Founded in 1972 by an uneducated Ethiopian farmer, Zumra Nuru, as a better alternative to mainstream Ethiopian society, Awra Amba is a community where gender equality is crucial, where organized religion is banished, and where work and development are of the upmost importance.

The elderly and the young enjoy rights that aren't accorded outside the village. The village is run by way of committees where 50-percent-plus-one vote majorities decide all bylaws and decisions concerning the community.

Down a dirt track from the paved road, about a nine-hour drive northwest of the capital, Addis Ababa, lies Awra Amba - a clutch of wattle and daub houses and shared buildings, including weaving and textile workshops, a grinding mill, a tourist hostel, a school and a library. Most of the village's labor force works communally, so money is ploughed back into the village and the profits are split evenly.

Ethiopian utopian village goes against the grain

This way of doing things has helped lift the village out of poverty and now, some 40 years after its founding, family income, literacy levels, life expectancy, gender equality and economic growth are far exceeding the national average.

Awra Amba on BBC World News