Creating a Regenerative Learning Ecosystem

We are deeply aware that education needs to change at all levels. It is not only about how we raise children in a dying world -- even though that is a very important topic! Here in Barichara, we are taking an overtly bioregional approach to weaving an ecosystem of learning that coordinates and supports the restoration of native forest and local watersheds.

Last year, we talked a lot about the Barichara Regeneration Fund as a way to create funding pools for a "portfolio" of regenerative efforts in community. Rather than having the local projects compete with each other for funding, we actively weave them into collaborative partnerships and look for synergies among parallel efforts that address shared challenges.

This year we are making progress on several fronts. Our regenerative school for children continues and is evolving into a community learning model that combines elements of Waldorf pedagogy with traditional ecological and cultural knowledge of our territory. The nature reserve Origen del Agua continues restoring native forest. Bioparque Móncora works with local schools and serves as a community reforestation project. And we are gathering multi-stakeholder groups to develop educational and healing programs at both Las Ruinas and the former alternative school El Totumo.

More recently, we have also initiated a storytelling experiment called Historias Regenerativas with a local documentary film team to highlight inspiring stories about regeneration in the territory. This is weaving with work of our territorial foundation Barichara Regenerativa to develop knowledge commons for large-scale regenerative work.

This video is a beautiful example of the work that Historias Regenerativas is doing. It is a moving interview with Don Jesus Barragon who has devoted the last fifteen years of his life to restoring the forest at Bioparque Móncora. Earth Regenerators like him often go unnoticed as they do some of the most important work in the world.

Now we are preparing to initiate a visioning process that weaves the different learning activities into a properly "ecosystemic" framework. I will host monthly workshops in Barichara to share this larger vision and invite open collaboration across the local community. This will help the regenerative school Sueños del Bosque to move toward a more open community model while bringing greater coherence across the network of educational initiatives in our territory.

If you feel moved by this work, please consider making a donation. We have a lot that is in motion and want to form a donor support group that we can work with more closely in the months ahead.

Please reach out to me directly if you have any questions. Share a comment below. Let's keep this going! All of our children will thank us for it later.

Onward, fellow humans!