Gaia Education manages different streams of activities:
Design for Sustainability E-Learning
Gaia Education’s online programme ‘Design for Sustainability’ provides students with whole systems design skills, analytical abilities, and a wide range of methods and practical tools to support the redesign of the human presence on Earth – one local community and bioregion at a time. The programme, also offered in Spanish and Portuguese, is divided into four interconnected dimensions: Social Design, Ecological Design, Economic Design, and Worldview, each conducted in an 8-week period, which can be taken individually or as a whole course. The course is completed with the Design Studio – providing an opportunity to work with an international design team and focus on real-life design projects.
Sustainability Design Panorama
The Sustainability Design Panorama is a free online and self-pacing programme. Enroll and start your learning journey with Gaia Education. The program is rooted in Gaia Education’s over 10 years of international experience in community design education and sustainable systems thinking. The 15-hour, self-paced course offers participants the chance to learn from the pioneers and visionaries who have dared to innovate and bring sustainability resilience, and systemic thinking to urban, rural, and traditional settings around the world. Case studies range from experimental ecovillage communities to transformative innovation by the mainstream inhabitants of large cities and clustered neighborhoods.
Renewable Energies for Sustainable Development
This online programme will give a comprehensive overview of renewable energy as a means to enable sustainable development at a global scale. It will present the case for how renewable energies represent both an environmental necessity and an economic opportunity. Created in partnership with Strathclyde University and UNITAR.
Ecovillage Design Education
Ecovillage Design Education programmes, often referred to as ‘EDEs’, take place in more than 40 countries in settings ranging from tribal and traditional communities to intentional ecovillages, from urban slums to universities and training centers. The duration of these programmes is around 125 hours over a full month, although this may vary slightly depending on where and when they are taken. The EDEs provide students of all ages with the knowledge and practical skills on how to design a society that uses energy and materials with greater efficiency, distributes wealth fairly, and strives to eliminate the concept of waste.
Students become change agents and sustainability designers, taking active roles in transitioning their existing communities, institutions, and neighborhoods, to more sustainable patterns of production and consumption, as well as leading more joyful, meaningful, and healthier lives.
Training of Trainers
The Training of Trainers, which is also referred to as ToT, is a course organised by Gaia Education that helps people deepen their experience of how to teach, facilitate and train people to become more effective local and regional change agents on the path to sustainability and regeneration.
Project-Based Learning
Gaia Education’s Project-Based Learning is a dynamic learning approach in which stakeholders acquire appropriate skills and analytical tools while actively exploring real-life solutions to the challenges of designing sustainable settlements.
We work with traditional and indigenous communities in the Global South to improve the way they manage their environments and villages, while addressing climate change vulnerabilities. Engaged communities benefit with more stable and fertile soil, secure supply of food and clean water and enhanced livelihoods.
Organisation
Gaia Education is an international civil society organisation active in 55 countries, 6 continents, with a 15-year track record in education for sustainable development, and with more than 25,000 around the world and 80 partner organisations. GE educational programmes equip students of all ages and cultural backgrounds with the appropriate knowledge, skills, and critical thinking tools necessary to design a society that uses energy and resources with greater efficiency, distributes wealth equitably, and makes the quality of life, rather than open-ended economic growth, the focus of future thinking. Our learners become change agents capable of playing active roles in transitioning their existing communities and neighbourhoods to sustainable and regenerative practices, lifestyles, and infrastructures.
Board
- Ross Jackson, Denmark
- Tim Clarke, UK
- John Clausen, USA
- Monica Picavêa, Brazil
Management Team
- Shane Rankin, Interim CEO
- Silvia DiBlasio, E-Learning, and Academic
- Emmanuel Khodja, Coordinator of Portuguese courses
- Daniel Christian Wahl, Design and Innovation
- Pedro Pedrosa, Operations and IT)
- Alexandre Pereira, Branding and Design
- Saskia Rodrigues, Communications & Marketing
- Fasil Bogale, Treasurer
- Sally Bogale, Partnerships coordinator
- Charlotte Bulmer, Marketing coordinator
- Malena Fabregat, Marketing coordinator in Spanish courses
- Yan Teixeira, e-learning associate