Call for participants: “Leadership in Regenerative Learning Communities»

[Update from 10th March 2023: all places have been covered. You can still apply if you want to enter the waiting list.]

Biodiversa is offering 4 places for the training course «Leadership in Regenerative Learning Communities», which will take place in the Educational Hub of Vale da Lama Farm (www.valedalama.net), a Regenerative Organic Farm located in the Algarve, South Portugal, from 19th to 26th April 2023.

LRLC is an educational project directed at youth workers from rural and semi-urban areas. It aims to deepen solutions and practices within the scope of environmental education/action, coming from a regenerative development paradigm.

The project is coordinated by Projecto Novas Descobertas (www.projectonovasdescobertas.org), and Biodiversa is one of the partner organisations, together with Keti Keta (PT), Boodville (ES), Palma Nana (IT) and Kalistratia (IT). There will be a total of 26 participants.

About you

Are you?

 – A youth worker with fewer opportunities*;
– Over 18 years old;
– Officially living in Spain;
– Fluent in English;
– Interested or with experience in Education/Action for Regeneration;
– Developing work in rural and/or semi-rural areas (this is preferable, but not compulsory).

About the place and learning opportunities

The facilities include camping area, indoor showers and toilets, indoor/ outdoor classroom/multipurpose space and indoor/ outdoor dining area. WiFi, charging stations, tools and didactic materials are also available. 

It’s close to the sea and Ria do Alvor nature reserve, an amazing estuary where a lot of our Ecosystem Regeneration Learning activities take place.

The spaces, practices and routines of Vale da Lama Farm offer the possibility for practical examples of Regenerative Agriculture and Permaculture solutions.

Costs

The project is funded by the Erasmus + program of the European Commission.

All project-related costs (accommodation, food, course materials, etc) will be provided to you free of charge.

Your travel costs will be refunded, up to 275 EUR. To be coherent with our values, we will ask you to find the most environmentally friendly means of transportation possible (avoid or minimize air travel) and to offset the CO2 emissions of your trip at your own cost if you do take a plane.

How to apply

If you got excited when reading this project description and you fit the profile, write us an email at asociacionbiodiversa@gmail.com explaining briefly how you meet the selection criteria, what excites you about this project and what you intend to get out of it.

Please state your full name and the title of this project in the email subject, and remember to tell us where you live (it must be somewhere in Spain). Your phone number can also be useful, as we may be calling some of you during the selection process.

The selection will be made on a rolling basis, so if you’re interested, apply as soon as possible!

Preference will be given to Biodiversa members, those of you who already cooperated with us somehow, and those of you living in or close to us here in Asturias.

* People with fewer opportunities means people who, for economic, social, cultural, geographical or health reasons, a migrant background, or for reasons such as disability and educational difficulties or for any other reasons, including those that can give rise to discrimination under article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental rights of the European Union, face obstacles that prevent them from having effective access to opportunities under the Erasmus + programme)

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Live Sustainably: how to live the present without compromising the future

Participants in Live Sustainably

Dear readers,

The residential part of «Live Sustainably» is over. From now, we go on with the «Youthworkers for Sustainability Network». (We will publish more information about that in the near future.)

It’s been intense and demanding, as well as extremely satisfactory and rewarding. There are many things we could say about the experience, but some of the participants have already summarised it quite well. We leave you with the links to their reviews, in Portuguese/English and Spanish:

https://www.vidaeconsciente.com/l/live-sustainably/

http://europaaqui.org/una-semana-para-empezar-a-cambiar-el-mundo/

Many thanks to the authors Filipa Gouveia and Jolanta Pieniak.

Enjoy!

Live Sustainably – Call for participants

What: a training course to learn about practical sustainability

Where: In the beautiful valley of Valdediós (“valley of Gods”), in Asturias, Spain

When: 2nd-8th Sept 2019

Why: Every day we make decisions about how we live our present, which affect directly or indirectly the health of the planet, of other living beings and of ourselves, and which are compromising the capacity of future generations to satisfy their own basic needs.

With “Live Sustainably: how to live the present without compromising the future” we aim at raising awareness of the importance of caring for our environment and most of all to develop the competences needed to live a sustainable life and to inspire and motivate others.

How: Apply here now

 

The objectives of  this training are as follows:

– To provide you with competences to live a life which is more respectful with the planetary boundaries (more sustainable) and to promote and facilitate effectively a change of habits towards sustainability among the young people you work with;

– To encourage you to think critically, so you can unmask frequent phenomena such as “greenwashing” (or fake sustainability), fake perceptions of certain commodities as “cheap”, etc;

– To share resources and tools to inform and raise awareness about the importance of caring for the environment, inspire and motivate to live a more sustainable lifestyle;

– To create an international network for promoting sustainability among young people.

With this project we want to contribute to more young people knowing, practising and promoting environmental sustainability, and this way improve the capacity of our planet to satisfy the needs of the future generations.

Conditions for participation:

Please only apply if you fulfil the following conditions:

• You work with/for young people and you are interested in promoting and facilitating environmental sustainability practices among them,
• You are over 18 years old at the time of the training course,
• You are currently living (and will travel from) any of the 11 partner countries: Armenia, Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Greece, UK, Germany, Czech Republic, The Netherlands or Spain,
• You speak English fluently,
• You are willing to be fully present and participative during the whole duration of the training course (2-8 September);
• You are happy to spend a week in all comfort but rather isolated and surrounded by nature.

Costs:

• Your travel costs to Spain will be refunded after your participation in the training course¹;
• Comfortable accommodation in a big traditional rural house and tasty sustainable meals will be provided during the training course by the organizers at no extra cost for you;
• Participation fee²: We have set a participation fee on a sliding scale from 50 to 150€.  You will be free to choose your contribution according to your own personal financial possibilities and the value you see in this 6 days training programme;
• CO2 offset fee: You will be required to offset the CO2 emissions produced by your air travel through the following site: http://www.atmosfair.de/en/. This amounts to 15 EUR per person for the round trip³.

¹ Provided all the original tickets and receipts are presented. Maximum reimbursement: 820 EUR for Armenia, 360 EUR for Greece, 275 EUR for Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, UK, Germany, Czech Republic and The Netherlands, and 180 EUR for Spain (only if you travel from more than 100 km away)

² In order to make this training possible to the quality standard that we usually deliver, we need some extra income aside from the European grant that we got.

³ We have calculated the total emissions of your flights in 22 tons of CO2 and shared the compensation costs among all of you.

More information:

You can have a look at the preliminary programme of the course:

How to apply:

Fill in the application form here.

Applications will be reviewed frequently, and places allocated immediately if the application is considered good enough. For this reason, we recommend that you send your application as soon as possible. All applicants will be informed of the results of the selection process in due time.

This training opportunity is open to everyone, but we will give preference to existing members of Biodiversa and the other partner organisations, provided that they fulfil the above-mentioned «conditions for participation».

Our partner organisations in this project are: Associação Animam Viventem and Associação Spin (Portugal), Argonauta (Croatia), Amici della Natura (Italy), Naturfreundejugend Deutschlands (Germany), Youth Exchange Service (The Netherlands), Gyermek (Hungary), Cia Cekija (Czech Republic), Natura Humana (Greece), Viaje a la Sostenibilidad (Spain), Coyote Initiatives (UK), Colors of Green (Armenia).

Biodiversa’s workshop: the most beneficial

The final results of the evaluation of International Young Nature Friends Networking Conference, which took place in Tuscany, Italy, in May this year (2014) and in which Biodiversa participated with a workshop on «Transformative Learning» are finally out.

And guess what?!:

Biodiversa’s workshop on «Transformative Learning for Sustainable Living», delivered by Esther Vallado, was considered to be one of the two most beneficial parts of the programme, together with the «dynamic space» in which participants shared ideas and plans. Here you can see the infographic that they prepared with the results of the evaluation:

We are so happy to hear that our workshop
was so useful for the participants!!

Other feedback on this workshop:

“Transformative learning for sustainable living” was one of the sessions with more engagement and discussion amongst the participants, as they were confronted with unfamiliar situations and dilemmas, which questioned the way we perceive reality and interact with one another. (Extracted from http://www.iynf.org/quick-news/iynf-networking-conference-2014-resilient-cities-resilient-youth)

The programme was really instructive and informative and well-organized (I have to highlight here Esther’s presentation on Transformative Learning, and all activities we had about sharing opinions and ideas). (Extracted from http://www.iynf.org/quick-news/networking-conference»resilient-cities-resilient-youth»)

You can check our post about this workshop in the following link:

https://asociacionbiodiversa.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/biodiversa-participates-iynf-networking-conference/

Biodiversa participates in IYNF Networking Conference

Biodiversa‘s head and projects coordinator, Esther Vallado, contributed to the conference by leading a session on «transformative learning for sustainable living» during the second day of the gathering.

Esther leads a session on «Transformative Learning for Sustainable Living»

IYNF (International Young Naturefriends), is an international organisation bringing together Young Naturefriends and their organisations accross Europe. It was established in 1975 and currently has 19 member organisations. With more than 120.000 young members organised in over a thousand local groups, it is one of the major European youth organisations. Every year they celebrate a Networking Conference. This year’s theme was «Urban Outdoors – Resilient Cities, Resilient Youth!», and the conference took place in the Italian Naturefriends house «Il Vile», in the heart of the beautiful rolling hills of Tuscany.

Biodiversa was there sharing expertise, through a whole morning session on «transformative learning for sustainable living» lead by Esther Vallado, the head and projects coordinator. Through a role-game, she made participants experience an encounter between two civilizations, activity which she then used to explain the basic concepts leading to transformative learning, to then link it to sustainable living in a very logical way.

Esther triggered participants senses, feelings and thoughts using different means and methodologies, and we were only sorry there was not enough time for discussion at the end. Many fruitful conversations around this theme came up spontaneously after this session, though, making good use of the available free time together until the end of the conference and hopefully even further.

Half of the session was outdoors.

The rest of the conference was all about getting to know each other, knowledge and skills sharing, planning, discovering, and food tasting! The Annual Meeting of IYNF took place right after the Conference, in the nearby historical town of Volterra, starring a newly elected presidium, the acceptation of one new member organisation from Latvia «Homo Ecos», also partner of Biodiversa in some projects, the ratification of Sarka Bambasova as the new Secretary General since the beginning of this year and the re-election of Vanessa Hofeditz  as president.

Group picture taken in the medieval city of Volterra

Biodiversa has requested membership to IYNF and its application is currently being reviewed. We will keep you informed about that!

Updates:

Click here to read about the result of Biodiversa’s application for membership with IYNF:
https://asociacionbiodiversa.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/biodiversa-accepted-as-iynf-partner-organisation/

Click here to read the feedback about the «transformative learning» workshop:
https://asociacionbiodiversa.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/biodiversas-workshop-the-most-beneficial/