3-Year Schools for Resilience Comenius Project

Cultivate is looking forward to joining a European team for the Schools for Resilience programme.  The project kicks off in January 2014, and culminates in an event at the Cloughjordan ecovillage in the last year of the project.

This project aims mainly to respond to two needs: First, to introduce a new approach in environmental school education, based on community action and a socio-constructivist approach, in which students will define the most adequate solutions to their local community from a positive and creative way. It will also foster the sense of initiative, entrepreneurship and creativity; and second, to make a reality the 21st century school, being open to the outside world and problems that society faces, innovative in the use of new didactic methods and with a relevant learning and teaching regarding key social challenges.

In this sense, the project aims to design a set of teaching materials (educational resources, teaching plan and guide for adaptation to school / community context) aimed to approach environmental education from the point of view of community sustainability and resilience, using a holistic and comprehensive methodology: Place Based Learning. Such a didactic method underpins the relation between schools and communities, supports the acquisition of key competences, fosters a sense of initiative, entrepreneurship and the creativity of students and promotes their civic engagement and active citizenship. Thus, the project is contributing to some of the general goals for education and training systems stated by the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (ET 2020). It is also to highlight the importance given by the Council of the European Union to education for sustainable development. In its conclusions of 19 November 2010, it explicitly states that “Sustainability can play an important role in national lifelong learning strategies and can be used as a tool to enhance quality at all levels of education and training”; and furthermore, declares that “At primary and lower secondary level, Education for Sustainable Development can focus on awareness-raising and the development of key competences”. Therefore, the approach chosen for the project (Place Based Learning) is the most appropriate approach to contribute, not only to environmental education recommendations, but also to the general goals of the Education and Training 2020 strategy.

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The Rise of the Sharing Economy in my Community

by Davie Philip, originally published by Reconomy Project  | Oct 24, 2013

“Our well-being will depend more and more on what we share with others and create together”. - Charles Leadbeater, author of We-Think

As I live and work in rural Ireland, it is the local application of the sharing economy that most interests me.  Cloughjordan is a small heritage village located less than two hours from Dublin and is reachable by train. In the past the village had suffered from population decline and some of its key services were under threat before the ecovillage project first arrived in 2003. The term ecovillage is actually a little misleading, as we are very much a neighbourhood of Cloughjordan that is experimenting with good practice in community regeneration.

The ecovillage project has now attracted over 65 families to move to Cloughjordan contributing to the flourishing of the whole village and is now seen as one of the healthiest communities in Ireland. In the last two years, it has won the National Green Community Award, in 2012 was voted runner up in an ‘Irish Times’ contest looking for the ‘Best Place to Live in Ireland’ and this year has been nominated for an Irish Pride of Place award and a UN award for liveable communities.

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Learning from Nature By Davie Philip

What do billions of years of resilience have to teach us?

“Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature, a mistress above all masters, are labouring in vain.” ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

What does it mean to live a good life, especially in a time when we face so many uncertainties? How do we maintain our health, happiness and collective well-being when the world seems to be unravelling? How do we make a living by collaborating and working together for the common good? These are some of the questions I have been exploring, and attempting to answer, in this column.

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