It has been said that we are the most useless generation that ever walked the earth (Hopkins, 2008). Our cosy western lifestyles have led us to reliance on the supermarket, and food transported thousands of kilometres around the planet. As we have chased economic growth at all costs, we have rejected a lifestyle where we had to take care of our own needs, and many of the basic skills that go along with resilient simple living. We forgot once common knowledge, common sense, like how to cook and preserve, to grow our own food, build our own homes, how to fix things when they break, how to live in community.

We have become consumers of goods and services, subjects rather than active citizens, rather than active participants in production of the things we need. In fact the entire education system is designed to reinforce this industrial and unsustainable pattern. We choose it every day. The end result is that our homes and communities are vulnerable to sudden changes like economic crises, climate change and volatile oil prices. Our communities lack the resilience to weather inevitable challenges that are on the horizon.

But things are changing. We are also in the midst of a massive global shift, the so called Great Turning (Macy) the greatest social movement that the world has ever seen (Hawkins, 2006). We are witnessing thousands of groups and millions of people around the world waking up to their dependence and looking to regain traditional knowledge and skills. The antibodies of Gaia are waking up and organising, searching for new models for living and learning. There is a lot of evidence to show that this revolution is alive and well in Chile, and is rapidly gaining momentum.

Over the last few years we have seen an explosion in the number of courses and workshops in all number of things from Permaculture and gardening, to Homa therapy, cosmetics and medicinal herbs, bioremediation and bioconstruction. What seems to be emerging is a community based education revolution, largely outside of the mainstream education system, for communities, by communities.

It seems we are moving in the right general direction, and the stage is set for more exhilarating developments to come in Chile. According to Davies (2009) ´´... we need to develop an entire learning society so humankind can take the next step in its evolution...to learn how to live sustainably on the Earth´´. This transition will see us learning the skills for sustainability together, and we need everyone’s creativity and ingenuity (Davies, 2009). A new education model means building local capacity to respond, it means action in our own living, learning and working environments. In this transformative response to systemic crises, education becomes a ´living inquiry´, a lifelong active learning process that can happen anywhere, anytime, with anyone (Phillips, 2009). We are being challenged to develop new places of learning that are based in our own communities that inspire and support people to act now.

The global Permaculture and Ecovillage movements have been at the forefront of this evolution in living education for some 30 years. Various practical action learning pathways have been developed in basic literacy for sustainability and its application in regenerative design, on almost every continent, and in many languages. Many demonstration centres and villages around the world exist as places of learning the basic skills for sustainable living. The core of this new model is a practical design toolkit for creating sustainable human settlements. This helps people to create integrated designs for their own homes and communities based on observation of natural patterns in ecological and socio-cultural systems. Permaculture's essential contribution is a concise set of broadly applicable design principles that can be transferred rapidly through brief intensive training. These principles enable people to create their own local responses, and their own designs and plans for healthy and productive communities, without hurry, without pause in transition towards a sustainable future.

Here in El Manzano we are following this pattern and have been responding to some of these challenges to help mobilise a broad network in Chile to begin transition processes in our own local initiatives and provide accelerated learning pathways for local people. El Manzano is what Rob Hopkins (2008) refers to as ´´College of the Great Reskilling´´, a living campus, of living classrooms, where we are all participants in determining our future together, where daily living is a collective learning opportunity. In the last year we have been focused on education as the foundation of our efforts, a knowledge transfer between professionals and local people. Our focus has been on the basics of sustainable living and appropriate technology; growing and preserving food, building low cost housing from local materials, implementing manual water pumps, low cost solar hot water heaters and ovens, and managing our own waste. As our project finds its feet, the landscape speaks back, and the rubber has hit the road.

In 2010 we will be extending our re-skilling programme to include a variety of opportunities to work alongside our community in developing simple solutions that work. We will be starting the implementation of many projects that include retrofitting the houses in Villa El Manzano, bioconstruction of a community kitchen, classrooms and accommodation, and community supported agriculture where you can grow your own healthy food with us. We invite you to join in the conversation and participate in our regular transformative action learning events, to invest yourself in sustainability. For more details about our tours, volunteer opportunities, workshops, courses, diploma pathways and degree programs please visit our website, or connect with our network, or in your own region through the Instituto de Permacultura en Chile. If there is no transition network in your region, you can organise it now. Contact us today and begin a lifelong exploration.

References

Yes, many of these links are in English. Luckily google provides a good online translator that makes conversion of text in many languages easy and quick. If you think you can do better than google contacts us today and offer your translation services. Translation of important material is a big part of our work.