Ecovillage Design Training of Trainers 2010

Social Design - Week 1

Saturday 2nd October, 2010

May East, Pracha Hutanuwatr & Jane Rasbash

Building Community and Embracing Diversity

The overall focus of this week is on the social aspect, designed to develop the skills needed to work effectively with both large and small groups. Using an experiential format, we will start by looking at how to create a learning environment that meets the needs of all, looking at individual learning styles and needs. From there we will learn how to design inclusive group agreements as a foundation for embracing diversity. We will explore the role of games in building groups and community - both theory and practice. We will learn the processes which define community glue and common ground - including values, vision and mission - and will understand the relationship between task, process and relationship.

Communication Skills and Feedback

"I do not know if you have ever examined how you listen, it doesn't matter to what, whether to a bird, to the wind in the leaves, to the rushing waters or how you listen in a dialogue with yourself to your conversation in various relationships with your intimate friends your wife or husband. If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate, we hardly listen at all to what is being said. In that state there is no value at all. One listens and therefore learns, only in a state of attention a state of silence in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quiet; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate." Krisnamurti, Talks and Dialogues

The heart of good communication is a simple but profound capacity to listen. This module will give participants the techniques and insights needed for creating environments informed by a culture of deep listening. We will learn how to support one another in the shift from a defensive to a collaborative communication and from debate to dialogue. We will practice mindful speaking and explore how to handle and welcome critical and constructive feedback as a vehicle for learning and growing.

Topics include:

Conflict Facilitation

Conflicts are a part of our life like storms are a variety of weather. In fact, in groups that are truly diverse, differences are both a sign of health and an invitation to creativity. The most important lesson is to change our attitude from avoiding conflicts to looking at them with interest and openness. This means stepping out of a winner-loser and into a win-win perspective. Win-Win solutions become possible after all involved parties of a conflict have been heard and understood.

Topics include:

Health and Healing

We will explore universal principles of health, including the role of diet, exercise, humour and beauty. How to design community centred health service that focuses on healthcare (health enhancement, health maintenance and disease prevention) rather than disease care

Topics include:

Facilitation Skills and Decision Making

"Deep democracy claims that all people, parts, and feelings are needed. Deep democracy appreciates present democratic forms but adds to them the need for awareness of feelings and atmosphere in moment-to-moment interactions and institutional practices."
Arnold Mindell

An organizations performance and ultimate success is directly related to its ability to make decisions that are high quality and that can be sustained over time. Making clear choices about the fundamental issues of power and process can transform a diverse group of people into a strong, stable, healthy community. This module will introduce a range of fair and participatory decision-makings methods to avoid conflict over power imbalances. We will look at the role of facilitation in the process of finding common ground between people with diverse points of view. We will look at facilitation techniques that make meetings productive, participative, cooperative... and fun, while balancing the focus across three dimensions: Results, Process, and Relationship.

Topics include:

Celebrating Life: Creativity and Art

This module will explore how to integrate art, land, creativity and community life. We will learn how, by creating a culture of ethics, aesthetics and beauty, we can free ourselves progressively from the tyranny of a materialistic worldview which has separated us from each other and alienated us from the earth. We will look at the role of the artist in reinvigorating and healing local communities, and at art as a liberating force for collective transformation and self-realisation. We will work creatively with environmental art in a variety of ways which are not simply about the landscape, but which actually take place in it. Such art can contribute to our becoming a less destructive and more benign presence on our planet. Facilitated by Lisa Shaw.

The Gaia Education Design for Sustainability is being introduced to the world at this time to complement, correspond with, and assist in setting a standard for the United Nations'­ Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014.

Pracha Hutanuwatr, Thai activist and intellectual, is a former Buddhist monk with a socialist background. He has worked under the guidance of Buddhadasa Bhikku, a renowned, Buddhist monk and philosopher who developed the concept of Dhammic Socialism; and Sulak Sivaraksa, an influential, independent thinker. In 1988 Sulak and Pracha founded the International Network of Engaged Buddhists.
Pracha is Director of Wongsanit Ashram and Director of Spirit in Education Movement, an NGO organising Grassroots Leadership Training in South East Asia. He has published several major books in Thai. Recently he and Ramu Mannivan published (in English): Asian Futures: Dialogue for Change, containing intensive interviews with 14 prominent Asian thinkers.

May East is a Brazilian social change activist who has spent the last 30 years working internationally with music, indigenous people, women, antinuclear, environmental and sustainable human settlements movements. Since 1992 she has lived at the Findhorn Foundation ecovillage in Scotland where she is the Ecovillage Education Coordinator, the Director of International Relations between the Foundation, the Global Ecovillage Network and the United Nations. May is a facilitator of the World Wisdom Council of the Club of Budapest and works internationally as an ecovillage consultant and educator. She is currently coordinating the establishment of a UNITAR CIFAL training centre at Findhorn.

Jane Rasbash lives at Findhorn Ecovillage in Scotland and Wongsanit Ashram in Thailand. She has been involved in participatory community sustainable development in the South East Asia Region for many years. This included co-founding and establishing the Grassroots Leadership Training programme a community sustainability initiative working in Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. She served as Executive Director of the Alternatives to Consumerism Conference in Bangkok in 1997 and follow up activities on Spirituality and Globalisation. She has co-written many papers on Engaged Buddhism with Pracha Hutanuwtr. She now serves as a 'needs based' consultant for several NGOs Thailand and Burma. She is also involved with Ecologia Youth Trust a Scottish Charity with projects in Russia and Thailand. She co-facilitates training of trainer courses, proposal writing and deep ecology workshops.

Lisa Shaw is an artist, designer and environmental educator. She is a partner in the Ecovillage Institute, an ecological design and engineering firm based at Findhorn. She has worked on water restoration projects in India, China, Bolivia, Russia and the UK as part of the Ecovillage Institute team, educating for the restoration and sustainable use of water and soil. She-co founded Lookfar Connections, an environmental education cooperative, and Grasshopper Art and Nature Camp for children in Vermont USA, which she ran for five years. Lisa uses art as an educational tool, bringing people together in a creative and inspirational way, teaching art to adults and children.

The EDE is being introduced to the world at this time to complement, correspond with, and assist in setting a standard for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014.

Training fees
For the whole programme
£1675 payable by participants with low income
£1925payable by participants with medium income
£2235 payable by participants with high income
£475/£545/£635 per module according to income

Fees include tuition, accommodation, vegetarian meals and field trips.

Please complete the Application Form and Enrolment Questionnaire

Enquiries by e-mail: bookings@findhorn.org

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*If you cannot afford the full fee, please check out our bursary guidelines.

* If you can afford to pay more than the full fee for this programme, your donation will be gratefully received and used to help those who cannot afford the whole fee.

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