Intentional Communities Desk (ICD)

The ICD is a contact office between intentional communities of all kinds, all over the world. It is essentially a committee of members of different types of kibbutzim, working mainly on a voluntary basis. It meets every two months or so at Efal, the kibbutz seminar centre, near Tel Aviv. The core of its work is correspondence, usually in English or Hebrew. However, you are also invited to write to us in German, French, Spanish, Dutch, or Portuguese. We’ll be able to translate your letter. Though founded in 1976, for the past 31 years the ICD has issued an English-language, biannual journal CALL (Communities At Large Letter), and for the last eleven years a Hebrew version, Kol. It contains articles, newspaper excerpts, opinions, notices, and various information culled from community publications from all over the world. CALL & Kol are papers about communities, for communities, and by communities. The editor is a member of an Israeli urban kibbutz. You can receive CALL free of charge, but a donation will be gratefully received, as will items for publication. We have also set up a website devoted to the various forms of communal living around the world. You’re sure to find something of interest there! As the contents of our website and CALL indicate, the term “commune” in our name is for brevity-not for exclusiveness. It really means all forms of communal living. Though originally geared to the big wide world, the ICD in recent years has become active on the Israeli scene, where there is a growing “movement” of urban communes. It has issued a series of four Hebrew booklets, “Communal Living Around the World.” (Your community may well appear in them!) We are very interested to hear from you, about life in your own community, your ideology, aims, and your problems-if any. Through such mutual contact, we feel we can help one another by sharing our communal experiences. Any comments on our website or on CALL will be very welcome.