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     The Night Orchard is a small social enterprise run by three families of five nationalities based in a Small rural village in Ireland. Taking inspiration from our individual countries best practices, we aim to become a model enterprise for rural regeneration based on local environmental responsibility, the development of economic resilience models and the empowerment of young people through non-formal learning. We operate as a workers cooperative in a family environment, practicing and promoting a homesteading and ecocentric lifestyle and believe in a whole systems approach to work and live.

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Our organisation came into existence as a direct response to the climate emergency, unsustainable food systems and a sense that we need to empower our local community to become agents of change. We take a very practical approach to these matters and want to lead by example. As individuals our staff are passionate about being self-sufficient but after experimenting with this philosophy we realised that in order to achieve our goals we have to expand our capacity and rather work towards community resilience. 

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