and to follow, support and collaborate. For example, through our crowdfunding campaign in the beginning, we reached a lot of new people and collected around 20.000 €, from which 30% were people who just got to know us then. How cool is that! We were happy that as a very young organization we apparently developed a lot of trust already through our online appearance and thus were gifted trust and support from many!
For individuals or organizations interested in collaborating with AGAIA and joining your mission, what opportunities are available to get involved and support your work?
In general, if you feel connected to our vision, reach out and we will find the right collaboration and opportunity for you! Furthermore, we listed some more concrete opportunities.
Financially:
Become a donor for the first Hope Hub to help accelerate the building
Consider becoming an investor in the real-estate side of the first Hope Hub
Book us for regenerative leadership retreats or as speakers
Collaboration with the first Hope Hub in Galicia, Spain:
Are you a University or research institution and want to scientifically accompany this project or parts of it? Or offer your students field trips, internship or thesis opportunities with us?
Are you a construction organization that is specialized in bioconstruction or natural building and would like to support the transformation of the village and the stone houses?
Are you an artist or regenerative practitioner who wants to offer their own services and workshops at our Hope Hub or connect their services to ours?
Other:
Subscribe to our Newsletter on our website
Volunteer with us at the Hope Hub or at it’s thyme. We are looking for:
1. Lawyers specialized in communal land ownership in Spain
2. Graphic designers and website developers
3. Carpenters
4. Filmmaker
If you found something interesting and are eager to collaborate with or support us, please send us an e-mail at hey@itsthyme.org
