Our new logo—una nueva imagen!

Somos un centro comunitario de aprendizaje para desarrollar habilidades de una forma práctica para cuidarnos a nosotros mismos, cuidar el medio ambiente, y cuidarnos unos a otros.

We are an experiential community learning center that teaches practical skills for caring for ourselves, each other, and the land.

La misión es cultivar los talentos de cada individuo dentro de una comunidad auto-sustentable.

Our mission is to cultivate the talents of each individual within the context of a self-sustainable community.

La visión es formar una red de comunidades auto-sustentables que apoya la salud de la gente y de la tierra.

The vision is to form a network of self-sustainable community centers that support the health of the people and the land.

Los principios básicos son (1) la salud del cuerpo, mente, y espíritu y (2) auto-sustentabilidad

The basic principles are (1) physical, mental, and spiritual health and (2) self-sustainability.

Our unique approach to education

An authentic educational environment nurtures, nourishes and prepares children for a healthy, vibrant lifestyle. As facilitators, the adults are role models for younger people, and everyone is entitled to wholesome food and a healthy balance of work, play and rest.

It is natural to rest after eating a mid-day meal, the way a dog or cat curls up after being fed. Sending children off to recess immediately after lunch prevents proper digestion and absorption of nutrients. This is just one example of the many ways that mainstream education engenders unhealthy habits and maladaptive behaviors.

Let’s consider a unique approach: An authentic educational environment provides people with knowledge, engenders wisdom and prepares children to be healthy, vibrant human beings within communities that steward the earth.

You might ask, “But how does this prepare kids for the real world—the workplace—where you have to be on a tight schedule?”

It is understandable that we adults may be resistant to the idea that anything could change, because we’ve been entrenched in the only world we know from decades ago. But that’s not the world we live in today, and it’s not the world we will live in in the future: Corporate jobs with benefits are rapidly disappearing, thereby making the factory-model education system meant to prepare people for these jobs obsolete as well. The infinite growth “gravy train” is increasingly defunct and irrelevant.

The healthy, vibrant workplaces of the future are self-sustaining communities on arable land where people are wisdom-keepers, working for none other than a divinely inspired mission.

Preparing our children for the future

Children at N.Y. Zoo (Photo credit: The Library of Congress)

The jig is up: parents cannot reasonably expect that their children will enjoy the same kind of lifestyle that they themselves did. The generation that is now approaching retirement borrowed from the future generations—the children who are on the planet today—in order to have the infinite growth lifestyle that they’ve enjoyed up to now. But we can no longer consume resources the same way we did in the past.

We have surpassed peak oil, a concept first coined by the Shell Oil geologist M.K. Hubbert. He was the first to predict that once Peak oil was reached, there would be massive public unrest around the world. We’ve well surpassed that point. Not only do we see rapid, alarming changes on a sociopolitical level, but the impact of climate change on our living ecosystems is undeniable.

We can respond to these rapid changes by making better and different choices than we did in the past. We can teach our children sustainable living skills that allow them to live in community, close to the Earth, doing work that directly improves the quality of life on the planet as well as their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being. It is up to us to prepare our children.