Teaching Regeneration in Barichara

Something really inspiring is happening in Barichara right now…

Yesterday I led a two-hour discussion with our teachers at Sueños del Bosque about regeneration. What it is. How it works. Why we need to understand where humanity is in planetary evolution. And how to integrate it all with our regenerative school for children.

We started with the ideas of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela -- two Chilean philosopher/scientists who discovered that life is auto-poeitic and continually creating itself from its surroundings. From there we explored how life seeks harmony and evolves with changing contexts. And we explored how organisms create intelligence emergently as bodies in their environments.

It was beautiful to see how the Waldorf-inspired pedagogical cycle of our school already maps to existing cycles of nature in our bioregion. And how we are in a combination of discovering and recovering Indigenous lifeways from the Northern Andes.

All of it will be blended in our school as children learn how to be healers and stewards of ecosystems -- and also to be designers and visionaries of regenerative economies.

This was after a morning meeting to outline how we will begin a community process with the land Las Ruinas to dream as a territory about what kinds of educational patterns we want in the bioparque. That process will begin with an initial gathering of stakeholders in February. And a parallel process will begin to integrate this work of Tierra Sagrada (Sacred Earth) and our territorial foundation Fundación Barichara Regenerativa.

A lot is setting in motion for 2025 in Barichara. These are merely two threads among many.

Onward, fellow humans!