Place-based Education
Bhoomi College
India
Bhoomi College is located just outside Bangalore, a city known as the high-tech capital of India; yet Bhoomi represents something very different. On its lush campus, Bhoomi has brought together an impressive array of thinkers and practitioners in fields like local food and farming, holistic and place-based education, green energy, trade policy, sustainable water systems, and more. They offer year-long graduate degree programs in Sustainable Living and Holistic Education, as well as a large number of shorter courses. They also offer internships, host a farmers market and repair cafe, and maintain a full calendar of events, lectures, and conferences — from talks about carbon alternatives to tree plantings and monsoon celebrations. They also issue the Bhoomi Award for Localisation, “Established to celebrate the spirit and honour the work of individuals, organisations and communities in India that have made outstanding contributions towards economic localisation and/or community based local ecological projects.” To learn more, visit http://bhoomicollege.org.
Photo by Bhoomi College (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning
Canada
This unique school, located beside a lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada, was founded to reverse the process of disconnection from lands, families, languages, spiritual traditions, and history imposed on the young people of Canada’s Indigenous First Nations. To learn more about Dechinta, visit: http://dechinta.ca.
Photo by Dave Bezaire (CC BY-SA 2.0)/ Drying Salmon
Edventure Frome
UK
Edventure Frome empowers cooperative community enterprises by hosting free 10-week courses that teach groups of young adults to design and create a place-based start-up venture together. An early student team created the Welsh Mill Hub: a community center with co-working offices, a commercial kitchen, and event spaces available for hourly rental. Later cohorts used the Mill Hub space to create more enterprises….
https://edventurefrome.org/about/us-in-2-minutes/
Food Ed
USA
A few years ago, the staff of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture realized that while school gardens were gaining in popularity in elementary schools, there was still a systemic lack of food education programs for high schoolers. They created Food Ed, a semester-long course that explores the intersection of food, nutrition, agriculture, history, and the environment.
https://www.stonebarnscenter.org
Foxfire Magazine
USA
In 1966, at Rabun County High School in rural Appalachia, an English teacher and his students decided to drop their standard curriculum and instead create a magazine to share local folklore and practical knowledge of living close to the land. Since then, students have spent classroom time interviewing elders in their communities, writing articles about the living traditions and heritage of Appalachia, and publishing a biennial magazine. Learn more on the Foxfire website.
https://www.foxfire.org/about-foxfire/