Community De Hobbitstee, in the Netherlands, was founded in 1969, so it already has existed for 40 years. The desires to change society, to stimulate personal growth, to get rid of bourgeois mentality were important aims for the initiators in the late 1960s. Times change, just as people do, and their social environment changes.

But the primal ideas of seeking love, harmony, and simplicity are still the drives, the wells from which present inhabitants draw their energy to form and re-form daily community life and our relation toward society. Besides the promotion of organic/biological agriculture and the handicrafts candle factory, issues we embrace are nonviolent conflict resolution, nonviolent communication, and the receiving of guests in various forms. A small-scale camping facility for nature-loving people is a new development, also providing some income. De Hobbitstee is small, and more and more it may become a kind of alternative-activity center, seeking and trying out new ways of personal and spiritual growth and social/political engagement.

That is what gives us a kind of right to exist. We want to grow in the coming years from 8 to 12 adults (plus children). We want to direct our energy, as a core group, toward the topics we find important. That also means the developing of plans for a new sustainable community building! Together with short- or long-term guests, therapy groups, and environmental and peace organizations, we'll resist the worldwide devastating religion of the so-called free market.

The right to existence, that's what binds all groups and communities working for positive social change on the eve of the twenty-first century.