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Free ‘Local Water Solutions for Global Challenges’ Course – New Cycle Starting 22 March
Launching a new cycle of our free online course, in partnership with UNITAR and the University of Strathclyde, covering a number of water-related challenges that must be addressed to achieve sustainable water solutions at the local level.
The Impact of Stories in Understanding the World Around Us
Mother Jungle is an organisation founded by Sanne von Oort, a graduate of Gaia Education’s Design for Sustainability programme. The ethos of the organisation lies in the importance of indigenous storytelling in biocultural conservation efforts and supporting intergenerational communication.
Shifting Direction
Today, every economy in the world is being induced to enlist in a single, highly-centralised economy, one which depends on vast homogenised markets and ever-increasing trade. Although the globalisation of this economic model is exacerbating a wide range of social, economic, and environmental problems, governments continue to subsidise the global economy’s physical infrastructure, and to rewrite trade treaties, laws and regulations to facilitate its spread.
A number of concrete ste…
Networking with Nature: Implementing the Bioregional Approach
Living with a bioregional awareness does not require that we begin by mapping our entire bioregion. We can start small, with our own home and immediate surroundings. Here are some ideas on how to get started.
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Make a seasonal wheel, a circle bisected by twelve angles (one for each month of the year). Record the cycles of plants, animals, weather and cultural events within and around the circle. Note the date or week when a bird began building a nest near your house, when the chicks hatch…
Becoming Regenerative Designers
We enter this new season and look back at 2020, remembering that millions of people in every region of the world have been personally affected by economic loss, health challenges or the loss of loved ones due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our hearts and prayers go out to all of you in these difficult times. Stay strong, we will get through this together.
As we adapt to a new reality, we see before our very eyes what it means to live in a time of transformation and the urgent need for regeneration. …
Gaia Education COVID-19 Update
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gaia Education has taken precautions to protect our staff as well as participants and stakeholders. Due to the situation, almost all face-to-face courses have been cancelled, however, we are slowly starting to introduce new and innovative ways of conducting Ecovillage Design Education programmes (EDEs) that follow the social distancing rules of the country and where part of the training takes place online. We encourage ecovillages to contact us s…
What is Integrative Whole Systems Design and how do we achieve it?
There are many different definitions for the word design and many different types of professionals that call themselves ‘designers’. The attitude taken by Gaia Education is that we are all designers! We all co-create the world we live in, and are all responsible for the future of our communities, the well being of generations yet unborn, and all life on the planet. Design is much more than simply the beautification of material objects or some nature-detached aesthetic tool to express human indiv…
What is required for me to get a course certificate of the Social dimension?
Creating Community
Building community is the process by which a group becomes aware of its own existence as a living collective unity – and of the life force that sustains it. To build community is to nurture the group spirit and its social cohesion through a shared and clear vision. It’s to take care of the group through compassionate communication, empathy and assertiveness, generating trust and a pleasant work atmosphere. It’s to sustain the group through appropriate liberating structures, such as good deci…