Global Ecovillage Educators

Gaia Education was created over a series of meetings among international ecovillage educators. The group decided to call itself the GEESE (Global Ecovillage Educators for Sustainable Earth) to acknowledge the importance of collaboration and roving leadership as it is exhibited by the migration behaviour of a flock of geese.

The current members of GEESE have designed the Ecovillage Design Curriculum and compose the Board and various working groups focused on areas such as programme development, outreach, certification, strategy and finance, and publishing.

Brief biographical profiles of the GEESE:

Massimo Candela is resident of Ecovillage Torri Superiore, near Ventimiglia, Italy, since 1993 (www.torri-superiore.org). He is president of the Ture Nirvane Cooperative Company that runs the ecological guest house and the course programmes. He holds Permaculture Design and Permaculture Teaching diplomas. He is one of the founders of the Italian Permaculture Academy. Experience includes: Ecovillage Design Course and Practicum led by Max Lindegger at Crystal Waters (2001); Ecovillage Design Course at Torri, with Morag Gamble and Evan Raymond from SEED International. He taught with Lucilla Borio Ecovillage Creation courses in Torri, Croatia and Bosnia.

Giovanni Ciarlo is co-founder of the ecovillage Ecoaldea Huehuecoyotl, a centre for the exploration of the arts and ecology in central Mexico www.huehuecoyote.org. He helped form the Ecovillage Network of the Americas http://ena.ecovillage.org and serves on the Board of the Global Ecovillage Network. He is also a professional Arts-In-Education Consultant and a trained group facilitator. He is an associate member of the International Institute for Facilitation and Consensus (www.iifac.org) and leads workshop trainings in Group Facilitation in the US and Mexico. Since 2003 he has co-directed sustainability programs in Mexico in collaboration with Goddard College of Vermont and Living Routes Ecovillage Studies of Massachusetts. He currently divides his time between the US and Mexico, linking community sustainable projects in both countries.

Jonathan Dawson is a sustainability educator and activist. He has spent much of the last 20 years involved in development work in Africa and South Asia, as a researcher, author, project manager and consultant, working primarily in the field of small enterprise and community economic development. He lives at the Findhorn Community (www.ecovillagefindhorn.org), where he teaches human ecology and applied sustainability studies. Jonathan is Executive Secretary of the Global Ecovillage Network for Europe in which capacity he is heavily involved in writing, representational and networking activities.



May East is a Brazilian social change activist who has spent the last 30 years working internationally with music, indigenous people, women, antinuclear, environmental and sustainable human settlements movements. Since 1992 she has lived at the Findhorn Foundation ecovillage in Scotland (www.ecovillagefindhorn.org) where she is the Ecovillage Project Education Coordinator, the Director of International Relations between the Foundation, the Global Ecovillage Network and the United Nations, as well as a Trustee. May is a teacher of the International Holistic University and works internationally as an ecovillage consultant and educator. She currently is coordinating the actions of the Global Ecovillage Network and Gaia Education vis a vis the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014.

Hide Enomoto has been a professional coach for more than 10 years and has been offering coaching and leadership trainings around the world. He is passionate about bringing empowerment to wherever it is needed and, most recently, his central interest revolves around how to empower communities so that they can take responsibility in creating the change they want to see in their world. He currently lives in Scotland near Findhorn with his family to explore and expand new possibilities both on the personal front and the professional front. He is also a successful entrepreneur and an author, and has played a key role in introducing coaching to Japan.


Daniel Greenberg has studied and directed community-based educational programs for over 15 years. He visited and corresponded with over 200 U.S. intentional communities for his Ph.D. dissertation on children and education in community, and later spent a year at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland working with children and families there.~ He is the founder and Executive Director of Living Routes (www.livingroutes.org), which develops accredited ecovillage-based education programs that promote sustainability. He lives at the Sirius Community in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, USA, with his wife Monique and their two daughters, Simone and Pema.

Maddy Harland is the editor of Permaculture Magazine, solutions for sustainable living (www.permaculture.co.uk) and a co-founder with her partner, Tim, of Permanent Publications, a company dedicated to publishing solution-orientated practical books since 1990. Permanent Publications are  co-publishers of Gaia Education's Four Keys series. Maddy helped found the Sustainability Centre (www.earthworks-trust.com) in Hampshire, UK, a former military base, now a budding community which hosts conferences, runs a varied non-residential and residential educational programme for adults and children, and has an award winning eco-hostel. The centre is also host to a woodland burial site, varied community volunteer programmes and Permanent Publications.

Hildur Jackson was born in Denmark in 1942 and has been married to Ross Jackson for 40 years. She has three sons and five grandchildren. She is a lawyer, cultural sociologist, permaculture and ecovillage designer and writer. She initiated one of the three first Danish cohousings in 1970. Hildur is co-founder of Gaia Trust (www.gaia.org), the Danish National Network of Ecovillages (LOS) and the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN). Ross and Hildur have just initiated a new project: The Lavegaard project, where they will teach the EDE. She has authored several books including: Ecovillage Living: Restoring the Earth and her People (2002), co-edited with Karen Svensson; Creating Harmony: Conflict Resolution in Community (1998); and a video: Rashmi Mayur: A Man of the New Global Renaissance.

Ross Jackson, Ph.D., was born in Canada in 1938, and is Chairman/founder of Gaia Trust, Denmark (www.gaia.org). He has an educational background in physics, management, and economics, specialising in operations research. Ross was for many years a management consultant and IT systems designer, working in various branches of the business world, eventually specialising in international finance, where his foreign exchange know-how provided the financing for Gaia Trust‚s programmes to support a more sustainable and spiritual world. He now devotes more time to writing. His books to date include: And We ARE Doing It: Building an Ecovillage Future; Kali Yuga Odyssey: A Spiritual Journey; and, hot from the presses this summer, Shaker of the Speare: The Francis Bacon Story. Ross is a member of the GEN Advisory Board and is a board member of the recent Gaia Education initiative.

Anja Kosha Joubert was born and grew up in South Africa. The system of Apartheid deeply influenced her life's path: she decided to devote herself to the study and practice of trustful communication amongst humans. She has been living in intentional communities for the past 20 years and presently lives in the Ecovillage of Sieben Linden in Germany (www.oekodorf7linden.de). She focalises courses on community-building and is part of a consultancy team that takes the knowledge gained in ecovillages out to support projects in the wider society (www.gemeinschaftsberatung.de). Kosha co-edited the Social Key: Beyond You and Me. Inspirations and Wisdom for Building Community.

Will Keepin, Ph.D., is President of the Satyana Institute, a non-profit organization founded in 1996 to integrate spiritual wisdom into social change leadership (www.satyana.org). Will's passion is to bridge the inner mystical journey with an outer life of service. He has been a colleague and friend of the Global Ecovillage Network since an early planning meeting in 1994. Originally trained as a physicist, Will's advocacy work on sustainable energy influenced environmental policy in several countries. Will is a certified practitioner of Holotropic Breathwork, and has founded training programs for social activists including Leading with Spirit and Gender Reconciliation. He has published widely, and is Adjunct Faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He leads retreats on interfaith mysticism in India, and supports interfaith projects for battered women in India.

Max O. Lindegger is a designer of ecological communities and sustainable systems of international repute (www.ecologicalsolutions.com.au). He is a respected and sought-after teacher in the disciplines of sustainable systems. His reputation is born of 20 years of hands-on experience and leadership in the design and implementation of practical solutions to the challenges of sustainability. As the creator and Director of the Oceania/Asia secretariat of the Global Ecovillage Network, Max participates in and contributes to the international flow of current thinking and best practice in the fields of sustainable systems design and education. Max was a primary partner in the design and development of the Habitat Award winning Crystal Waters Permaculture Village, where he lives. This is a robust ecovillage situated in south-east Queensland, Australia, and is the site of the award winning EcoCentre learning facility the venue for many of his courses. He has designed and consulted on numerous community developments including the Spiers Project (S. Africa), Gqnubie Green (S. Africa), Living & Learning Centre (Sri Lanka), Vatukarasa Village (Fiji), Garopaba Project (Brazil), and China Walls (Australia). Max was awarded the (Australian) Prime Minister‚s Centenary Medal in 2003 for "distinguished achievement in the field of developing sustainable communities".

Christopher Mare has been pioneering comprehensive, transdisciplinary,
multidimensional, fully accredited education in the emerging field of Ecovillage Design since 1994. Lacking a precedent in Academia, these studies have been exploratory, producing curricula that are prototypical. Mare founded and currently directs an educational nonprofit Village Design Institute (www.villagedesign.org) whose purpose is to collect, organize, and disseminate a knowledge base promoting sustainability at 'village' scale. Mare lives in the Cascadia bioregion of North America, where he conducts workshops and courses in Ecovillage Design.

Ina Meyer-Stoll is one of the two executive secretaries of the Global Ecovillage Network of Europe (www.gen-europe.org). She has lived in intentional communities since 1984 and is a founding member of the ZEGG ecovillage in Germany (www.zegg.de). She is a communications trainer and supervisor, specialising in the process of building community, and is a networker, a peace activist, and has visited many ecovillages in Europe.






Marti Mueller from Auroville, South India (www.auroville.org), vision keeper for GEN and Gaia Trust, has 30 years of experience in the field of education, 20 years of community experience, and is former professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris. She is co-founder of 'Children and Trees Research' with UNESCO and the Indian Government. Marti is the author of Indigo Spirit for a Child Friendly Planet. She has also worked on the Earth Restoration Corps curriculum and The University of the Streets and Alleys. Her current concerns: Establishing a wildlife sanctuary to protect a UNESCO World Heritage site in central India, editing a spiritual anthology on new curricula for communities, and researching a book on Himalayan tribal people and the protection of their indigenous customs.

Helena Norberg-Hodge is a leading analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures around the world. A linguist by training, she was educated in Sweden, Germany, England and the United States, and speaks seven languages. Ms. Norberg-Hodge is founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC), which runs programmes on four continents aimed at strengthening ecological diversity and community, with a particular emphasis on local food and farming. Ms. Norberg-Hodge also directs the Ladakh Project, renowned for its twenty-five years of groundbreaking work in sustainable development on the Tibetan plateau. She is the author of numerous works, including Bringing the Food Economy Home (October, 2002) and the 'inspirational classic', Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, which together with an award-winning film of the same title has been translated into more than 35 languages.

Géza Varga graduated with degrees in agronomy + professional management, specializing in organic agriculture and alternative technologies. He is the founder of the first Hungarian ecovillage project called "Galgafarm" since 1988 (www.gaiaalapitvany.hu). Geza is also director of the "Gaia" Ecological and Rural Development Foundation since 1990. This Foundation has run a Research and Education Centre since 1996, which is a residential school with 36 beds and a restaurant for adult rural people.

Daniel Christian Wahl studied biology, ecology and zoology at the University of Edinburgh and the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has visited, worked and volunteered at a number of ecovillages and eco-centres in Europe. In 2002, he completed his Masters in Holistic Science at Schumacher College about ecological design and the ecovillage movement as a practical expression of a holistic worldview. He worked as an eco-design consultant in Spain and regularly publishes with the magazine EcoHabitar. In 2006, Daniel received his PhD in Natural Design from the University of Dundee, and took part in the first Ecovillage Design Education training of trainers at the Findhorn Foundation. He joined Gaia Education in early 2007 and will be teaching on the EDE course in Thailand in December 2007. Daniel lectures and publishes internationally. He is his currently working on a documentary on ecovillage design.

Liz Walker is co-founder and executive director of EcoVillage at Ithaca, Inc. (www.ecovillage.ithaca.ny.us), a non-profit educational organization which created and continues to nurture the development of a mainstream ecovillage community in Ithaca, NY, that includes multiple cohousing neighborhoods, organic farms, open space preservation and hands-on educational work. Since its inception in 1991, EVI has received national and international awards and media recognition. Liz is the author of the new book EcoVillage at Ithaca: Pioneering a Sustainable Culture (New Society Publishers, 2005). Liz has spent the last thirty years working full-time on social change work that promotes community, environmental responsibility and personal growth. She is a skilled writer, facilitator, mediator, trainer, public speaker, and project manager. Liz is a board member of the Gaia Education initiative.

Marian Zeitlin has been living since 1996 in Senegal, as a member of the EcoYoff Ecovillage and director of the EcoYoff Living & Learning Center. Marian has first degree in mathematics from Oberlin College and Ph.D. in nutritional biochemistry and international nutrition planning from MIT. She taught and practised social science research and international development program design at Tufts University (Boston), and taught human ecology at Findhorn in 1995. Since 1996 she supervises ecovillage internships and organizes and teaches sustainable development courses in Senegal