Standing in solidarity with those resisting oppression and violence around the world. we opened a Mutual Aid and Solidarity Opportunities page in the Ecoversities Website. Our friends, Mahmoud, Essam, Saleh, Ahmed, Ashraf, and Mohamad with their families still need enormous support to escape Gaza amidst tremendous circumstances. In this crucial moment, please consider extending your gift directly to them and to your local communities. We can make a difference, definitely 🍉!
Flowers & Reflections from the Third Asian Ecoversities Regional Gathering in Nepal 🐂🗻 May 11 - 16, 2024
"Simply being around these dreamers who are reimagining life anew, and the flowing Trishuli river has cleansed my soul and uncovered some long forgotten personal dreams of my own. I am leaving full of energy to reimagine new learning initiatives in my organization, and to collaborate with and contribute to some of the projects that have resonated with me. Deeply grateful for this gatherings that are sacred medicine." - - Sheetal Sanghvi, Urban Ashram, India.
"Our recent gathering was truly inspiring, filled with learning, heartfelt conversations, and deep personal connections. Highlights included chanting mantras and singing during our hilltop hike and riverbank rafting, which reinforced our bond with nature. The silent dinner by the river further deepened our connection with each other and the environment.Inspired by these experiences, we plan to incorporate similar practices into our Riverversity program. By emphasizing gratitude, silent reflection, and mindful engagement, we aim to strengthen our community and our connection with nature.Thank you for being part of this journey. Let’s continue to nurture our bonds with nature and each other. Best regards." - Ram Silwal, Royal Beach Camp, Nepal.
Little Musings from the Ecoversities Micro-Gathering for Learning and Peace in Costa Rica 🦥💫
Past February, friends from the Ecoversities Alliance reunited together for four days in a micro-gathering in Costa Rica to share dreamings, projects, ideas, and the ways in which each one is re-imagining higher education, learning, and peace from their own spaces and territories. They were warmly hosted in the University of Peace and Casa Luna Feliz in the mountains of Puriscal where they exchanged nature art and love pedagogies, political activism, permaculture, ALCs, andinismo, imaginings and various profound conversations that touched their hearts, sowing many seeds for the future.
"As Ecoversities when we think about peace, what is reflected in us? What does each territory that we inhabit tell us about this learning? What path do we find ourselves in?" - Andrea Gonzalez Andino, Siguiendo Pasos Andinos, Adventureversity, Ecuador.
"Tomorrow we will close our time together, which I sense will be another beginning that I cannot fully see yet. Planting seeds of ecoversal space at UPEACE, seeds for unschooling and self-directed learning in Costa Rica, seeds of friendship and relationship that we will continue to water and grow, like the unwieldy tropical vegetation we are surrounded by and breathing with. As one of our friends said yesterday, “Ecoversities is an excuse for us to get together,” and I love this excuse, and am so grateful for the Alliance for having brought us together.”- Stephanie Knox Steiner, University of Peace, Costa Rica.
“(…) We applaud and support students and others who are risking vilification, attacks by police and by right-wing extremists, arrest, and expulsion from their universities in defense of human rights and a swift end to the genocidal assault on Palestinians. We’re encouraged by this growing movement, which reveals an awakening among students of anticolonial awareness and worldwide solidarity (…)”
Friends from the Alliance, and fellow conflict composters circle member Maura Stephens and Alessandra Pomarico wrote a piece on the ongoing student protests in many mainstream universities around the world, and how we can directly support these efforts while being aware and keeping our eyes on what is occurring in Gaza. You can read the whole piece in our website.
Ecoversities Pollinations, Learning Exchanges and Residencies 🐝
The Ecoversities Alliance supports residencies between ecoversities around the world, as learning journeys for pollinating and exchanging cosmovisions, dreamings, and practices that empower local communities.
"(…) Against the serene Himalayan backdrop, this period immersed me in the realm of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and meditation practices, with a remarkable alignment with the "Datun" event – a month-long rainy season meditation retreat."
Petra Carman from Thailand chronicles her residency at the Deer Park Institute, Bir, India, joining a meditation retreat inrooted in the foundations of Hinayana - Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism traditions.You can read her full residency here.
“La Escuela Campesina is an educational space, it is the pedagogical element with a political positioning, among many others, that occur at the national level and that seeks to give coherence to the survival of the campesinado in our country (…)” - Gabriela Jimenez (Biblioteca Hojarasca Ecoversity) from Punta Negra, Uruguay composed a beautiful memory from her residency at the itinerant Latin American Gathering of Escuelas Campesinas Abya - Anahuac that happened last November in Mexico. You can read her reflections in our website.
Ecoversities Germinating Projects 🌱
The Ecoversities Germinator Service Circle helps nurture young ecoversities, drawing wisdom and experience from elder members and collaborators. In this section we share a few gestating projects that are currently being supported by the alliance.
Unified Playfulness is a passion project linking together playfulness and mindfulness practices, providing a creative safe container for adults to make the invisible visible and think the unthinkable. “Unified Playfulness is a unique liberatory, decolonial practice, an approach that gives people a chance to slow down and step out their default modes of being, in order to see/shift patterns with more awareness.” - Daniel Rudolph, Unified Playfulness, Turtle Island Region. You can read more about Unified Playfulness and upcoming cohorts here.
Great Lakes Institute is a permaculture school seeking to create a space where the humanities can be studied outside the university context, in practice and relation to the land “The critical function of the institute is to instill in participants a habit of conceptualizing and contextualizing their working relationship with the world, through the disciplined study of history, philosophy, political theory, environmental studies and related fields." - Philippe Mesly, Great Lakes Institute, Turtle Island Region.Read more about Great Lakes Institute and their residencies program in their website.
Dancing the Waterfall of Abundance: 5th Ecoversities Assembly 🌦️
Last March we held the Ecoversities 5th Assembly: Dancing the Waterfall of Abundance, Calling the Rain. About 25 people from various service circles joined us for two days, we danced, laughed, flirted, grieved, and celebrated our long path as an alliance together, as a waterfall began to flow vigorously around us. For this assembly we heavily used this Miro Board, if you are a service circle member we invite you to share your learnings and reflections along the forest that surrounds the waterfall. A summary of the assembly has also been uploaded into our website.
Flowing with Ecoversities 🐳
In this section we enjoy to share moments within and around the ecoverse!
On May 11, a splendid procession to save the Arneo Forest took place in Lecce, Italy, this very same ancient forest generously received the European Ecoversities Regional Gathering last year. The rally reunited about 500 people in the streets, numerous voices, sounds and colors answered the forest cry for help, as 200 hectares of canopy are threatened by the expansion of the Porches Nardo Technical Center. These efforts were organized by friends of Free Home University and the Guardians of the Arneo Forest Committee who have engaged in previous Ecoversities Collaborative Projects involving reforestation and learning with the land.
Our friends from the Enlivened Cooperative hosted an unlearning journey to observe the total solar eclipse in Mazatlán, Mexico on April 8. For 12 days they travelled together on both sides of the Ja’Tay Eñoom, the Gulf of California, this collective in movement remained in communion and dialogue with the sea and her guardians, the songs and the flowery word, and the beautiful courage of the imagination of local populations that propose alternatives to the extractive model of fishing and tourism. At this moment, they are preparing an un/learning journey Walking to Chavin, in the Central Andes, Peru, that will begin at the end of July.
Save the date! The Re-imagining Education Conference 4.0 will happen on October 24 - 27th! Re-root with diverse networks of learners, mycelial threaders, disillusioned academics, soil caretakers, un/researchers, wisdom-tenders, and other amazing humans. Let's co(i)nspire with nature, make humus and sporulate learning from our territories! We will connect with your world soon!
Celebrating Liora Adler, becoming territory
Our long-time friend Liora Adler passed away recently. She was a mother, a dancer, partner, network weaver, visionary, mentor and teacher of ecosocial un/learning ideas to people from all over the world. She was a co-founder and president of Gaia University, co-founder of Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage in Tepoztlan, Mexico, and mama of the long running Caravana Arcoiris por la Paz, She was also a companion of the Ecoversities Alliance movement since the very beginning. Now she has become territory. Rest in Peace Liora.
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