The Coconat founding team has always kept impact at the heart of its project. We employ a holistic approach when considering decisions in order to take into account all our stakeholders – our guests, our village of less than 100 people, and our region. This approach has played an integral role in our success in the region, and the flourishing of the region as well.

We are happy to announce that our Municipal partners, the towns of Bad Belzig and Wiesenburg, have been chosen as model projects in the German federal ‘Smart Cities’ program – meaning that up to €6 million of funding has been granted with the aim of developing digital strategies for the city life of the future. Of course this is also applicable for small rural cities.

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We Are A Social Business

Our impact work is done with a sustainable business approach. We rely on grants for research and development, and search for economically sustainable ways to start projects or address needs. We offer services, such as catering and meeting or event space, free or at cost to our neighbours, to lower the threshold for inclusion to this particular community, for whom coworking is still a bit of a foreign concept.

We actively take feedback from all stakeholders as well. We do this by speaking directly with our village mayor and fire-brigade, through forms for our guests, and by presenting at publicly organised events where the general public is welcomed to speak with us directly. And here’s a little secret: in a small village, if someone doesn’t like something that you do, you find out pretty fast.

We can use this feed-back to change how we do things. For example when a guest asks if they can fly a drone, we now are very clear about where that drone can fly, as a neighbor once expressed a concern about one going over his house. We also consider how our neighbors might react to something and if it could be a sensitive topic, we either speak directly with a person or take it up with the mayor before we start.

Many of the core team members have worked professionally on environmental issues, and therefore environmental sustainability is also a core measure when developing new projects. Of course what is amazing is when environmental and economic sustainability go hand in hand.

This is not always easy, as we have experienced with the topic of food. We aim to source most of our food in a locally sourced and organic manner. However, this option is often not economically sustainable for the project, which also aims to have its doors open to people of all socio-economic backgrounds. In these instances, we try to seek alternatives and do the best we can, while still keeping the business alive. If the business doesn’t run, then our impact remains limited as well. These decisions are not made lightly, and we are open about this, and hope environmentally healthy food options can one day be available to every budget.

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Our Purpose: Inviting. Inspiring. Inventing Sustainable Stuff.

After quite an amazing process, we re-identified our purpose. What began as a ‘Space for anyone to be inspired, concentrate, work, and play in the countryside!’, has grown into something much more than we ever could have imagined in 2017, when we opened our doors in our village, Klein Glien.

Inviting. Inspiring. Inventing Sustainable Stuff.

We take these words with us when making our decisions.

For our guests, we are still a place to relax, to get work done, to integrate nature into the everyday working process, and to get inspired for something new. For the village, we are an open space, a meeting point, a host to the yearly village fest, and a space the local fire brigade calls home. For the region, we are a partner and collaborator.

In the short time that we have been in Klein Glien, we have co-founded the non-profit initiatives Smart Village and Netzwerk Zukunftorte (Future Places Network). Within the Smart Village project, we have also become partners of the rural focused think and do tank, Neuland21, with whom we enlisted to write the application for the €6 million ‘Smart Cities’ grant. We see our role as an active stakeholder of new, innovative, and enhancing projects for the region.

Within the Brandenburg region and in Germany, we are indeed pioneers. We built the first coworking space for the region and we are the first workation location in all of Germany. We are also actively testing different models of coliving. Through our initiatives, like Smart Village, we have enabled previously unthought of collaborations between local and Berlin based projects, businesses, and public bodies. The embodiment of this can be seen in the annual Kreativsause event, which hosts a week of workshops open to locals and visitors alike, ranging from nature walks and crafting to digital media and storytelling.

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Developments Since End Of 2019

Since the end of 2019 and during COVID-19, we have developed several impact initiatives, which we wanted to share below as inspiration for other rural impact- driven coliving spaces:

Pizzeria Cocolores - Pizza makes the world go ‘round. Sometimes we really just keep it simple (believe it or not :-)). Pizzeria Cocolores was conceived of one month after having to close our doors because of COVID-19, when our staff went on Kurz-Arbeit (a paid temporary leave in the lock-down period). It is a self- service outdoor restaurant and serves as a way to give work to our staff and to be a point for people to meet again face to face after isolation. The demographics of Coconat visitors since the opening of the Pizzeria has increased exponentially. Have a look at the website of Pizzeria Cocolores which was created as a donation. If you don’t believe in the inspiration of pizza in a region with no pizzeria on offer, here’s an example!

CocoLab: Maker’s Retreat – After completing a feasibility study of creative hand-craftspeople from the region and Berlin, we are in the final planning stages of creating a workshop, which will offer traditional and contemporary tools – think wood-shop meets 3-D printer, with a small-scale craft workspace with sewing, and natural materials space.

Coco-Cabanas: Tiny House Community – These manifestations of the reduction / minimalist mentality, offer the perfect escape for people who would like to make Coconat, at least some of the time, home. Over the years, folks who are looking for a place to house their tiny homes have approached us – and now we will finally be able to offer the opportunity!

Heim@Office: Remote work in the Countryside - Coconat has partnered up again with Neuland 21, to develop remote working in the rural context. The 2 year project just had it’s kick-off in August 2020. So far a series of workshops aimed at free-lancers and remote workers already based in the region, lobbying for remote jobs to be added to the jobs boards hosted by the chamber of commerce, and possible out-reach for trainings for employers as to how to run remotely more efficiently - adding a positive outcome from the Corona home-office days.

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Measuring Our Impact

Coconat is still searching for a cost effective way to measure our impact results, and have only started to brush the surface to do so in any sort of qualitative way. However, using the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a reference point, we see that we align with the following goals:

Goal 1: No Poverty - Economic growth must be inclusive to provide sustainable jobs and promote equality. Our purpose of ‘Inviting’ has a foundational meaning of inclusion.

Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being - Ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages is essential to sustainable development. Sustainability can be considered in the form of promotion of a healthy work-life balance. The inclusion of nature in one’s everyday lifestyle, healthy food, and taking care to not over-work are a key to our method here.

Goal 5: Gender Equality - Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. We lead through example, by supporting local initiatives which support female-run companies and mothers getting back into the work-force.

Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy - Energy is central to nearly every major challenge and opportunity. Coconat is dedicated to improving the existing energy systems in the next phase of building and renovation. We have already developed our sustainable energy concept, using public funding available in Germany to subsidize the cost of professional consultancy.

Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth - Sustainable economic growth will require societies to create the conditions that allow people to have quality jobs. We are promoting new job opportunities through trainings in remote work, both on the employee and employer side of things.

Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities - There needs to be a future in which cities provide opportunities for all, with access to basic services, energy, housing, transportation and more. We have successfully lobbied, with many others, for a bike path, which is currently being built from the town to our village. The Smart Village and Smart Cities initiatives will enhance many aspects of life in the regions already discussed, and could include autonomous public transport, digitised public services (at the moment citizens must travel all over the region depending on the service) and infrastructure development such as fiberglass cables.

Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production - Worldwide consumption and production — a driving force of the global economy — rest on the use of the natural environment and resources in a way that continues to have destructive impacts on the planet. We actively reduce consumption of food by cooking a menu limited to 1 or 2 items for the number of people who are eating. All cleaning products used on-site are ecologically developed. We take care of our temperature controls, have cut out some processes found in the hotel business, for example ironing of sheets, our kitchen fat is extracted by a food-waste energy company, and we compost all of our kitchen waste ourselves.

Goal 13: Climate Action - Climate change is a global challenge that affects everyone, everywhere. A lot of the already-mentioned actions listed directly or indirectly aim to reduce CO2 emissions, and climate change is a leading factor in our decision making processes.

Goal 15: Life on Land - Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss. Coconat has received a grant to finance the planting of heritage fruit trees in the garden. Our overall garden concept emphasises the planting of native flowers and letting the grassland grow for the wild bees and butterflies.

Goal 17: Partnerships - Revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development. Coconat is currently co-founding a global network of impact driven projects working in the rural space. The launch of the network will most likely take place in December 2020, so keep your eyes out for the Rural Shakers online Congress.

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With our purpose firmly in place, we approach the future with un-ending enthusiasm. We look forward to what we will create with our community that expands from our neighbors to interested folks around the world. Join us in:

Inviting. Inspiring. Inventing Sustainable Stuff!

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