What You’ll Learn: Course Overview

Orientation Call: Laying the Foundation (July 9)

This beginning week we will spend time getting to know one another as we set our intentions as a transformational learning community and begin our co-creative process with one another. You’ll have the chance to share personally.

Week 1: How Do You Get There From Here? (July 16)

In our first week together, we will clarify the guiding inquiries for the course, which will lay the groundwork for all the future classes.

In addition, there will be a guest appearance by poet, teacher, writer and speaker, Drew Dellinger. Drew has inspired hearts and minds around the world through his poetry and keynotes on justice, ecology, cosmology, activism, democracy and compassion.

In Week 1, you’ll explore:

• Your current connection to sustainability
• The possibilities for our future and practical and hopeful ways we can green our world
• What is yours to do in the area of sustainability – the place where your passion and the world’s needs intersect

Week 2: Your Part in Healing the Web of Life (July 23)

In our second week together, we will take the time to survey the state of our world-its climate, oceans, rivers, forests, and animal communities. We will feel into each one, like we would touch and feel our body after an accident. It can be scary, but we need to know how we are doing so we know what needs to be done. Special guest Brock Dolman, founding member and resident of a thriving intentional community, Sowing Circle LLC, will be joining us.

In Week 2, you’ll explore:

• How you have responded to change in your life (successes and failures) and how you can become more resilient
• Why it’s difficult for humans to respond quickly and effectively to environmental changes – and what we can do to navigate these collective challenges together

Week 3: Energizing and Empowering You to Help Solve the Crisis (July 30)

Energy! How we harness energy is the source of great promise and potential or destruction and demise. What exactly is our “energy crisis?” In many ways, it’s a crisis of imagination and will-power. Can we move toward clean and sustainable ways of powering our civilization and our lives? How?

This week we will explore what doesn’t work as well as renewable energy solutions, localization, and conservation efforts.

In Week 3, you’ll explore:

• What energizes you in life and what depletes you – and how you can bring your life back into balance
• The ways your personal relationship to energy informs what needs to change on a global level to achieve a more sustainable world
• The energetic benefits of becoming more green

Week 4: Crafting Your Vision of a Just Society (Aug 6)

You are one of Earth’s 7 billion people. As a member of the human race, discovering the immense challenges – like overpopulation, hunger, global migration, extreme poverty, and human rights violations of women, children, immigrants and indigenous people – can be disturbing.

One way of holding and finding solutions to these difficult issues is to envision what a truly just society might look like. Consider this definition: A just society would share resources to meet every person’s basic needs, so that everyone in the world has access to adequate food, water, shelter, clothing and meaningful work.

To complement this conversation, in this session we will hear from guest faculty Andrew Harvey, an internationally acclaimed poet, novelist, translator and mystical scholar.

In Week 4, you’ll explore:

• The role of social justice in your life – and why it’s important for our world
• Ways you can align your life so that you are helping others not only meet their basic needs, but THRIVE
• What our world could look like with everyone thriving

Week 5: Putting Your Money Where Your Heart Is (Aug 13)

Oikos (meaning “home”) is the root of both ECO-logy and ECO-nomy. This session involves re-connecting eco-logy and eco-nomy in ways that matter personally and globally. Rinaldo Brutoco, founding president of the World Business Academy, will join us for this session.

In Week 5, you’ll explore:

• How assumptions around money = happiness, time = money, success = wealth affect you, your family and friends, your culture and the world
• Your feelings around doing something useful and not being paid for it – and how you can make a shift
• The interconnections between the economy, social justice and ecology
• Personal choices you can make to contribute to a “new economy”

Week 6: It’s Your Community After All (Aug 20)

This week we will consider the “how to.” Communities can be designed and built with environmental sustainability, spiritual fulfillment and social justice as guiding and foundational principles. We will study emerging models that engage the imagination, skills, resources and sponsorship necessary for large-scale community change.

What does it mean for a community to support and embody the movement toward sustainable living? What, in all honesty, is the alternative?

During this session, we will have a special guest appearance by author, proponent and catalyst for inclusivity and spiritual transformation, Sharif Abdullah, whose work on inclusivity has taken him to more than two dozen countries playing a key role in several international forums.

In Week 6, you’ll explore:

• How expected and unexpected changes emerge as human communities become inclusive and sustainable
• Ways you can become more fulfilled in your work, church, school, neighborhood, sports club, etc. and what communal activities are ripe for revision, reform and renewal
• Steps you can take now to create a thriving community for yourself and your family

Week 7: Getting Personal and Keeping It Real (Aug 27)

This week we embark upon a “no-impact” journey, where we experiment with daily actions that are respectful of “all our relations.” During the past seven weeks, we have explored myriad ways all of us- all human societies, ecological systems and every living being – are intricately connected.

We honor this wondrous interweaving by adopting, and adapting to, mutually beneficial (low-impact) lifestyles. Thus we co-create a thriving world, moment by moment and action by action-every day!

In Week 7, you’ll explore:

• Where you experience ecological disconnects (where you cause harm) in your life – and what you can do about it
• The role of spirituality and overall wellbeing in sustaining you in a no-impact way of life
• The ways your lifestyle is already low-impact – take note and celebrate!

Bonus #1: Live Coaching Call with Spring of Sustainability Co-Producers Vinit Allen and Steve Motenko (August 9 at 12pm PDT)

During this live bonus session, Spring of Sustainability co-producers Vinit Allen and Steve Motenko will coach you on how you can bring to life your ecological values and truly implement them on a daily basis as well as answer your questions on how to live a life of engaged environmental activism.

Vinit will bring a fresh perspective as a recent delegate to the UN World Summit that just took place in Rio de Janeiro.

Vinit Allen is an educator and event producer, and has been an activist in environmental, peace and human rights arenas for about 30 years. He produced the Sustainable World Symposium twice in San Francisco and is a facilitator trainer for the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium. He was a delegate at the UN World Summit In Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002, where the Sustainable World Symposium and Sourcebook were conceived, and he also served as a delegate to the UN World Summit that just took place in Rio de Janeiro.

Steve Motenko is a certified personal coach and leadership trainer, and formerly an award-winning journalist, music teacher and advocate for educational reform. Steve’s passion for sustainability, for transformative education, and for an integral approach to the interdependence of all life led him to a leadership role in the Awakening the Dreamer facilitator community, and in 2011 to the Sustainable World Coalition.

Bonus #2: "Living in Alignment with Your Values" Audio

With Vicki Robin, coauthor of Your Money or Your Life, and Alisa Gravitz, Executive Director of Green America

In this Bonus Audio, you’ll learn how to bring your lifestyle choices into complete alignment with your values. You’ll learn remarkable tips and strategies that can save you money, streamline your life, and open up new possibilities. Benefits include:

• How to go green without going broke
• Using your social networks for collaborative consumption: meeting everyone’s needs together
• Specific strategies for clothing, food, transportation, gifting and fun that save money (and the earth)

Vicki Robin is the coauthor of the international bestseller, Your Money or Your Life (5 years on the Business Week list) and is a leading voice for sustainable consumption. She was featured as one of 61 Visionaries by Utne Magazine, named the “prophet of consumption downsizers” by the NY Times, has received awards from Sustainable Northwest and Green America, and has appeared regularly for 20 years in the media including Oprah Winfrey show, NPR and PBS specials as well as over 1,000 other media stories. She is a member of a community choir and an improvisational theater troupe on Whidbey Island, Washington.

Alisa Gravitz has led Green America, the national green economy organization for more than 27 years. Green America (formerly Co-op America) develops marketplace solutions to social and environmental problems with a key focus on tackling climate change, building fair trading systems, stopping corporate abuse and growing the green economy. Alisa is a leading expert on how families and businesses can "go green," saving money and resources. She is also a nationally recognized leader in the social investment industry. She authored Green America’s acclaimed Guide to Social Investing, with over a million copies in print and the popular Guide to Community Investing. She earned her MBA from Harvard University and her BA in economics and environmental sciences from Brandeis University.