Regenerative Finance for EcoVillages
Part of the Global Regeneration CoLab
Yesterday I shared this “SolarPunk” image and slideshow with my high school Economics and Government (aka Peace & Regeneration) class. What do you notice? What do you feel?
Talk about financing regeneration and especially, regenerating finance is a favorite topic of course. How good can it get and what are our next steps?
So this morning, after an especially pink sunrise, I enjoyed a cup of tea and a morning call with the Regenerative Finance group, part of the Global Regeneration Colab. Thank you Jean-Louis Robadey for initiating and keeping this group going.
It was pure SolarPunk visions.
How can we leverage these visionaries and bring them into the classroom?
Bringing the visions out of science fiction and into students’ lived experiences? How can we reinvent education to be paradise? How many schools can be eco-villages? If we can spend 65 million on a digital picture, or invest in a digitized moment in history, can’t we design an economy NOW where education is central?
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So many ideas and innovations to follow up on.
How can a teacher like me be supported to help shift and create new and innovate curricula for high school students to envision and design a future of peace, prosperity, regeneration, and wellbeing for all? How might this heighten their own economic success, civic engagement, and personal wellbeing and resilience?
Can I find funding to take a year of sabbatical to re-write the curriculum? To teach to other teachers? To help teachers be researchers? To design an economy that centers education, regeneration, and healing?
How about students and schools? Can students and families who are feeling increasingly isolated afford to join eco-villages as school sites?
Can education, like regeneration, cease to become a cost and become an investment?
A few years ago, Econ-Gov became “Design Thinking for Peace & Regeneration” and was approved as an alternative to the traditional curriculum. This year however, the students chose Harmony and Flourishing over Peace & Regeneration, a beautiful improvement! It is an honor and a pleasure to be allowed to “teach” Relational Design Thinking for Harmony and Flourishing to high school students. Relational Design is an adaptation to design thinking that I worked on this summer, to highlight systems thinking and relationships as a means to meet needs (Non-Violent Communication comes in) and inspire synergistic designs.
Welcome.
