Available as a 2 year Masters degree and 1 year Post-Masters Diploma (for people with existing, relevant M degrees).

Read here for a generic description of the 2 year Masters pathway

Introduction.

For people seeking to act in local and regional organizing groups (LOG's and ROG's) of Gaia University as organizers and process advisers. You are proposed as the principal operators and extenders of Gaia University with high degrees of autonomy in determining the substance, form and vigour of activities in your locale and region. The potential for generating a satisfying, meaningful livelihood through promoting high level, action learning for world change in your locale and region is excellent. You will be a significant agent in mobilising the collective intelligence of your region towards ecological regeneration and social justice.

These roles conform to the permaculture principle 'everything gardens' which proposes that all species, including humans, are inherently interested in improving their locale, making it more functional for themselves and others of their kind - thus deer ring-bark some trees in the forest to fell them so that the decaying trunks provide a reachable substrate for nutritious and medicinal mosses and lichens over winter and rabbits crop grass close to their burrows to assist with early observation of predators and increase yields of high protein grasses close to home. People in LOG's and ROG's think of themselves as gardeners of talent in their communities, consider their communities ready for improvement and find creative ways of increasing the yields of useful resources. A one-man LOG story.

Who should apply.

We are seeking mature people with a track record which shows their organising skills. You will have resolved most issues around personal effectiveness, will enjoy working with other people and exhibit a love of life.

Here's an advert we recently placed in the USA.

Your role will be to energise your locale and region as a dynamic learning community, to identify, gather and develop a network of authentic advisers, specialists and mentors who can support new learners in their journey to become ecosocial regeneration actionists.

Read here to lean more about Dates & venues, here to learn more about fees, and here to learn more about Financial Aid.

Program outline.

Core elements in this unique one-year Master of Science/Post-Masters Diploma program are a 10 day opening workshop, a 6 day workshop on completion a year later and a 2 day accreditation festival/graduation contiguous with the completion workshop. 10 + 6 + 2 = 18 days total (total subject to variation). Only two trips to and from the venue will be required.

During the year associate local and regional organisers and process advisers will work at two major tasks:

1. To survey, design, start implementing and evaluating a local and/or regional development strategy in their home regions and
2. To acquire the appropriate advising, mentoring and evaluation skills including developing the capacity to select, brief and train future process advisors, project design advisors and specialist advisors in their region in order to ensure adequate capacity ready for growth.

Support in these activities is provided by a peer group (action learning guild), a process advisor, a project design advisor and appropriate specialist advisors. Thus you will experience the very same pathway support that you will later provide for associates recruited in your area.

Program content.

The opening workshop (known as the Orientation Workshop) has the following functions:

1. To familiarise potential LOG's, ROG's and process advisers with:
   • Action learning methods including
     • what is an action learning tutorial and what difficulties commonly arise for associates in their action learning pathways
     • using the action learning guild method
     • using listening skills to draw out an associates own thinking
     • giving associates evaluation reviews and constructive feedback
     • analysing and developing action learning capabilities
   • Gaia University systems and procedures, especially review and quality assurance systems.
   • Each other and the International Organizers
   • Common languages (e.g. permaculture, spiral dynamics, the patrix) in use in Gaia University as part of the development of Integrative Ecosocial Design
2. For the assembled group to develop an inspired, practical working culture based on the ethics, principles and methods of the intended second-tier (a spiral dynamics term), leaderful, policy-governed, open-source, open-book partnership envisioned for Gaia University and to enhance the means whereby the maintenance of this organizational culture is vigorously attended to.
3. To work through the business model for Gaia University with a view to answering the following questions (at a time of readiness during the whole pathway - thus giving time for research and reflection)
   • Are the base-line costings adequate?
   • How shall we estimate the volume of business expected and can we set regional goals using these estimates?
   • Where is there flexibility within the costings and what are their values?
   • How do we adjust to meet the needs of the varied economies we are likely to want to work in?
   • What is our agreed strategy for negotiating around flexibility?
   • Are we up for income solidarity of some kind?
   • How shall we choose which regions to develop into and how shall we resource expansions into new regions?
   • How shall we measure our performance, collectively and as individuals, and what shall be our methods of evaluation and response?
4. To ensure that each participant is prepared for the entrepreneurial culture of Gaia University through a combination of prior experience and completion of the Masters/Graduate Diploma pathway.

5. To explore our conditioning by the "patrix" with a view to:
   • Noting unaware sexism, racism, classism and other common oppressions interfering with the emergence of a truly human culture
   • Liberating the legitimacy of leadership and support within a culture of partnership
   • Understanding when our thinking is compromised by distress and developing a means to recover our full intelligence
   • Learning how to take good care of ourselves as we step forward to take leadership in the essential task of facilitating our societies through the great transition and long emergency that lies ahead

This section is also guided by the following insight: that the technical solutions for regeneration and social justice are mostly available to us right now. The delay in the widespread, successful adoption of these solutions has to do with the mostly invisible, irrational resistances embedded within the psyches of individuals and societies. These resistances to intelligent transformation are bundled here, for easy recognition and focussed remediation, as the patrix. We will pay attention to raising our awareness of the existence and effects of the patrix, both within ourselves and without and we will actively explore sharp tools whereby we can deconstruct this major limiting factor.

We will be using peer counselling based processes for this essential work (for more information, read the Re-evaluation Counseling home page).

Outputs expected.

Outputs are the pieces of work that evidence the associates learning activities. Outputs can be in any form that is a) deliverable on CD or DVD and b) is capable of being searched - this means that outputs using audio and visual media need written indexes of key words or transcripts. More information about outputs.

There are 6 outputs spaced at approximately 9 week intervals, adjusted for holidays, required during each year of this Organizing Learning for Ecosocial Regeneration MSc. Each has a word equivalence value. This is to indicate the scale of each piece of work.

Check the dates, venues and fees information and ensure you can meet these conditions first. Create a log-in to this site in order to complete an application form.

Start thinking about your Career Review and collecting the necessary portfolio material.