EDE Curriculum

The Ecovillage Design Curriculum has a wide range of practical application and is full of innovative materials, ideas and tools that have been developed and tested in ecovillage communities worldwide.    

The EDE Curriculum is available for download gratis, for personal use only (i.e. not for resale at a profit). EDE Copyright © Gaia Education

Click here to download EDE in English
Click here to download EDE in Spanish
Click here to download EDE in Portuguese
Click here to download EDE in Japanese
Click here to download EDE in Finnish

Ecovillage Design Education is:

An education where a thorough and objective assessment of the state of the planet is followed by regional, community, and place-based solutions.
An education that empowers individuals and communities with the knowledge for shaping their worlds and becoming more self-reliant while engaging in bioregional as well as international cooperation.
An education that is universal in scope but local in application, directed toward preserving precious cultural diversity.
An education where investigating theory is followed by practical application.
An education that imparts useful and instrumental life-skills as part of the curriculum.
An education relevant to people in rural and urban regions.
An education promoting and facilitating healthful planetary evolution, as well as the well-being and quality of life of individuals and their communities everywhere.
An education exploring and expanding the perceived limits of human potential.
An education that informs, enables and inspires community-based visions of a sustainable human civilization as well as the means to turn such visions into reality during the course of the 21st century.

Ecovillage Design Education is of relevance to:

community leaders in ecovillages as well as rural and urban communities everywhere
students with an interest in sustainable design,
educators wishing to develop new skills and perspectives,
community redevelopers & builders,
members of non-governmental organizations,
urban, rural and regional planning professionals,
professionals in architectural, engineering and building careers,
permaculture and horticultural researchers and designers,
renewable technologists,
business leaders interested in social and environmental responsibility and ethical development.

So far the EDE curriculum has been applied in a variety of different programmes, with formats ranging from week-long intensives, to four blocks of one week, weekend intensives followed by evening classes, to a longer series of weekend courses. Crystal Waters is currently pioneering a 4-month-long EDE-apprenticeship programme, and a number of universities have been in engaged in a dialogue about creating an academically accredited masters programme in sustainable community/ecovillage design based on the EDE curriculum.