Co-hosted by

Youth Alliance and Swaraj University

10th to 17th April, 2019
Tapovan Ashram, Udaipur

"It's 3:23 in the morning, and I'm awake because my great-great grandchildren won't let me sleep. My great-great grandchildren ask me in dreams, what did you do while the planet was plundered? What did you do when the Earth was unravelling? Surely you did something when the seasons started failing. As the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying? Did you fill the streets with protest when democracy was stolen? What did you do once you knew?" ~ Drew Dellinger
We are at a tipping point, amidst chaos created by the confluence of huge ecological imbalance, rapid rise of technology, beyond grasp economic systems and utter failure as social specie to understand our roles. It is important to ask ourselves, now and at this moment – “What kind of world are we leaving for our grandchildren?”

The 8-day long, intense open-house workshop will take us through a journey of reconnecting with nature and questioning our lifestyles, our consumption patterns, our standards to measure success, happiness and of course ourselves.

A mix of field visits, film screenings, participative discussions, nature connect practices, interactive activities, and sharing of personal experiences, this workshop at length, would take us through different stages of development – extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal – to aspects we are many a times unaware of. The workshop intends to demonstrate how these processes have subtly seeped into our patterns of thinking and in-fact is manifestations of our internal chaos. We will understand the untying knots of intersections between ecology, economics and the human self. Most importantly, this workshop aims to offer opportunities to co-create spaces where we can rekindle our once lost connection with nature.

This invitation extends to:

  • Those nature lovers looking for reasons to live a more responsible, conscious and holistic life
  • Those seekers willing to understand the big picture and figure out where they are placed in it
  • Those searching for roles other than those of the mindless consumer
  • Those struggling to find happiness or success in standards set up for them by the society, media, market and education system
  • And to those small groups of ‘thoughtful committed citizens’ who think they can bring around some transformation in the world.

About the facilitators

Rahul Hasija works as a Co-Director and Lead facilitator at Swaraj University hosting modules on self-awareness, listening, unlearning, team-building, reconnecting with the ancestral roots, rethinking development and nature connect. A keen observer of consumer psychology and practitioner of systems thinking, he shares his understanding of it through his writings, facilitation, theatre plays, mono-acts and lifestyle for the past 9 years. He is preliminary editor of book ‘Narmada – River of Joy’, translated and edited ‘The Original Forest’ and has worked as sub-editor at an ecology, food and farming quarterly ‘Eternal Bhoomi’ in Bangalore. Community building, zero-medicine life, nature-cure, gardening, bird watching, making herbal products, designing facilitation processes, theatre and folk dances are areas of his interest and engagement. Growing food, cooking and harnessing the culture of abundance and gift help him in his efforts to live a simple and Earth-honouring lifestyle. *

Vibhuti is a founding member of Youth Alliance. Last 8 years, she has action research on holistic education experiences through different organizations like Teach for India, Make a Difference, Shikshantar Andolan, Sri Ram Ashram (Haridwar) and Youth Alliance. At YA, she wears many hats - program design, facilitation and building the alumni community are a few. She is motivated and driven by incessant self-learning which makes her travel often. With her diverse interests in art, cooking and baking, clowning, cycling, interplay, she is exploring life through different mediums. Her most recent obsession is to unravel modernism and create conversations to challenge our perceptions about it. She is also very passionate about sustainable and holistic living and is looking at creating her base at an eco farm in the near future. She is a grauate in Economics from Lady Shriram College, University of Delhi

Born to parents working on child rights, Isha Parul Falgun imbibed a deep sense of social justice. While growing up she was part of a children's collective Balsena that built her to stand up for what is right and the power of collective love and non violence. Post her schooling, she joined Swaraj University and explored her relationship with nature, began to question the systems around and understood the value of working with hands. She also explored alternative education did a course in Holistic Education in Bhoomi College, Bangalore to deepen the understanding. Currently, she is involved in creating an open learning space for children with Shaishav Child Rights. She co-founded Life Beyond Development, a program to spread awareness on issues of environmental sustainability and social justice among children and youth, and create a space for them to connect to nature. Isha's love for working both with children and youth get manifested in her workshops, where she wants to take her own learning deeper and connect more with mother Earth.


Contribution

We are questioning, challenging and experimenting with our set notions of money and we welcome you to join our experiment and explore your relationship with money.

By participating in such workshops you are supporting and encouraging such learning spaces to thrive and stay alive. You are also taking forward the larger movement of reclaiming our learning. However, it is important that we all contribute to take care of the needs of the space, facilitators and meet the actual expenses of hosting such a workshop.

The suggested contribution for this workshop is on sliding scale between Rs 7,500 to Rs 12,000.

Your contribution will support to pay for the local, seasonal and organic (as much as possible) food that you will be served and for your stay at Swaraj University. You would also, partly, be helping those who find it hard to access these spaces due to financial constraints. We would like to accommodate everyone who is interested in this field of work and we understand that some of us might find it challenging to contribute the suggested amount. If so, please feel free to speak or write to us so that we can together look for ways through which we can support each other.

The Applications for this workshop are now closed..