A fresh, innovative approach to ecological education in the early years
- Are you inspiring or educating children between 3-12 years old (as a teacher, parent, grandparent, child-care worker, etc)?
- Do you love nature and want to find ways to share that passion with children?
- Are you concerned about the future of the planet and want to be part of long-term, sustainable solutions?
This two day workshop offers practical tools for embedding ecological attitudes and love for nature into the education of young children
Why is this particularly relevant for you?
We know that childhood is the optimal time to form life-long attitudes and worldviews, including fundamental attitudes towards our relationship with nature. The acceleration of global climate change issues and the threat to the earth's ecological systems indicate the critical need for cultivating a new generation of sustainable thinkers, starting as early as possible.
Key questions:
How can we help children to develop a deep sense of love, connection and reverence for nature that is the basis of sustainability?
How can we help them to acquire practical skills in understanding and “reading” the silent language of nature and choosing to cooperate with it?
Is it possible to embed this way of thinking into the whole educational process?
The Children in Permaculture project
These are some of the questions that motivated the development of the “Children in Permaculture” Erasmus plus project. Since the 1970s, the Permaculture movement has been leading a profound paradigm shift in the relationship between human beings and nature, in order to design smart, efficient systems that build on the wisdom of nature itself to generate abundance both for humans and the planet in sustainable, low impact ways. The term “permaculture” comes from the idea of creating a “permanent culture”, thinking for future generations in contrast to the instant gratification based consumer culture that takes environmental impacts for granted.
The CIP project aims to broadly introduce these new ways of relating with nature to the next generation through the educational system, as one of the keys to an ecologically viable future. The project team have developed a manual, session plans and methodological guidelines to help educators find ways to embed permaculture into children’s learning environment.
What to Expect:
In this two-day workshop, you will have the chance to:
- Gain a basic understanding of permaculture and consider implications for education
- Learn how to apply the permaculture ethics and principles to both formal and informal opportunities for educating children
- Share best practices with other educators
- Learn how to adapt learning to an outdoor environment and deal with potential challenges
- Understand how to access and use the resources and tools developed by the Children in Permaculture project
About the Workshop Facilitators:
Didi A.Devapriya
Didi is an experienced international trainer in Neohumanist Education, originally from the US, now based in Romania since 2005. She has given teacher trainings in Romania, Holland, Italy, Australia and Lebanon. She is the founder and president of the Association of Neohumanist Education in Romania and the president of AMURTEL, which runs several service projects in a rural community, including a community supported agriculture project that she started, a Neohumanist after-school project, a children's home, and a Neohumanist kindergarten in Bucharest. Neohumanist Education is a holistic approach to education that emphasizes developing inclusive, ecological thinking towards all living beings and the created world. She joined the Children in Permaculture project through the Association of Neohumanist Education and has been one of the main authors of the CiP curriculum, offering her expertise in holistic early childhood education.
Rakesh Rootsman Rak
Rakesh is an experienced permaculture teacher and low impact living designer from the UK, specialising in community resilience, permaculture, creating food forests and low maintenance food growing systems. Rakesh has been designing and teaching permaculture to individuals and communities since 2009, and has taught over 200 permaculture, forest gardening, eco village design and related courses. His design portfolio ranges from a forest garden on part of a 30-hectare ecovillage in Croatia that he co-owned through to many urban community food growing gardens, private farms and back gardens as well as designing collaborative businesses, urban water retention systems and even computer software and documentation systems. Along with Permaculture Rakesh focuses on the human skills of communication and planning so necessary for successful communities. He is one of the founders of the Children in Permaculture project which was launched at the international permaculture convergence in 2015. So be prepared to go off on inspirational tangents occasionally.
Website: www.ecologicaldesigns.co.uk
For those that cannot make both days:
You can come to either day 1 or day 2
Day 1 will be mainly about understanding and resolving the issues we may face when teaching children outdoors
Day 2 will be mainly about how to use the Children in Permaculture content and how to make your own learning opportunities and lesson plans.
Cost
Suggested contribution is €100 per day
Registration
Please fill in this simple registration form to register your interest or reserve your place
Contact
Contact for more information:
Rakesh: rakeshaji@gmail.com
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Global Association of Neohumanist Educators