Ecovillage Design Education Gains Popularity in North and South

As Spring arrives in the North and Autumn in the South a new season of Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) training sessions is inaugurated. Following a series of successful pilots in 2006 this year will see Gaia Education EDE programmes widely spread. They will be held as far afield as Auroville in India and Wongsanit Ashram in Thailand in the East to Asociación Gaia in Argentina and El Poncho Ecocentro in Bolivia in the South. EDE courses are sparking great interest of future sustainability designers from both rural and urban settings. With the pressing agendas of climate change and peak oil, there is an increasing readiness for Gaia Education trainings, where an objective assessment of the state of the planet is followed by regional, community, and place-based solutions. The response to the 2007 programme has already been way above expectations.

Kibbutz Lotan, Israel - The 10-week programmes that are based on permaculture and practical eco-building projects in a desert environment are already oversubscribed. Lotan EDE courses empower individuals and communities with the knowledge for shaping their worlds and becoming more self-reliant

Sao Paulo, Brazil - The urban EDE starting on the 14 April in the heart of Sao Paulo is proving extremely popular with over 400 applicants! It took a well discussed and defined selection criteria and a huge group effort to identify the 101 highly qualified participants, among them, architects, planners, public park carers, social workers, educators, engineers and peri-urban horticulturalists. The EDE curriculum has been adapted into Latin America urban context to suit their immediate city environment. Whilst the principles are the same, the context is different, for example, the Bioregionalism Module has become Sustainable Neighborhood focusing on how existent neighborhoods can be sustainably retrofitted.

EDE Brazil being held at the Parque ibirapuera, the green heart of Sao Paulo.

Crystal Waters, the Australian Ecovillage, where renowned permaculture teacher Max Lindeggar is based. Max and team sent out basic information about a Four Month EDE Internship in 2008 and within 36 hours they had 16 e-mail enquiries, two phone calls (US and Japan) and a request to consider teaching the course in Thailand.

Gaia Education programmes provide cutting edge high quality sustainability education with a transdisciplinary approach, equipping the students with the practical skills, analytic abilities and philosophical depth for the redesign of our human presence in the world. The EDE curriculum has four core facets of World View, Economic Design, Social Design and Ecological Design that are woven together in rapport with the local environment. The curriculum is relevant to peoples of both developed and developing countries, rural and urban regions and the host sites are a diverse selection of well established ecovillages and occasionally urban sustainability centres. EDE is a Gaia Education programme and since 2005 is an official contribution to the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.