Eco-Village
智然度 "Zhì Rán Dù" or "3-Dom" is the first threefold community in China.
Founded in 2024 in Guizhou, it has initiatives planned in
education, agriculture, science, business, art therapy, and more.
Currently, we run a biodynamic farm, children's camps, research projects, and and workshops. In September, we are starting a full-time Initiative School.
We would love your support!
This is a placeholder website.
The full website should be ready in late July 2026.
3-Dom is an eco-village with a vast vision.
We're growing an Initiative School (ages 16-25) and a farm.
Come for a day, a week, a month, or more.
Find your unique way to help the world.
International, two-year social entrepreneurship training in China.
A two-year residential social entrepreneurship training and incubator in Guizhou, China, for 16-25 year-olds
GUIZHOU · CHINA
In September 2026, Zhi Ran Du
(3-Dom) eco-village is launching a full-time social entrepreneurship training / incubator for young people (ages 16-25). It offers an alternative to conventional schooling, cultivating holistic understanding, wellbeing in community, and practical skills. By the end of the program, each student will have designed and founded their own real business that serves the world.
The first year initiates the student into a healthy relationship to life and reality through arts, humanities, science, math, agriculture, and travel. The second year guides the student to channel their insights and capacities from year one into practical prototypes, with the help of modern AI techniques, leading to a functioning enterprise.
To give young people a path to become free, financially independent ethical individuals in the modern world.
The course’s pedagogy intends to cultivate health at all levels of the human being. Not only is the curriculum structured to cultivate life-supporting engagement, but the school environment is also designed to create a genuine, natural community lifestyle. Students will learn to take care of themselves and others, for example, by cooking, cleaning, and farming. Beyond academics, an important part of the educational experience is learning to live in and support a diverse and multifaceted community.
The program takes place in 智然度 "Zhì Rán Dù" (also known as 3-Dom) — an intentional eco-village in rural Guizhou, China building a wholesome foundation for human culture. Founded in 2023, it has a wide-ranging vision for developing ecological, economic, and social initiatives. Students may find the community itself to be a fascinating project with many opportunities. After the program, alumni may choose to run their new enterprises in the entrepreneurship residency on campus, leveraging the holistic community, and even becoming a mentor for future students.
The first year draws on Waldorf and anthroposophical practice, and the purpose is to awaken and strengthen the capacities from which a healthy, self-directing individuality grows.
Each month, the daily art, science, and humanities classes rotate through a curriculum of intensive main lessons. The curriculum is designed to develop thinking, feeling, and willing capacities. The pedagogy emphasizes a living relationship to the subjects.
Here’s a sample of a daily schedule. Please note that real schedules are very variable.
The class will make a number of shorter visits to successful and inspiring Chinese enterprises and organizations.
This year builds on the first year’s insights and clarity and channels them into prototyping practical projects and eventually founding their own business. Many rhythms from the first year are continued, with a shifted focus towards self-direction and guidance towards finding where one’s unique callings can meet the world’s needs. Entrepreneurship classes are led by real, successful entrepreneurs.
The following is a sample schedule.
With increasing independence over the year, students are guided through a step-by-step process, for example:
At the beginning of the year, the group will gather to make agreements of how we wish to live together. In addition to the ones the group decides upon, there are some important basic agreements for all members of the community:
This is a community dedicated to the benefiting of all beings. By joining the community, we are agreeing to strive to step beyond selfish motives and learn to live for the sake of helping the world.
This is not a place to merely gain skills but a place to become a more capable and moral person. We strive to let go of unhelpful habits to grow to our highest potential.
We aspire here to become healthy at all levels of our being, for example, through sleep, eating, movement, and media consumption. We agree not to smoke, drink, or use drugs.
We aspire to treat all beings with kindness and compassion. We agree to avoid harming others with body, speech, or thoughts.
To support the social and emotional health of the community, we will offer a number of care structures throughout both years.
If students desire additional support or insight, they may opt into the following therapeutic offerings on weekends.
A method that allows students to develop a greater awareness of their own life story, releasing attachments from the past and stepping into future possibilities with greater clarity of their unique path.
This modality allows us to simultaneously express creativity, understand ourselves, and heal deep layers of our heart.
To allow students to develop a natural rhythm and relation to the real world, technology may be used in dedicated rooms on campus. This way, the community environment becomes more present and available for encounter, while time used on technology becomes intentional.
While understanding its ecological and societal dangers, Zhi Ran Du views AI as an important technology to be utilized skillfully for world benefit.
Much of conventional education focuses on the accumulation and synthesis of information. AI is now a more efficient and interactive way of doing this. Therefore, students will be taught effective methods to use AI for self-study and follow their own interests. AI is used to expedite the necessary processes of accumulating information, which allows more time for the more important development of original, living thinking, taught in all classes.
AI enables individuals to create organizational and digital structures in a day that previously required large teams months. This opens opportunities for individuals to specialize more freely and specifically as the economy evolves towards having more small businesses run by smaller groups. This program seeks to help young people get ahead of the curve and take this opportunity for economic and vocational independence using modern and next-generation techniques.
For this project to exist, it must align with governmental regulations and cultural sensibilities. Many aspects of the program are tailored to these. For example, the program not only educates but actually generates fruitful ongoing economic activity, and this is essential for it to exist as an independent educational program.
The country has compulsory education with many regulations up to age 15. Eventually, about a third of students score highly enough to enter competitive university education. The other two thirds are sorted into vocational training or the workforce.
Therefore, this program offers a unique alternative at the appropriate age range for both holistic wellbeing and a genuine opportunity to author one’s own life beyond how they were categorized by the testing system. It fills a unique contextual niche, distinct from both conventional schools and existing Waldorf schools.
Surrounded by mountains, forests, caves, and fields, it is located in the heart of Luojiang Nine-Bends Wetland Park, Suiyang, Zunyi, Guizhou. It is an hour’s drive from Hailongtun World Cultural Heritage, Broadwater Primeval Forest, and Shi’erbeihou Caves/Hot Springs.
Take flight to Guiyang, Chongqing or Zunyi Xinzhou airport
Take high speed train to Zunyi station.
Call a didi or taxi to
智然度 (zhi ran du)
(40-50 min)
We need teachers of all kinds! If you teach something not listed, we would still love to be in touch. We welcome those interested in teaching monthlong intensives and those who are interested in longer term work.
We welcome experienced or novice biodynamic farmers from all over the world to support or help lead our farm.
We are seeking financial support of 1,000,000 RMB (147,000 USD) for salaries, materials, and operating costs. Once the program is running, it will become self-sustaining and replicable with hopeful support from the students’ enterprises.
Our eco-village is holistic and ever-expanding. We have needs and opportunities for people with all kinds of interests.
Anthroposophical, educational, therapeutic, artistic, academic, and entrepreneurial friends and those who are simply curious, we would love to connect and share the vision!
Food and housing are included for volunteers, staff, and registered visitors.
Travel costs may be covered or supported as well.
This page is coming soon.