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A global network of ECO-communities

Not an escape.
A beginning.

Honeydew is a home for those who seek to build a future together – to live and work with purpose and dignity. Communal life, grounded in ecology, open to the world.
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Our mission

Honeydew is a collaborative initiative to build a sustainable future, emphasising collective resilience and communal creativity.

We seek to blend the best of modernity with tradition: cosmopolitan in culture, local in nature. Our intergenerational communities provide a space for sharing, creativity, and mutual care.

2030

Honeydew 2030 · Vision & Action

Not an escape.
An alternative.

The crises converging around us – ecological, political, social – are not separate problems. They share a common root: the myth that we thrive alone.

Honeydew is a counter-proposal. Not a retreat from the world, but an argument about how to live in it. The alternative to consumerism is not austerity. It is abundance of a different kind: more connection, more authenticity, more meaning, more life.

"You cannot heal alone. You cannot even know yourself alone. We are a communal species - and we find meaning in relation to one another."
Benjamin Ramm, Founder

By 2030, the goal is a global network of communities that prove the model works – financially, culturally, socially. Not a dream. A lived reality.

Read the Honeydew vision

DOCUMENTARY

The vision behind the plan

Documentary

Featuring Benjamin Ramm

The ecovillage network


"For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge · ‘Kubla Khan’

The School of Community Life · Waitlist open

Learn to build the future, together

A three-month residential immersion at Honeydew.
Not lectures, not theory – you join as a full member and learn how a community is actually built, maintained, and evolved by those committed to its creation.

First term

Apr 5 – Jul 5, 2027

Format

12 weeks · residential

Where

Maiolo, Italy

01

Live

Share meals, rhythms, and responsibilities of a full community member – the everyday fabric of life at Honeydew Maiolo.

02

Work

Take real ownership across the land, the kitchen, and the projects that keep an ecovillage running and growing.

03

Learn from Makers

Resident experts teach through what they do. You learn craft, ecology, and governance at their side – never from a slideshow.

Completion earns the Honeydew Passport – entry into the wider global network, with priority access to every Honeydew community worldwide.

For people serious about building a different kind of life: ambitious, mission-driven, and ready to commit to building something real.

The Honeydew farmhouse at Maiolo with solar panels among the hills12 weeks at MaioloHoneydew Maiolo · Italy
The network

One culture of co-creation, rooted in many places.

19

Communities

6

Countries

3

Continents

🇮🇹 Italia

1 community
  • Maiolo, Emilia-Romagna (HQ)

🇧🇷 Brasil

12 communities
  • Itacimirim, Bahia
  • Vale do Capão, Bahia
  • Uruçuca, Bahia
  • Santa Teresa, Espírito Santo
  • Alto Paraíso, Goiás
  • Vila Paraíso, Goiás
  • Colinas do Sul, Goiás
  • São Lourenço, Minas Gerais
  • Paraty Mirim, Rio de Janeiro
  • Teresópolis, Rio de Janeiro
  • Piedade, São Paulo
  • Juquitiba, São Paulo

🇮🇳 India

3 communities
  • Do Gaon, Uttarakhand
  • Nainital, Uttarakhand
  • Waichin Valley, Himachal Pradesh

🌎 & beyond

Colombia · Portugal · Sri Lanka
  • Subachoque, Cundinamarca, Colombia
  • Soure, Coimbra, Portugal
  • Midigama, Ahangama, Sri Lanka
How the network works

Not a franchise. A trust network.

Honeydew is not a single community in Italy. It is a growing network of ecological projects, held together not by a corporate structure but by a shared way of living, a shared membership, and by people who carry the culture wherever they go.
01
Across the network

The Honeycomb

There is no corporate entity behind the network. No licensing fee. No compliance audit. What connects the communities is a shared culture, a common membership system, and the people who have been shaped by Honeydew.

The Passport

How a person who spent three months at Maiolo can arrive at a community in Brazil or Sri Lanka and be recognised, not as a stranger who might be interesting, but as someone who has already proven something.

The Swarm

In nature, a swarm is how a hive that has become too full of life creates a new one. Every Passport holder is a potential swarm. The network grows because the culture is worth carrying.
02
Inside each community
Each new project becomes a node, governed locally and bound by a shared creed.
  • Solidarity
  • Simplicity
  • Hospitality
  • Ecological stewardship
  • Non-violence

Communal abundance

Fresh food grown on site, clean air, pure water, and a star-filled night sky, shared in common, not consumed in isolation.

Collective resilience

A community that absorbs the shocks that isolate the individual: social, ecological, and personal.

Creativity in symphony

A cooperative model that harnesses the talents of all its members, exploring shared states of group flow.
Benjamin Ramm, founder of Honeydew, outdoors at the ecovillageBenjamin Ramm · Founder

In his own words

The flower of community comes from the earth, and at Honeydew, we live a more active, grounded life, avoiding the online culture of silos and slogans. At the core of our outlook is gratitude: for fresh, abundant food; for a cosmopolitan community rooted in local traditions; for the dazzling, star-filled night sky; for clean air and pure water; for low noise and light pollution; for a space to co-create and reimagine our own kind of society.”

- Benjamin Ramm, Founder of Honeydew

Community life · A short film

A Taste of Community Life

FILM · 2024 A Taste of Community Life
Quiet benches under the trees at the Honeydew ecovillage, where guests share the rhythm of community lifeGuest rooms · Maiolo
Visit Maiolo

Come for a week.
Stay for life.

Guest rooms at Honeydew Maiolo are available for short stays, from a night to a month. You share meals with the community, enjoy the beautiful surroundings, take part in optional workshops or group activities, and leave with an appreciation of a life lived together.
Rooms from €45 / night. Enquire for availability.
Enquire about a stay

Support the network

Help us grow the ecovillage network.

Every donation is pooled directly into the shared land, tools, and infrastructure that make communal life possible.

Solar panels at the Honeydew ecovillage in Maiolo, part of the shared infrastructure donations help fund

Solar installation, Maiolo - one of the shared infrastructure projects your donation helps fund.

€Other
donation€20

Every contribution helps cover the land, the tools, and the table.