Green Success Stories shines the Green Spotlight on Adi Benea, climate action educator for the Terra.do Learning for Action course, Climate Fresk facilitator trainer, and creator and leader of indigaia, an organization providing regenerative learning journeys. Adi discusses his extensive and evolving sustainability journey, from feeling the connectedness of nature and humans in his birthplace in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania, to learning and working in Surakarta, Indonesia where he created indigaia, to travels and transformative educational experiences in South-East Asia and South America. Adi encourages readers to embrace the learning and teaching experiences that are happening in our lives daily, and to recognize how we all contribute to how our world looks and feels.
Tell us a bit about your sustainability journey.
My sustainability journey began as a child, growing up in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. I was spending most of my time outdoors with my friends and the mountains were our playground. The time spent in nature helped us understand that there is a connection between nature and humans and that there is an impact our behavior has upon nature. Later on, after graduating from university, this understanding solidified as I started to travel the world and see how strongly ecosystems are affected by human behavior on different scales in different regions of our planet.
In 2014 I had the amazing opportunity to coordinate a research project for a local NGO in the city of Surakarta, Indonesia. The experience exposed me to the work done by local NGOs not only in Indonesia, but worldwide. During my stay in Indonesia, I was invited to share my knowledge with students from the University of Muhammadiyah Ponorogo. That experience led to creation of the “indigaia” project with programs focused on personal development and environmental education.
Traveling through South-East Asia, I took the “indigaia” project with me and implemented some of the programs in Vietnam. In 2017 I moved to Ecuador where I lived and worked as a teacher at Cacique Tumbala, a school on the coast near the city of Playas. Living there opened doors for new understanding as the school was an intercultural bilingual one and the locals were descendants of the Huancavilca Culture, a fascinating pre-Colombian culture. Besides Spanish and English, the students were also learning Kichwa, the language of the descendants of the Inca Empire.
In 2018 I moved to the Galapagos Islands where I worked as a teacher for sustainability at Tomas de Berlanga School. Working with alternative educational methodologies and a contextualized curriculum, participating and guiding professional development workshops, I got to learn about the work of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how to integrate them in K-12 education. While there I became the school’s representative in the UN Global School’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
One thing led to another naturally and in 2023 I became a climate action educator for Terra.do, guiding the “Learning for Action” course. In the same year I became a “Climate Fresk” facilitator and now I am a trainer of facilitators. Since then I have been guiding people worldwide through learning journeys that teach about climate change; more than climate change, they provide understanding of what lies at the foundation of global challenges that we collectively face as a species.
Tell us a bit about the product or solution you offer.
The challenges we face as a global community are at a scale and magnitude that pushes us to reconsider the way we live as a species. These challenges offer us an opportunity to explore our potential and to co-create a healthier world for us as individuals, for our communities and for our home, Planet Earth. In safe learning spaces designed for understanding the individual and collective potential, learners reconnect with themselves, others and nature, and become conscious co-creators of our world.
I guide awareness-based learning journeys shaped in the form of educational projects and climate change education, designed for educational communities, local communities or organizations. Based on my international experiences in education with different age groups in multicultural environments and working with different learning methodologies, I created a conceptual framework for learning processes called “Life Learning”, which is a life-based learning methodology. The methodology proposes a holistic approach to learning and it invites us to not only learn about life, but to also learn from it and the way we relate to it in its following expressions: the individual self, the collective society and the natural environment.
What would you do with $1 billion dollars?
I would create and finance the creation of a network of a thousand $1 million dollar social & environmental entrepreneurship projects aligned with the values of the work I am doing. Part of the revenue and ROI would push the “repeat” button.
What do you envision your industry looking like in ten years?
I feel that the way education looks and feels will change a lot as emerging technologies such as A.I. are being introduced in educational systems. How will this shape education, only time will tell! Creating and accessing information will be faster and easier than ever before; however, it is important to understand that significant education is more than acquiring and reproducing information. I believe that significant education goes beyond just the mind and implies experiences that invite the use of all of our senses. Besides having access to all existing information there’s also a need for self, societal and environmental awareness that comes based on real life experience. I hope that we choose to take a step towards this kind of education.
What would you like readers to take away from this article?
Learning goes beyond the walls of an institution or the structure of a process. Learning experiences are happening in our lives daily. When we choose to recognize them, we accept that we are learners and teachers. We learn from people when we choose to do so, and people learn from us when we share who we truly are and from the wisdom we have. What we keep from what we learn, what and how we share, is always and forever our choice. By understanding this we understand that we all contribute to how our societies look and feel like, because we are all co-creators of our world!
How should readers get in touch with you and/or your organization?
Kudos
Many thanks to Adi Benea and to indiGaia.
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