Gaia Education

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= promotes a holistic approach to education for sustainable development by developing curricula for sustainable community design, while drawing upon best practices within ecovillages & transition settings worldwide

URL = http://www.gaiaeducation.org

Description

"Gaia Education promotes a holistic approach to education for sustainable development by developing curricula for sustainable community design. While drawing upon best practices within ecovillages & transition settings worldwide, Gaia Education works in partnership with universities, ecovillages, government and non-government agencies and the United Nations."


Daniel Christian Wahl:

"Gaia Education is an international consortium of educators, many of them based in ecovillages on five continents. Over eight years a curriculum offering a holistic and participatory approach to sustainable community design was developed and launched in 2006. The initiative has been endorsed by UNESCO and is an official contribution to the ‘UN Decade of Education of Sustainable Development’ (2005–2014). So fare more that a thousand people have been certified after participating in the EDE (Ecovillage Design Education) programme. The intensive 120 hour training has been held on five continents, in locations as varied as the Findhorn Foundation (Scotland), Auroville (India), Crystal Waters (Australia), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Kibutz Lothan (Israel) and the Middle Eastern Technical University (Turkey). The curriculum is organized into five modules in four dimensions: ecological design, social design, economic design, and worldview. It can be downloaded on the website above.

In November 2008, Gaia Education and the Open University of Catalonia — Europe’s second largest online learning provider — launched a virtual version of this curriculum under the title ‘Design for Sustainability’. Participants so far included designers, community organizers, public servants, planning and architecture professionals, entrepreneurs, activists, educators, academics, consultants, and more. Former course participants have initiated wide range of projects as a result of this empowering programme. It enables and inspires individuals to move beyond the politics of protest or an economic growth and techno-fix focussed sustainable development agenda and to take the creation of a more ecological, socially just, equitable, and spiritually meaningful society into their own hands." (https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/beyond-sustainability-natural-design-and-resilience-a0374e747333)


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