The EDE is a 7-day course which will take place from March 10th – 16th 2013. We would like to offer an Ecovillage Design Education Programme in March 2013.
It will be oriented towards Indian participants on a limited budget and foreigners who are traveling in India or want to use Auroville as a stepping off point. It will be a one-week programme pitched at an affordable rate for Indians. We will cover all four of the EDE dimensions with a permaculture approach. There will be an opportunity for participants to do an optional second week in a mentorshi
10/04/2013
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22/03/2013
04/03/2013
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09/02/2013
March 2013 EDE course
AUROVILLE, South INDIA
We would like to offer an Ecovillage Design Education Programme in March 2013. It will be oriented towards Indian participants on a limited budget and foreigners who are traveling in India or want to use Auroville as a stepping off point. It will be a one-week programme pitched at an affordable rate for Indians. We will cover all four of the EDE dimensions with a permaculture approach. There will be an opportunity for participants to do an optional second week in a mentorship programme with one of the Auroville units under a specific mentor, who will be determined at the time by the participants and the EDE staff. The one-week program will be from March 10th—16th 2013 and the second optional mentorship week will be from March 17th – March 23rd 2013.
The programme will be an introduction to the GEN and EDE principles as a whole.
The goal of this course is to empower, enable, energize, and equip participant/activists with knowledge, skills, analytical tools and perspectives in creating and designing sustainable communities in the North and South and in urban and rural areas of the world. This is part of a new widespread acknowledgement that creating small sustainable communities may be the only solution to our planetary problems.
We will explore:
Worldview--how different cultures regard life and its connection to nature
Economy--how to maintain local automony in the face of emerging global realities.
Environment--how to live sustainability and assure water and food securityand respect for nature.
Social--how to respond to growing social and educational needs.
• The course will be hands-on with site visits:
• Sadhana forest, a vibrant community of earth restoration workers.
• Upasana, a cottage industry project that has helped revitalize the Benares silk-weaving industry and which played a major role in the tsunami relief programs in South India.
• The Earth Institute, a unit based on wide-scale low-cost earth building of everything from homes to mosques.
• The AV financial unit, how to run a community financially with a focus on anonymous giving.
• Auroville’s organic farms. Auroville has about a dozen farms, with a diversity of agricultural techniques.
• The solar kitchen, a large collective facility with solar energy to feed more than 1000 people a day.
• L’Avenir, a town-planning unit to build an ecological city with environmental principles.
• Village action programmes, and many others.
BACKGROUND
The Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) course programme was developed to train trainers in ecovillage design and provide leadership skills by an internationally-selected team from the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN). It is an official contribution to the UNDESD. The EDE course has evolved under the name of Gaia Education (see www.gaiaeducation.org.)
THE GEN
The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) (also see http://gen.ecovillage.org) is a federation of thousands of rural and urban eco-communities throughout the world dedicated to sustainability plus, putting more into the environment than we take out of it. The vision they all share is to try to focus on ecological integrity, social cooperation, and lifestyles that leave a minimal ecological imprint on our planet. It was founded in 1996 and is endorsed by UNESCO and the UNITED NATIONS under the ECO-SOCprogramme.
COURSE CONTENT
The curriculum of the EDE is tailored to learning how to create eco-communities while incorporating eco-design factors. It is a general course aimed at improving leadership capacities, community building skills, and training trainers to help protect traditional ecovillages and to create holistic sustainable new rural and urban communities.
The primary resource people will be Aurovilians, MARTI Mueller, International Advisor to the GEN and United Nations ECO SOC representative to Geneva; Kundhavi Devi, nature wildlife and environmental education facilitator, Auroville Botanical Garden; and Mark Tormo, Aurovillebusiness entrepreneur and specialist in community businesses.
COURSE LOCATION
The course will take place in the multi-cultural community of Auroville (www.auroville.org) in Tamil Nadu, South India, about three hours south of Chennai.
WHEN AND HOW TO REGISTER
The EDE is a 7-day course which will take place from March 10th – 16th 2013.Participants will start the day with meditation or yoga. There will be full course days and field trips. Evenings will be times of play, workshops, films, interacting with community members and enjoying free time to explore Auroville.
The course is limited to 20 people. We hope to have a wide diversity of people from throughout the world.
Fees will cover course content, course-related activities, all meals (vegetarian) and dormitory accommodation.
The cost for international participants will be U$275/ Euros 215. The cost for Indians will be 10,000 rupees. We will offer some partial scholarships to participants from NGO’s in India.
This does not include travel to and from Auroville or transfers to Auroville from Chennai (Madras), which is the nearest international airport. We can, however, arrange a taxi or van to pick you up. Cost for transport is about 2500 rupees/ $50 by taxi.
Registration is open until February 28th 2013. A partial deposit will be required to secure your place.
The cost of the one week mentorship programme at an Auroville unit of choice will be paid to the Auroville unit and costs can be communicated once you register for the EDE course.
CONTACT
Please contact us for the application form and further information at:
Kundhavi, coordinator
Auroville Botanical Garden
Auroville
Tamil Nadu 605101
[email protected]
(91) 9360043538
and copy to:
MARTI Mueller, director
[email protected]
“Be the change you want to happen in the world.”—Mahatma Gandhi
CHARTER OF AUROVILLE
Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be servitor of the divine consciousness.
Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within. Auroville will boldly spring towards future realizations.
Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual research for a living embodiment of an actual human unit
Education for Sustainable Development, ESD, Sustainability Design and Online Courses – Gaia Educatio November saw Gaia Education partners in Bangladesh and India respectively embarking on their second Ecovillage Design Education programmes, aimed at empowering lives and strengthening community resilience.