New Community Paradigms

Matt Powers is an author, educator, seed saver, gardener, and entrepreneur focused on radically transforming the entire K-12 education system through the collegiate system as well as the economy such that it aligns with regenerative science, natural principles, and permaculture ethics: Earth Care, People Care, & Future Care. Matt, a former public high school teacher with a Masters degree in Education, is the author of the first government accredited permaculture curriculum in North America (fully cited, peer-reviewed, & aligned to national standards), and his work continues to spread in schools, colleges, and universities globally with over a dozen books in 6 languages and 9 online courses.

Morag lives amidst an award-winning permaculture education garden in a UN recognised permaculture village, and works with city farmers, school farmers, community gardeners, and educators. She sees the direct social and ecological impact of industrial farming on marginalised farming communities around the world - in Indonesia, India and most recently in East Africa.

At SupplyShift, we're committed to helping businesses create more transparent, responsible, and resilient supply chains. We believe that, when properly managed, a company's supplier network can deliver incredible value for the company, the greater economy, and can play an important role in changing our world for the better.

"The Climate Action Simulation is a highly interactive, role-playing game. It uses the En-ROADS simulation model to engage a wide range of participants in exploring key technology and policy solutions for addressing global warming. The game is conducted as a simulated emergency climate summit organized by the United Nations that convenes global stakeholders to establish a concrete plan that limits warming to Paris Agreement goals. This game is a fun format for large groups to explore climate change solutions and see what it would really take to address this global challenge.  "

Andrew Millison has obeen designing, building, and teaching about Permaculture since he took his first course in 1996. He began teaching Permaculture at the college level in 2001 and has been an instructor at Oregon State University in the Horticulture Department since 2009. Andrew currently teaches the Permaculture Design Course at OSU both on campus and online.

During the last three decades, a new conception of life has emerged at the forefront of science. It is a unified view that integrates life's biological, cognitive, social and ecological dimensions. At the very core of this new understanding of life we find a profound change of metaphors: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network. This new science of life is now being developed by outstanding researchers and their teams around the world. I have integrated their concepts and ideas into a single coherent framework - a unique synthesis, which I will teach for the first time in this online course.

"The e-learning programme consists of four dimensions: Social Design, Ecological Design, Economic Design and Worldview., each contained in an eight-week period.  You will learn skills and effective methods to collaborate with others in regenerative design for societal transformation and the creation of thriving communities within vibrant regional economies. The course will explore case studies and best process examples that demonstrate how regenerative cultures use energy and materials with greater efficiency, distribute wealth more fairly and strive to eliminate the concept of waste, in order to regenerate the material, energy and social resources they depend upon as much as possible at the local and regional scale. "

The Transformation Journey Program is the result of 5 years of work, translating the outcomes of the 4 r3.0 Blueprints on Reporting, Accounting, Data, and New Business Models into a step-by-step process for all organisations of all sizes and constituencies on how to become thriveable and creating system value.

The Four Rivers: a course for r.evolutionary changemakers is much more than a course. It's a fledgling learning community of people who are exploring and co-creating a new sense of self, authentic ways of relating to one another, growing an enlivening culture, and designing wiser systems. This course is also about making a collective contribution to the possible human that we can become only when supported by the power of transformative teaching-learning communities.

Prosocial is a method for improving human welfare through creating more effective, harmonious, equitable and cooperative groups. Prosocial has been applied in situations as diverse as helping a school to enhance collaboration among teachers and students, a community to reduce the spread of Ebola and a network of environmental groups seeking to cooperate more effectively to achieve their common aims. Prosocial works best for groups, and networks of groups, that are interested in human welfare, not just economic outcomes.

These principles were initially derived by Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist by training, for groups that were attempting to manage common-pool resources. The fact that groups possessing these design features were capable of managing their own affairs was so new against the background of received economic wisdom that Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009. The design principles were later generalized by David Sloan Wilson, Ostrom, and Michael Cox in two respects. First, they follow from the basic evolutionary dynamics of cooperation in all species and our own evolutionary history as a highly cooperative species. Second, because of their theoretical generality, they apply to a much broader range of human groups than those attempting to manage common-pool resources. That is why they provide a practical framework for improving the efficacy groups, which is the objective of PROSOCIAL." (http://alanhonick.com/prosocial/)

"Below you can find our resources which explore intersections of the COVID-19 crisis, climate change, equity, and beyond. Dr. Elizabeth Sawin, Co-Director and Co-Founder of Climate Interactive, reflects on how systems thinking approaches are necessary during this time. Her ideas highlight the need for applying a multisolving lens - emphasizing that as we find solutions to address one crisis, we can remediate and prevent other issues. "