How GEN's online Ecovillage Design Education course will change the way you walk through the world.

Joining GEN’s path made me feel in alignment with myself.

I have been passionate about GEN’s work from a very young age, and since I discovered [the organization], it has been like a guiding star. It gives me a great sensation of relief like the world is being embraced in magnificent invisible arms. A gigantic embrace, that acts on every dimension of human issues, addressing it to restore the connection with our nature. The Ecovillage Design Course curriculum is a deeply beautiful work that goes from the deepness of the self and individual to the wide collective and delicate systems that sustain both natural life and the co-created social constructions that run our world.

Of the things that give me pure pleasure in life, a golden one is to see that a different education is emerging and increasingly being operated. The holistic approach that has been practiced by pioneers like GEN is finally arising and penetrating the conventional methods and institutions. Though (I believe) it comes very much from a sort of trend status, isn’t this the best trend ever (don’t you hope it lasts forever!)?

It may not be hard to find out how to transition into healthier and more sustainable practices on a daily basis, but there are pathways and blueprints that can amplify your positive impact on the world. GEN provides precious resources and one of them is certainly the EDE course – encouraging a lifestyle with a positive impact, at a personal, social and environmental level.

From my view, the EDE is a perfect formula, such a complete tool that walks you through every dimension you can act on, isolated and in synchronicity. Moreover, it challenges you to practice along the learning journey. How amazing, consolidating, and simply adequate is that? Why isn’t it in mainstream schools yet?!

The EDE goes very much hand in hand with the principles of permaculture, and we could even maybe call it social permaculture, as it is designed to have you observing and interacting with world systems in a regenerative way.

As a mother and “ex-school struggler”, it touches me profoundly that by now we still do not have these principles integrated as a base for the educational curriculum. The ideas proposed by the EDE should already be at the very foundation of the school system.

I have my son in a said “normal school” because it can lead him to interesting and important paths and also because I believe it is important that he learns to speak the language that society speaks today, but it is equally important that he learns a language that allows him to see beyond, act beyond, create a future and be a communication bridge between both worlds: the one we live in and the one we are co-creating.
This is what I’m about.

My EDE design group shared a vision of creating a place where people could incubate transition projects and that would work as a hub to interact with local schools, complementing the curriculum with precious tools, generating a wave of intergenerational upgrades with a common goal.

I want to eco-build, to Earthship, and earth shift! And invite the world to join this mission.
This amazing teamwork I experienced during the EDE restored my sense of community. Even though we may have different paths in the near future, thanks to sharing this journey with such inspiring and interesting partners, I find today myself on track of my goals and capable of challenging my reality.

I believe we should all at some point in our lives have access to an opportunity of unlearning certain limitations and develop ourselves to rethink our interactions with the world.

I have my heart and mind overflowing with gratitude and creativity, ready for action and willing to replicate this fulfilling (but still hungry) sensation of getting people back to the core, redesigning realities, and co-creating the future.

My son is 6 years old and I see resurrected in me, a kind of magical alchemist superpower to transform the weight I carry for not offering him the world he deserves, into an energy source to create it in front of his eyes. With my life project, I want to show him, that I did not abandon the world, I did not abandon his future. Show the children that we, the adults, are on the case, for them and all the living things. For real!

I may not be a religious person, at least on the common sense perception of what this is, but I have certainly this feeling that nature is a complex intelligent whole and a persisting background sensation of faith that enables me to picture great accomplishments.

The work I now have in front of me is to do the best communications, connect the right dots, bridge people, and create and engage a community around a purpose.
From a simple place, with the 4D module lens, this project reveals to be a large-scale exercise of cooperation and a social experiment. It lifts so many questions. It has so much to show.

An open challenge is up for a community to rise, take action, and co-create a truly remarkable gift for our children.

And as this might be a great around-the-fire story to tell, I wish to have it film documented. I wish to capture the process, and the sparkle of every soul involved.
Can you imagine?
Would you dare?
Are you in?

Written by Andreia Bastos – Check out her EDE design project here.