WHY CAPE?
Sustainability is no longer an elective. The world is urgently calling for visionary leaders who embody new paradigms, new practices, and new stories for how we can live in harmony with each other and all life.
Ecovillages – intentional communities that integrate ecological, economic, social, and cultural sustainability – are ideal campuses for experientially learning about human-scale solutions to our global ecological and social crises. From indigenous communities to high tech cohousing developments, ecovillages are experimenting with ways to live both well and lightly.
After deeply connecting with people devoted to creating a sustainable future, students return asking. “How can I make a positive difference in my own life, in my own community, and in the world?”
If you can imagine an ecovillage-based program, we can deliver it. CAPE supports your vision and works behind the scenes to provide high-quality, custom programs that meet your goals and can be promoted with your institutional branding.
WITH CAPE, YOU BECOME THE HERO!
CAPE works with a diversity of course topics and creates meaningful, transformative experiences of being in community, through safe, academically challenging, and culturally enriching ecovillage-based programs.
WHAT MAKES US UNIQUE
Integrated solutions: By bringing together solutions in the economic, ecological, and social dimensions, ecovillages are creating new cultures for how we might live well and lightly in a post-carbon world.
Global Reach: Partnering with the Global Ecovillages Network and Gaia Education, CAPE has access to a worldwide network of ecovillages, non-governmental organizations, and community empowerment groups.
Global Context: We have curricula and materials available to help students understand what makes their host community an ecovillage and how it fits within the global movement towards sustainable community development.
Group Building: Through cooperative games, reflection circles, and co-created group norms and agreements, we pride ourselves in developing learning communities within living communities.
Deep Immersion: Participants work side-by-side with local experts and create meaningful relationships while making a real difference in the communities they visit.
Green Infrastructure: From keet-roofed *capsules* in India to cob and straw-bale *dome-atories* in green kibbutzim, students live and learn in eco-buildings and classrooms.
Carbon Consciousness: Participants are invited to use our online tools to measure and “onset” their travel emissions by contributing money or time to a sustainability project in their host community.
Healthy, Local Food: Most ecovillages produce at least some of their own food and it is typically organic, nutritious, and delicious. Students often have opportunities to harvest their own food as well.