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PROPHETS AND LOCAL ECO-COMMUNITIES 293 the working title Wayout was pre-published online within a short period of time (Takacs-Sdnta et al. 2012), but as the years passed, we realized that despite all efforts, such an extensive book can hardly be completed with volunteers alone within a reasonable period of time. In the meantime, a publisher offered to publish another book at short notice. We seized the chance and decided to collect a small group of case studies of good practices based primarily on our field research. In parallel, I undertook to write a book of the theoretical foundations of the Microcommunity Program and the results of our community research. Both books came out in 2017 (Takäcs-Sänta 2017; Takäcs-Sänta et al. 2017), which marks the beginning of the second, far more extroverted period of the Microcommunity Program. We felt that we had already achieved something, at least as much as was enough for a good start — not only did we have the two books behind us, but an eco-community had been established upon our inspiration, and we were already supporting a few others. We began advertising our intention to help any local groups intent on becoming ecological communities.* By spring 2018, we had been collaborating with four of five such communities. We thought the time had come to connect these initiatives with one other and began to weave the large nationwide network we had hoped for. The New Koma Network We invited the most important people of the communities to a meeting on 22 August 2018. By the end of the high-spirited and extremely fertile discussions, we had established the network of participating initiatives and named it New Koma Network. The “komaship” was an institution in the traditional peasant communities of the Pannonian Basin which strengthened the coherence of the community beyond the ties of kinship. The members of a local eco-community are one another’s komas and quasi “komaship” may evolve between communities as well. The adjective “new” is meant to indicate that instead of reveries on the past, we deem it important to revive the traditional institution in a way that is adapted to the contemporary situation. The aim is, on the one hand, to facilitate mutual help among the initiatives via the Network and to assure them that they are not alone. The other aim is that we, those involved in the Micro-community Program, should support them effectively with our knowledge, experience and encouraging words. We also decided we would meet in person every half year, and in the interim time we would correspond (or consult personally with representatives of occasional initiatives). In addition, in recent years we (particularly myself) have popularized the Microcommunity Program’s main ideas in more public events, radio programs, podcasts, printed interviews and articles than previously, often in the mainstream media. These can be viewed on the page, www. kiskozossegek.hu, under the News heading. In addition, we published a manifesto for the local eco-communities on our own channels in summer 2021, which has reached a large number of people.
