The Ecovillage Design Education programme (EDE) was born out of the experiences of long existing communities and cutting edge educators or transformative and participatory learning in order to share how to create a new way of living with low environmental impact and high quality of life, bringing together the four areas of regeneration: social, ecological, economic, and culture/worldview.
Created by Gaia Education and the Global Ecovillage Network, this training is certified and a Key Partner of UNESCO Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development, amongst 70 selected world-wide educational institutions.
It is a course originally combined into a one-month experience in an ecovillage that has been adapted during the pandemic into a Live online format. It permits this year to 50 participants from all over the world to meet weekly online and get trained by all pioneers of the ecovillage movement.
On Saturday 19 March, the course started with the social dimension of the ecovillages. Taisa Mattos and Macaco Tamerice, lead facilitators introduced the theme of the week: Creating community.
The trainers
Macaco Tamerice is a sociologist, a life coach, and expert in human processes specialised in community-building, inner transformation, leadership and conflict resolution. In her life she researched with passion how to regenerate our planet and human systems. She has been living at Damanhur, Federation of Communities since 1993, where she has held many roles of artistic and social responsibilities, also the top leadership positions in the community.
Taisa Mattos is an experienced Gaia Education certified trainer. She has coordinated and taught Ecovillage Design Education Programmes since 2009, having contributed to 27 programmes so far, all over Brazil also in Portugal, Argentina, and Mozambique, and online. Currently serving as Education and Research Coordinator at the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), Taisa works as an international trainer and consultant in the fields of sustainability, social innovations, and community life.
An online format
A welcome tour reveals 50 participants from all over the planet in all continent seeing the course from different places and perspectives. We are immediately connected with short presentations and a deep appreciation exercise of 10 minutes in small Zoom rooms. The online format has the benefit to gather an amount of people which would be very difficult to gather in real life but also has the disadvantage of not sharing the same physical space so it limits some interactions. In order to create more connection between the participants, many games, cultural moments and exercises are coordinated so the participants feel the connection.
The social dimension and the concept of community
Community start with yourself, your family, nature, the other beings, with life.It can be rural, urban, online, traditional, intentional, residential, religious, spiritual or even political.
The community concept is based on the fact that each person is invaluable and truly irreplaceable. Each person has a gift to give, a contribution to make to the whole. The kind of gift a person brings, the kind of being a person is, is very unique to him or her and is valued by the community. The community is constantly affirming each person, and that constant affirmation is why people are always in the community […] When we are ‘separate’ we are vulnerable […] Being in community forces us to cultivate a deeper sense of intimacy with one another, to notice one another and value one another’s gifts.”
As participants of the course, we will be a community for the full experience of 4 months online course. As community guidelines, we commit to make clear agreements : ponctuality, openesss to dialogue, no triangular communication, confidentiality and Muditā (joy in Sanskrit). We decide to create and distribute roles: time keeping , heart keeping, note taking. During the course, different design groups will be created in order to implement projects together.
Get a glimpse of the course content
« We are both individuals and social animals. We are wired to be community. The individualistic world approach don’t allow us to see humans as connected, part of something bigger » – Macaco Tamerice, EDE trainer
« In modernity, there is a disruption of the principles of community. We got disconnected from the spirit of community. but there are tools to reconnect » – Taisa Mattos, EDE trainer
« In society people have lost touch with their individual potential in name of society’s needs. Separating more and more, because they weakened their own being. How to build a community with empowered individuals? » – Suelen, participant of the EDE
« For a long time we thought that survivors species were the killer ones when it is actually the ones that know best how to collaborate » – Macaco Tamerice, EDE trainer
“Ponctuality is human respect” – Steiner
“Diversity is something that has to do with creating community within yourself. If we were so composed of many different personalities with different wishes and likes inside of ourselves and with some parts that even we don’t like about ourselves to start harmonizing different parts at least listening to those different parts we are composed of. This is the first step to being able to embrace diversity. Diversity can lead the separation, embracing diversity is accepting the diversity of life which has so many faces. Diversity is richness and it is about the collaboration of these different faces. – Elif, participant of the EDE
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions. “ – Rainer Maria Rilke
Key to success: patience, perseverance and persistence
To summarize the sessions of the social dimension, in order to create community, we need clear procedures, diversity , common intentions, a group vision, an identity and documents and writing down the meeting agreements. It is important to define how are we making decisions, how do we facilitate our conflicts, how to relate with other groups and organizations what do we expect from our leadership.
John Croft, first guest from Australia sharing about why it is time to use widely Dragon Dreaming, a project management method
Temperature anomalies are causing ice to thin, increasing the rate of melt and accelerating sea level rise. The exposure of more water causes a greater absorption of sunlight, accelerating heating of the world’s temperatures. Higher temperatures increases the severity of floods, fires and droughts, ocean acidification and destruction of coral reefs. We need to begin cutting greenhouse gas emissions urgently if we are to avoid runaway climate catastrophe by 2050. Although we have known about Greenhouse Gas warming for over 150 years, current projections are all inadequate. We are caught in a situation of too little too late. Current climate policies: projected warming of 2.8 to 3.2°C by 2100 based on current implemented climate policies; If all countries achieve their current targets/pledges set within the Paris climate agreement, it’s estimated average warming by 2100 will be 2.5 to 2.8°C. This will go well beyond the overall target of the Paris Agreement to keep warming “well below 1.5°C”. So far, no country commitments of major emitters meets the +1,5°C target. As a result we risk huge climate tipping points, where positive feedback loops make matters worse, with planet-wide extinctions and uninhabitable zones likely.
It is time to know how to work together as human specie and collaborate better to maintain our specie on Earth. Every project start with an individual and his environment, integrating theory (thinking) and practice (feeling and sensing). Every project that has started on the planet started with a dream of one person. 90% of the projects get stucks in the dreaming stage, in order to make your dreams come true, you need to share your dreams. Sharing your dreams it’s an intelligent process that connects you to the world. Dragons represent those things that we’re most afraid of and when we learn to dance with our dragons we’re liberating that our power that’s sleeping there
Dragon dreaming is a way of making our dreams come true so let’s look at it. Every dragon dreaming project needs to great win-win-win, it has to be A win for me –
They are projects of personal growth for the people involved, that participants all of the people doing a project are committed to their own healing and empowerment ; A win for the community – They are projects of community building: they strengthen the adaptive capacity and resilience of the communities of which they are apart. ; A win for the earth – They are projects that work in service to the Earth: they work for the well-being, regeneration, and flourishing of life itself.
The Dragon Dreaming method has 4 stages: the Dreaming, the Planning, the Doing and the Celebrating.
We need to know what kind of people we are and which are our partners. In some environments we can be more introvert or more extrovert, we need to know the edge of your comfort zone. The dragon is outside it. The dreamers work with intuition, the doers with the senses, the planers think in advance and the celebrators use relection. Build a team to support your project with doers, dreamers, planners and celebrators, all parts should be equal. Each of them needs to have to same number of tasks agreed by each person. This is easily doable with 3 question : Which particular task would you be very enthusiastic to do? Which of this tasks scare you? Which of this task you could do but not necessarily want to do? Set up a project with a board game, it must be fun! – John Croft, EDE guest and trainer
Building projects in community is not an easy task.. 2 people working together involve 3 different relationships (between each other and each one with their self). 4 people involve 15 relationships. 5 people involve 31 relationships. It goes quick. You need to indentify your active supporters, your passive supporters, the bad supporters(negative) and the active resistors. The active resistors are the ones who will actually make your project best. Ask them why do you think is bad wrong and stupid. Creating a dream circle will help shifting mind sets and harmonizing a team”
Communication skills and Conflict resolution
Communication is like giving fuel to a person, so we need to be careful on how we communicate. We get too focused on a task sometimes but we need to take into account the process and the relationship with each other. Deep listening and deep sharing are important to keep the connection with each other.
– Macaco, EDE trainer
To help us communicate better, Marshall Rosenberg develop the Nonviolent communication concept (NVC) in the 1960s and 70s. The Book “Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life” was translated in 35+ languages and is still Applied to peace programs in war-torn areas throughout the world
“Conflict happens and we can see it as a source of creativity” – John Croft
Leaders create more leaders not followers
In the last sessions, about Social & Personnal Transformation, the guest Ina Meyer Stoll from ZEGG community in Germany shared different tools for self reflection and Team building. We talked about rank in society which we can also see in projects, always depending of the constellation of a group.
The consensus and sociocracy methods which are used as decision process in most of the ecovillages nowadays. It starts with a proposal, the dialogue and the decision making.
Keep tuned for the next sessions!
The Ecological dimension is about to start soon with André Soares sharing about Permaculture Design, Achim Ecker sharing about Renewable Energy, Water Management, Waste Management, Carlos Rojas about Green Building, Albert Bates about Sustainable Agriculture & Food Security and Sarah Queblatin about Ecovillage Solutions to Climate Emergencies .
Until July, the Economic, Worldview and Cultural Dimension will also be part of the EDE course. Have a look at all sessions:
Shifting from Global Economy to Sustainability – with guest Jonathan Dawson
Exploring Community Economies – with guest Anna Kovasana
Social Currencies, Community Banks, & Exchange Trade Systems
Intrapreneurship & Edge Work – with guest May East
Holistic Worldview & Reconnection with Nature
Transformation of Consciousness & Trauma Work – with guest Kosha Joubert
Read more:
Find out about the Global Ecovillage Network learning platform https://learn.ecovillage.org/course/ecovillage-design-education/
Follow the course on Instagram with Marc Domingos https://www.instagram.com/marc_domingos/
Find your ecovillage worldwide https://eco-villages.eu/
