Gaia University Associates & Friends

What is Gaia University?

Gaia University is a growing institution for higher learning offering accredited degree programs for real-world action in self and planetary transformation.  Our students (called associates) are able to earn accredited Bachelors & Masters degrees and Graduate Diplomas whilst being actively engaged in self and planetary transformation and ecosocial regeneration.

Gaia U is based on a methodology called action learning and is guided by the principles of Earth care, people care, & fair share.  Within that framework, associates work on self-chosen, self-directed projects anywhere in the world they wish, documenting their outcomes and their learning process along the way.  Throughout their program, they are supported by a worldwide network of learning providers, advisors and mentors and a collaborative online E-learning environment.  

Fusing passion and vision with self-directed practical experience, associates thus initiate and nurture local and global sustainability, regeneration, justice and peace. And they refine themselves to become effective world changers.

Mission

Gaia University nurtures systematic and conscious development of emerging leaders, visionaries, elders, and activists, through accredited action-learning in the formation of initiatives to co-create integrated, regenerative, ecological, communitarian and ethical human societies.Gaia University links organizations using the allied vectors of teaching and learning. Thus organizations may retain their unique missions while linking cooperatively to provide a learning ecology increasing the number and scope of global regeneration initiatives.

Purpose Statements

• Develop an international learning network focused on constructive action towards humanity's evolution. Gaia University will harvest from the world’s wealth of existing, emerging, ethical, ecological, and communitarian projects active in planetary renewal, catalyzing synergetic relationships. Allowing an organic infrastructure to encourage their emergence into a functioning new cultural economy.
• Create and maintain a light, user-friendly, low-overhead “liberating structure” for accreditation, learning design, tutorial input and registry activities with exemplary quality assurance systems suited for the small to medium enterprise culture in which the bulk of regeneration projects exist.
• Accelerate the emergence of a teaching and learning based economy capable of generating livelihoods congruent to regeneration activities.
• Increase the professional and political legitimacy of the fields of study relevant to regeneration.

What is the function of Gaia University in our global context?

Embracing change amidst cultural acceleration and globalization inspires new forms of agile, open-ended, hands-on learning. Gaia University is designed as a facilitating structure for this emergence, with its focus on self-directed study, education rooted in relevant localized projects, maximization of resources, and learning outcomes aiding global regeneration set in the context of a polyvocal and multi-lingual planetary conscious network. Preparedness is a basic function that Gaia University serves to demonstrate and develop as a relevant evolution.

How Gaia University can accomplish this change?

Gaia University provides credibility and resources that allow communities and organizations already active in planetary renewal work to facilitate individual, societal, and ecological transformation to remain maximally effective in the existing political economy and societal infrastructures without compromising the birth of this new cultural paradigm. Groups that will benefit from Gaia University’s accreditation include: earth-literate farmers, artisans, trades people, community activists, environmentalists, social justice workers, indigenous peoples from diverse global cultures, cultural visionaries, conscious emerging leaders, the ever increasing inspired visionary youth and people from all ages, cultures, and walks of life whose eyes are open to the paradigm shift and are seeking to make the transition from conventional to regenerative lifestyles. Whole villages and towns might decide to revitalize their community using the Gaia University structure to infuse their bioregions with meaningful employment and learning opportunities that emphasize a truly sustainable and evolutionary way of life. The Gaia University structure will enable people to set their own goals while training in careers and trades that are personally meaningful and relevant as they contribute toward the healing of the Earth and the creation of an abundant, thriving, regenerative culture in their local community and bioregion.

Ethical Organizational Design and Biomimicry

Gaia University is an institution conceived and designed with a whole systems approach. By basing the mission firmly in the three ethics of permaculture; earth care, people care, and fair shares; Gaia University embraces an earth-conscious vision. All degree programs and relationships are developed through the ethical lens of permaculture. The unique vision of Gaia University allows it to create a support system for the cutting edge mycelic expansion of our emerging culture.

Gaia University also utilizes the Permaculture principles to create a design system called SADIE (survey, analysis, design, and evaluation). SADIE allows for associates, and the organization as a whole to actively apply self-regulation and accept feedback to creatively use and respond to change. This unique Learning methodology is institutionalized in the acknowledgement that we are all learners, creating an adaptive and responsive structure that can create and maintain networks of organizations through the commonality of learning.