Shifting the Global Economy Towards Sustainability

The urgent need is to make the shift from the current situation where ecology is a subset of economy, to one in which economy is a subset of ecology.

Topics include:
- How the current economic system has evolved
- What impacts it has on people, communities and the Earth
- How we can make it more just, equitable, resilient and sustainable
- Ecological footprints
- An exploration of despair, anger and hope in the face of current realities
- Visioning of a more just, equitable, resilient and sustainable global economy
- Transitional paths towards a new global economy


How Money Works: Community Banks and Currencies

Far from being a neutral lubricator of economic activity, the way that money currently works is a major driver of our unsustainable, growth-dependent economies. We will explore how money currently works and how to make it our servant rather than our master.

Topics include:
- Exploration of how money works and the various impacts of the current monetary system
- Exploration of how money systems (global and local) could be reformed to encourage greater equity and sustainability
- Theory and practice of community and alternative currencies
- Exposure to Findhorn's community currency and bank
- Examples of thriving community economies from around the world


Right Livelihood

An exploration of the values underlying our economic activities and decisions; of the ways in which individual and community quality-of-life can be unhooked from material consumption; and of how values-based choices can help us move towards more satisfying and sustainable lifestyles.

Topics include:
- Voluntary simplicity and sustainable abundance
- Sustainable contraction
- Alternative well-being indicators
- Exploration of alternative ways of considering ‘wealth’ other than financial income
- Exposure to community members who have chosen to downsize and simplify their lives
- Exploration of participants' skills and values and of possible paths to increasing right livelihood

Social Enterprise

Social enterprises have as their principal aim not the maximising of profit but the delivery of social and/or environmental benefits that will enrich the communities in which they are based.

Topics include:
- Exploration of how we can use enterprises to meet many of our communities’ social and environmental needs
- Review of existing social enterprises in ecovillages around the world
- Reflection on the creation of social enterprises with guidance on how this can be achieved


Legal and Financial Issues

"While these questions may seem technical, their answers reflect your community's basic values . . . Does this legal entity inherently support your community's vision, mission and values? Does it support your ownership, financing and decision-making structure?" - Diana Leafe Christian

A review of the various legal, ownership and financial options available both for ecovillages and social enterprises within them.

Topics include:
- Overview of financial and legal issues to be taken into consideration when launching and managing social enterprises and ecovillages
- Feasibility studies
- Business plans
- Different forms of capital, their uses and how to raise them
- Creating abundance visualisation

The Gaia Education Design for Sustainability has been introduced to complement, correspond with, and assist in setting a standard for the United Nations' Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014.

Please complete the Application Form and Enrolment Questionnaire to book online.
Send an email.

Training fees
Income related price for Week 2 only (click here for more information): £475 / £545 / £635
For the whole programme: £1675 / £1925 / £2235

Fees include tuition, accommodation, vegetarian meals and field trips.

Convert to your own currency using The Universal Currency Converter

If you cannot afford the full fee, please check out our bursary guidelines. If you can afford to pay more than the full fee for this programme, your donation will be gratefully received and used to help those who cannot afford the whole fee.

Jonathan Dawson is the President of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and the Executive-Secretary of GEN-Europe. He is a socio-economist, with over 20 years experience working in the field of community economic development in Africa and South Asia. During this time he has worked for the United Nations and many governmental and non-governmental aid agencies. For the last six years, Jonathan has been living at the Findhorn ecovillage. During this time, he has been active in helping to establish the community's alternative currency (the Eko) as well as teaching Applied Sustainability and Sustainable Economics up to undergraduate level. Jonathan is a widely published author, with publications on local economic development and various dimensions of ecovillage living. Many of these articles can be found here. Jonathan is author of Ecovillages: New Dimensions of Sustainability which has just been published by Green Books in the UK.

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Findhorn's EDE course teaches holistically - from the heart and the head. The different facilitators taught from a place of optimism and love of their work. I was inspired by the other participants as much as from the wonderful teachers. I left the EDE month-long course with a huge number of new skills, new friends around the globe, and most importantly, a sense that a more gaia-centered civilisation is not only possible, but is happening already. I am honored to have been a part of such a rich programme and to help spread the word. - Miranda Loud, Rialto Art Inc, USA For me, the month I spent at Findhorn for the EDE was incredibly powerful. Well-taught, empowering, motivating, it gave me a wide array of tools facts, excercises, rhetoric, personal empowerment, process and practice to take the message of sustainable living out into the world. Gandhi said Be the change you want to see in the world, I feel that having completed the EDE I really can. - Annie Palone