First… Thank you for all your inspiring work in the world. We honor and welcome your commitment, your diverse dreams, your gifts, your struggles and your experiments.

We invite you to gather this January (22nd – 24th) as part of a growing community of learning practitioners from around the world committed to re-imagining higher education. This gathering will be specific to those in Turtle Island/North America, to connect around the unique social, political, and educational ecosystems present here and now. We see these as charged times, with much at stake. This gathering is a place for deep, Earth-based togethering, so while we will use screens, we will also use our feet and hands and roots to learn.

The theme we are centering around is HOPE. Arms open. Fists raised. Hearts ablaze. Breathing together we will find our inner orientation that allows us to more wholly embody the hope we each hold.

Together, anchored by our individual and collective hopes, we will hold questions such as:

• How do we practice a politics of care and pedagogy of hope in these times of multiple crises?
• How can we learn with/from the multiple knowledges that are found in Turtle Island?
• How can we create the kinds of relationships that can hold us as we address the racial, ecological, patriarchal, capitalistic violences of white supremacy and settler colonialism?
• What could accountability, reparations, and healing look like in our learning communities?
• How can we collectively build learning communities rather than education systems to meet the challenges of the time and to nurture future generations? 
• How can we be queering education? What can the LGBTQ community teach us about learning?
• What kinds of healing practices can be used to support us through times of crisis?
• How can we re-build and re-connect our relationships to the places we dwell?

About Ecoversities

We strive to cultivate human and ecological flourishing in response to the multitude of urgent and critical challenges of our times. Since 2015, the Ecoversities Alliance has hosted  4 international gatherings and regional networks have been active in Latin America, Indian sub-continent, Pacific, Europe, Africa and the Arab World. 

The Invitation

We invite you to join us as a co-creator of the 1st Turtle Island Regional Gathering of this planetary alliance. We will be meeting for ~4 hours per day on Jan 22-24th, 2021.  Our aim is to keep this first gathering focused on connecting, opening, and exploring how we desire to be a regional group.

Please complete this short form. We will then send more details as they become available.

Note: There is no monetary charge for this event, we recognize it is an investment of your time and energy. We are creating a solidarity fund that will be available to support certain folks’ participation and hope those who are able can donate gifts (money, skills, time, etc.).

Our vision

The Ecoversities Alliance seeks to transform the unsustainable and unjust economic, political and social systems/mindsets that dominate the planet. We wish to do this by actively transforming the ways we learn, the tools we use to make sense of the world, and the ways we create and share knowledge.

Our mission

– To support learners and communities around the world to reclaim their own processes of un/learning, knowledge co-creation and community building.

– Inspiring, nourishing, connecting and giving visibility to diverse ecoversities initiatives around the world.

– Building solidarities, collective inquiries, inter-cultural dialogue and new experiments in higher education.

– Nurturing an ecology of knowledges, radical pedagogies and learning commons to expand human consciousness and cultural and ecological regeneration.

We invite you to be part of our Community.

The Ecoversities Alliance is a trans-local learning community of over 100 transformative learning spaces from more than 40 countries around the world who have been meeting and working together since 2015 through international and regional gatherings, learning exchanges, campaigns, workshops, learning journeys, film festivals and publications.

Take your time to explore our website at http://ecoversities.org/ecoversities/ to learn about other Alliance members and how to reach out to them.

With love,

Udi, Kelly, Brandon, Kate, Rosemary, Eileen, Sierra & the Ecoversities Alliance

P.S. If you’re still wrapping your head around what it’s like to join an Ecoversities gathering, this and this may be places to explore.