Chile in Transition: Regenerative Design in the Transition towards Resilience

For the past 21 days the community of El Manzano, in the Bio Bio Region of Chile has been delivering the Ecovillage Design course certified by Gaia Education and recognised by the United Nations under the Decade of Education for Sustainability.

Over the last few decades various organizations such as the permaculture, Transition and ecovillage movements have been generating proposals to deal with social, ecological and economic changes of the early 21st century. In response these movements have begun to focus attention on collaborative and solutions based responses; on participatory democracy, economic solidarity, ecological regeneration and the awakening of human consciousness.

Our global network of networks are co-creating sustainable solutions for local resilience, seeking to reintegrate human communities as part of a larger super system, and not as agents of change dissociated from what happens in their environment.

El Manzano has been consciously working towards the integration of movements in Chile, bringing together the collective wisdom of emerging regenerative disciplines. As a local centre of an international learning community the community exits as a living demonstration, providing transformative learning events and pathways, undertaking action research as a think and do tank, connecting networks through mutually beneficial relationships, and providing consultancy an support services for people and communities to gain the skills of world co-creation.

This year the El Manzano community in partnership with José Luis Escorihuela, ‘Ulises’ & Nuria Gago of Gaia Education delivered the four modules of the Gaia Education curriculum from 5-25 of January. Ulises delivered the Social dimension, which involves decision making and participatory governance strategies for self determination, managing ourselves and groups. the Ecological dimension which investigates different strategies on natural energies such as solar, wind, geothermal and other, as well as natural building styles and organic agriculture was run by a team of teachers from around Chile including Jerry Laker and Alexis Torres from Pazimora and Pucon in Transition and Paulina Avila from Bioconstruyendo, Jorge Carrion, Javiera Carrion and Grifen Hope.

This was followed by the Economic dimension delivered by Felix Funders, Patricio Belloy Kauak and team from the Universidad Austral of Chile, whose approach was based on the model of Human Scale Development designed by Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef, the traditional concept of Trueke or good exchange was also considered for this module, creating local currencies and economic solidarity. Finally, the course ended with the Worldview dimension where participants explore the diversity of human cosmologies and human potential considered as active participant in the evolution of earth systems.

The course has gathered a learning community of 45 people from different countries, including Spain, Portugal, Holland, USA, Mexico, Argentina and Chile. They all shared daily classes and tasks associated with community life, generating a family and friendly atmosphere where highlighted the outdoor classroom, interactive games and dances of a learning methodology that stimulate personal transformation and lead to the incubation of regenerative enterprise for local resilience.  To view some wonderful photos from this course, click here.