Last week I helped take a group of 12 Kosovar Albanian environmental activists around Croatia to introduce them to other active NGOs in the region and in particular, show them examples of successful campaigns. We visited several NGOs, all at different levels of development and with different expertise. I was quite proud to see how successful Green Action has become since my trainings with them in the early 1990's. Green Action also runs one of the oldest Green <!-- pagebreak -->Telephone lines in the region.  At the other end of the spectrum was the Brod Ecological Society in Slavonski Brod, made up of a few old men trying to save local species of dogs and cattle. But I was most impressed with the eco-village that is springing up in Velika Gorcica. ZMAG, or the Green Network of Alternative Groups has managed to do everything I wanted to do at my house but could not find the experts to do. The 3 houses that form the community share an organic and permaculture garden, windmill, solar panels for electric and hot water, reed bed filtration system for grey water, and green roofs. Reed bed filtration can be done with reeds, ornamental flowers, or willows in gravel lined ponds. The water from your sink and shower gets filtered through the ponds and it is clean enough to drink afterwards, or at the very least, irrigate with. Green roofs are when you line your roof and put a layer of soil on top, then secure it by seeding the roof with flowers and plants. This makes for very good insulation. They also had a pretty amazing goddess bread oven...