Building Community and Embracing Diversity

The overall focus of this week is on the social aspect, designed to develop the skills needed to work effectively with both large and small groups. Using an experiential format, we will start by looking at how to create a learning environment that meets the needs of all, looking at individual learning styles and needs. From there we will learn how to design inclusive group agreements as a foundation for embracing diversity. We will explore the role of games in building groups and community - both theory and practice. We will learn the processes which define community glue and common ground - including values, vision and mission - and will understand the relationship between task, process and relationship.

Communication Skills and Decision-Making

We will learn how to shift from a defensive to a collaborative communication of our perspectives. To turn what could be a challenge into an opportunity by harvesting the creative potential inherent in diversity. We will introduce a wide variety of easy-to-learn and simple-to-use methods and tools designed to bring deep communication and a sense of achievement to group work.

Topics include:
Nonviolent, compassionate communication and feedback
Decision-making processes - from autocratic to consensus

Conflict Facilitation
Conflicts are a part of our life like storms are a variety of weather. In fact, in groups that are truly diverse, differences are both a sign of health and an invitation to creativity. The most important lesson is to change our attitude from avoiding conflicts to looking at them with interest and openness. This means stepping out of a “winner-loser“ and into a “win-win“ perspective. Win-Win solutions become possible after all involved parties of a conflict have been heard and understood.

Topics include:
Steps for facilitating differences and conflicts successfully
Obstacles to harmonious interaction: rank and privilege, cultural and structural roots of conflict, gossip, personal attacks and cynicism


Coaching and Empowerment

We will introduce the communication skill of coaching that is useful when it comes to empowering others. Participants will learn the basic concept and some of the skills of coaching which put emphasis on asking powerful questions to help others find the answer within.

Topics include:
Coaching and empowermenth
Philosophy of coaching
Basic coaching skills
Coaching in community

We will explore issues of power and leadership in the context of building group synergy in organisations, communities and ecovillages. Participants will learn methods for facilitating circles, rotation of leadership, leaderless circles, the use of silence, ritual, pacing, conversation, dialogue, and other aspects of the ageless art of maintaining or facilitating circles.

Celebrating Life: Creativity and Art
This module will explore how to integrate art, land, creativity and community life. We will learn how, by creating a culture of ethics, aesthetics and beauty, we can free ourselves progressively from the tyranny of a materialistic worldview which has separated us from each other and alienated us from the earth. We will look at the role of the artist in reinvigorating and healing local communities, and at art as a liberating force for collective transformation and self-realisation. We will work creatively with environmental art in a variety of ways which are not simply about the landscape, but which actually take place in it. Such art can contribute to our becoming a less destructive and more benign presence on our planet. Facilitated by Lisa Shaw.

The EDE is being introduced to the world at this time to complement, correspond with, and assist in setting a standard for the United Nations'­ Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014.

Please complete the Application Form and Enrolment Questionnaire to

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Training fees
For the whole programme
£1595 payable by participants with low income
£1835 payable by participants with medium income
£2125 payable by participants with high income
For one module
£455/£515/£605 according to income

Fees include tuition, accommodation, vegetarian meals and field trips.

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If you cannot afford the full fee, please check out our bursary guidelines.
If you can afford to pay more than the full fee for this programme, your donation will be gratefully received and used to help those who cannot afford the whole fee.



Pracha Hutanuwatr, Thai activist and intellectual, is a former Buddhist monk with a socialist background. He has worked under the guidance of Buddhadasa Bhikku, a renowned, Buddhist monk and philosopher who developed the concept of Dhammic Socialism; and Sulak Sivaraksa, an influential, independent thinker. In 1988 Sulak and Pracha founded the International Network of Engaged Buddhists.
Pracha is Director of Wongsanit Ashram and Director of Spirit in Education Movement, an NGO organising Grassroots Leadership Training in South East Asia. He has published several major books in Thai. Recently he and Ramu Mannivan published (in English): Asian Futures: Dialogue for Change, containing intensive interviews with 14 prominent Asian thinkers.

May East is a Brazilian social change activist who has spent the last 30 years working internationally with music, indigenous people, women, antinuclear, environmental and sustainable human settlements movements. Since 1992 she has lived at the Findhorn Foundation ecovillage in Scotland where she is the Ecovillage Education Coordinator, the Director of International Relations between the Foundation, the Global Ecovillage Network and the United Nations. May is a facilitator of the World Wisdom Council of the Club of Budapest and works internationally as an ecovillage consultant and educator. She is currently coordinating the establishment of a UNITAR CIFAL training centre at Findhorn.

Hide Enomoto has been a professional Life Coach for more than 10 years offering coaching and leadership trainings around the world. He is passionate about bringing empowerment to both individuals and communities so that they can take responsibility for creating the change they want to see in their world. One of his current project involves teaching coaching and leadership skills to community leaders in South East Asia working to empower the underprivileged people in that region. He is also a successful entrepreneur and author, and has played a key role in introducing coaching to Japan.


Lisa Shaw is an artist, designer and environmental educator. She is a partner in the Ecovillage Institute, an ecological design and engineering firm based at Findhorn. She has worked on water restoration projects in India, China, Bolivia, Russia and the UK as part of the Ecovillage Institute team, educating for the restoration and sustainable use of water and soil. She-co founded Lookfar Connections, an environmental education cooperative, and Grasshopper Art and Nature Camp for children in Vermont USA, which she ran for five years. Lisa uses art as an educational tool, bringing people together in a creative and inspirational way, teaching art to adults and children.