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EDE Final Report: Contents

 Course Overview 3 

Course Overview (150-300 words): 4 

Brief explanation of the background of the organisation, host site. Diversity of participants and                           facilitators. Main highlights, key success factors and other relevant information that would describe what                           happened during the EDE. This text will appear at Gaia Education´s web site to describe your                               programme. 4 

Participants (50-150 words):  4 

(Basic stats including numbers of participants, age range, gender ratio, countries, ethnicities and                         backgrounds) 4 

Course rhythms (50-150 words):  4 

A description of the times of daily activities, sessions, free time, social time, interaction with hosts, rest;                                 how many hours in lectures & practical sessions,etc. 4 

Highlights & challenges of each dimension 4 

Social Dimension (150-250 words) 4 

Economic Dimension (150-250 words) 5 

Ecological Dimension (150-250 words) 5 

Worldview Dimension (150-250 words) 5 

Design Dimension (150-200 words) 5 

Design Studio Case Studies 6 

Lessons Learned (50-300 words) 6 

Participant Quotes 6

 

 

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Course Overview:

This is the third EDE program we have hosted in recent years, each one under the name Holistic Sustainability Semester and granting the EDE and Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) upon completion. The host site is a non-profit sustainability education center, aspiring ecovillage of 29 years, and small conference center. The location is in a rural area 30 minutes outside Eugene, Oregon, USA.

Participants were far more age-diverse this program than previously, and came from a variety of backgrounds. More information about them is further down this report.

The main highlight is that students had a very positive experience in the community and classes, grew a lot personally in a short time, and felt more informed and empowered to go forth positively in the world.

Success factors include the same course coordinator every time, an ecovillage with social & physical sustainability examples to experience during the 3-month immersion, 1/3 to ½ of instructors from the onsite community, 40 hectares of lush ecosystem to connect with, a supportive culture in our nearby city, and the possibility of living in the community post-program. This program was designed to synergize with the community instructors and culture onsite, so that both help each other, and that has clearly been the case each time we have run it.

 

 

 

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Participants:

We started the program with 6 full participants plus 4 others doing just one day of courses per week (commuting from nearby for the permaculture design component). One couple was retired and didn’t want to do the full three-month program, so did about half (as planned). We finished the program with 4 full students and 3 additional weekly students. This was well below our minimum number to run the program, but it nonetheless went smoothly, showing that a very small program can indeed go well.

Two students were around age 20, one around age 40, and 1-3 around age 65. The gender ratio was split evenly male/female. All were from the U.S. except one from the Middle East (though two live now in Mexico).

Backgrounds varied from a current college student to a former oil trader with Saudi Aramco, from retired career professional to a newly minted adult. This was more broad than our usual range of 19-35-year-old Caucasian Americans.

Course rhythms:

Classes were three days per week for 6 hours (4 sections of 90 minutes each). On other days students did community kitchen shifts (5 hrs/wk), land work-parties lead by the Garden Coordinator (2 hrs/wk), preparation for upcoming classes, work on two group design projects, personal care, and free time activities. In this program there is a lot of structured AND unstructured time, striking a good balance that students appreciate. There were plenty of similarly-minded residents in the community to generate activities pretty easily, or a student can take more alone time for themself. 

Highlights & challenges of each dimension

Social Dimension

This element included self-governance, Non-Violent Communication, two group art periods, and a weekly session of sharing how each person truly is (and bonding as a result). Other sessions included setting group norms, authentic relating games, the art of discussion, intentional communities around the world, learning about and running a Summer Solstice ceremony themselves, power & leadership, diversity, forgiveness, and local service.

 

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Students were fully integrated into the onsite community, feeling a sense of social inclusion and casual tribe. Students really enjoyed the residents, what they could learn from them, and fun activities together.

Quote: three of four respondents mentioned living in a community as a highlight

Quote: highlight = “Learning what it takes to create a sustainable and aware society.”

Facilitator: Jess Johnston is a Lost Valley resident and personal coach. She enjoys teaching about Non-Violent Communication for all levels, and supporting individuals for personal growth.

Facilitator: Oblio Stroyman is a local organizer and diversity instructor who is particularly suited to giving students a window into transgender life and voices of the marginalized.

Economic Dimension  

This dimension can be the most cerebral and least active, as well as being challenging to find knowledgeable instructors for. It is throughout an examination of what is not working with our globalized capitalistic system and examples of various better ways of doing things. In this course we included integrated local development, alternative currencies and credit, and Transition Towns. Also included were sessions on this community’s history, legal structures for sharing, potential onsite microbusinesses, and a design project to concretize potential economic generators onsite. There was also a home economics component, with classes on herbalism, food preservation, and wild edibles. Finally, students did a group design project to add or improve on a Lost Valley system in the social and/or economic realm – more on that below.

Quote: gift economy listed as a highlight by three of the four respondents.

 

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Facilitator: Tom Tortorich is new to this program, though has been leading workshops in the Kansas City and Eugene areas for a while. His style is open and conversational as he stimulates students to think about alternative economic systems and how it would feel to live in them.

Facilitator: Ravi Logan has anchored the economic dimension of the three Holistic Sustainability Semesters thus far run. He is extremely knowledgeable, runs an organization called the PROUT Institute, and is a long-time meditation instructor.

Ecological Dimension  

This dimension is mostly represented by the Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course that is a subset of the Holistic Sustainability Semester. There are class days that focus on: permaculture ethics & principles; patterns in nature; whole systems design; water; plants; animals in a permaculture system; natural building; appropriate technology; energy; forestry; designing for other ecosystems and catastrophes + client relations + jobs in regenerative agriculture; and presentation of student design projects.

Students completed a design for a site at Lost Valley or where they live. This was supported in

class, though most of the work happened outside of class time between weeks 4 and 12.

There was also a field trip to visit green businesses and permaculture demonstration sites in nearby Eugene, as well as two class days being taught at other nearby sustainability education centers.

Quote: Highlight = “Living in an ecovillage and being around others who are driven by sustainability.”

Facilitator: Brian Byers is the lead instructor of the permaculture component. He teaches half the classes; the other half are taught by guest instructors from elsewhere in Oregon. This has been the case for the last three programs, and works very well. Brian is a clear and knowledgeable teacher, with experience in most of the systems studied. He also teaches some non-ecological sessions.

 

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Worldview Dimension  

Some classes in this dimension focused on how a person can look at the world. Examples from this semester were: the law of attraction; spiral dynamics; Jungian and other approaches to consciousness; systems thinking; and ways of knowing. These are mental tools that can be applied to any situation and life in general.

There was a class thread on nature connection, during which each student connected to a special “sit spot” in the woods. There was also a wellness thread that included classes on yoga, meditation, sound healing, and breathwork.

This program included a 5th dimension of sustainability – personal. This included classes on personal image & identity, journaling, and personal visioning, and was supported by the community culture of self-improvement.

Quote: highlight = “Realizing the important of the whole world changing.”

Quote: highlight = “Learning about other communities and other ways of life, ie. one planet, Hawai’ian culture, native American.”

Facilitator: Justin Michelson is a long-time Lost Valley resident. He is also a trained meditation instructor and spiritual thinker. He anchors the sessions on spiritual activism and others.

 

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Design Dimension

There were two design projects in the program. One is part of the ecological dimension, as permaculture designs. The other is something in the social/economic realm. Thus one is more hard-systems focused and tangible – including gardens, perennial food systems, water, and landform – and the other more about “invisible structures.” This semester the two social/economic projects were on interpersonal connection within the community, and a potential beekeeping microbusiness onsite.

This dimension is the exception in the semester, as it is not about ingesting knowledge or having discussion, but about generating a design or business plan for some new system or improvement. Students find this challenging, and are forced to push themselves and grow in the process.

Quote: highlight = “Brainstorming our ideal village/living space.”

Quote: highlight = “Instruction by design experts.”

Facilitator: Colin Doyle is the organizer of the full program and provides continuity between the sessions. In the design realm he gave students the options for permaculture sites and onsite systems, checked in with student groups along the way, and received the presented designs upon completion.

 

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Design Studio Case Studies

Social/economic designs consisted of a project on interpersonal connection amongst residents in the community, and a beekeeping microbusiness.

Permaculture designs were created for Lost Valley’s main garden, a cabin area, a school courtyard where a student teaches, and a community property in a nearby city. Included in this report is the fully-digital design of the Peacock Farm community property in Eugene, Oregon.

Lessons Learned  

One thing that can help this EDE – and probably others – is more hands-on components. That is the only consistent piece of negative student feedback from the course evaluations. It is difficult to cover the content of a given subject in a finite class time (Ex. 1.5 hours) while also including significant outdoor activities – I see this as a fundamental tension within any information-rich program. There is a tendency to default to content-heavy classroom sessions, such as slideshows with questions/discussion. The challenge is for instructors and the course organizer to transcend this - seeing adults as being like children, interested mainly in learning by doing - and designing lessons that suit this, while not going too far by spending all the time on narrow hands-on applications without getting to everything else that needs to be covered to grant the certificate.

A lesson learned from previous EDEs here is that students wanted more support in their permaculture designs. We increased that this course, and they felt more comfortable in coming up with design components. There is value, though, in students being pushed to their creative edge, and much more support than we gave this semester might amount to spoon-feeding. 

Key trends from the Gaia Education Survey Monkey evaluations

For the quantitative sections, the total responses from evaluators was 924 of a possible 935 points. That’s 98.8%. So the students rank their experience at 99%, which is amazing! The lowest rank any person gave any question was a 4 out of 5.

There are no clear places for improvement, though in a separate evaluation some students mentioned wanting more hands-on activities (addressed above). The results verify (and amplify) the on-the-ground experience that students loved the program and got much out of their time on site.

 

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The Holistic Sustainability Semester is great for individuals who know they want a different style of life than is presented to them in mainstream Western society, but don’t know where to go with it. They don’t want to be highly-consuming corporate robots, but that is most of what our society has to offer.

The process of discernment in the program is facilitated by class sessions across the wide spectrum of sustainability plus three months of ecovillage immersion. The program is a buffet of experiences and knowledge, and afterward a student is more ready to focus on a certain direction(s) in life, and choose not to pursue others. For example, a person can get very into natural building or responsible local economic generation or herbalism or nutrient cycling after getting a taste of it in the classes and community. Many students find the program helpful in getting them from a generalized ethic of wanting a healthy world to some concrete ways to get closer. They also find ‘their people’, enjoying the communion with likeminded others.

Three months in an intentional community seems to be an ideal duration for getting a substantive experience of it (as it’s currently manifested at Lost Valley) but not so long that it’s a daunting commitment. Some students continue to live at Lost Valley after the program because it is a much more wholesome place to live than where they came from; some also come to reinvent themselves and so don’t want to devolve back into their previous life.

The program is rather like a semester abroad without leaving the country. The context is different than mainstream American life, the people and projects refreshing, and the personal growth rapid. Compared to Gap Year or semester abroad programs it is also affordable and doesn’t require visas, immunizations, or parental fretting.

Best of all, the program moves us all slightly closer to where the world needs to be, improving our collective future prospects on Earth while experiencing a high individual quality of life.

Summary of projects/activities participants intend to engage in, inspired by their attendance in the course

In the evaluation all 4 respondents said they plan to make use of their increased expertise to spread sustainability where they are after the program.

 

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A fraction of students each course decide they want to continue living at Lost Valley as residents beyond their time as students. That was true of this semester. After experiencing the Holistic Sustainability Semester and Lost Valley life many individuals have more open eyes and higher standards, and have little interest in returning to the uninspiring life they left to come to the program.

Some students end up near Lost Valley in the Eugene area, enjoying the progressive culture of the place and adding to it.

Beyond that, it varies greatly what graduates do post-course. We could add more options of what to do next, but that is inherently challenging because the program is so broad. It is a taster of many elements of a sustainable life, on the individual and collective level, and thus does not naturally feed into a second-level course or skill-building career track.

Concise financial information showing income/expenditure.

Student payments are split between lodging, meals, and the education program. The amount that went toward the course itself (the education component) for the summer 2018 semester was a total of $12,500. The majority of this went to paying instructors ($5000) and the program coordinator ($2500).

There was no net profit for the education department running this program. That was an accomplishment, being that the number of students in the program was well under the minimum needed to run it. Further benefit went to other areas of the organization, such as the kitchen the Site departments, getting business for their corner of operations from students residing onsite for the program.

Participant Quotes

What do you think were the strengths of this programme? – Two of the four respondents mentioned the director.

“Very cool thought out structure of classes and how they were timed and linked together.” – Grant Hess

“The land is gorgeous and very peaceful.” – Christine Douglas

“It was everything I didn't know I needed.” – Zoe Frye

 

 

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