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A two hour drive from Wote in the Makueni district of Kenya lies the village of Ngomano.  The last 9 miles of the trip to the village center takes a four-wheel drive vehicle and nerves of steel.  Not only are you sharing the single lane road with goats, sheep, cattle and people heading to get water, but what is used as a road is often deeply rutted and washed out.  Hold on to your stomach for this bumpy ride.

Just before you arrive at the village center of Ngomano a small side road to the left takes you a hundred yards to The Clay International School.  This school was developed by PEI Kenya as an innovative way to teach, and in order to create a sustainable community.

I like that PEI Kenya is trying to work themselves out of a job, and the villagers like it too.  While initially skeptical, and who could blame them with the numerous abandoned or partially finished buildings put up by western groups seeking to ‘help’, the community is a shareholder in this process.

Some of the amazing accomplishments that I’ve seen:
- A women-owned cooperative in the village make beautiful traditionally woven baskets for sale locally and internationally
- The village now has access to clean drinking water after a long struggle with drought
- The school grows a variety of crops that are native, provide a balanced diet to the students, and are more resilient for when ‘the rains fail’

But the question remains, what does it take to help a rural village in Kenya to become truly sustainable?  While the answer is still in the process of being developed in Ngomano, it is clearly on its way.

I send my heartfelt congratulations to the first graduating class of The Clay International School!

Out to dinner with my friend the other night I casually referred to Peak Oil in a discussion. We were talking about topics that might be potential articles on Earth Thrives. As it turns out he didn’t know what Peak Oil was. Hadn’t heard about it and didn’t mention the fact until I had rolled on to another topic.

This friend had spent at least the past two years running a company whose focus sales demographic was the triple bottom line business, and so I assumed that he of all people would know what peak oil was. Turns out I was wrong.

Over the next week I asked another ten colleagues and friends if they knew what Peak oil was. I expected that they would know when I asked and was not prepared to find that all but one of them didn’t.

I shouldn’t have assumed that my friend or anyone else, for that matter, has the same knowledge that I have. This is not to say that I am amazing, but more to show that my foci are unique to my interests. We all have our own interests which lead to what we read, look up and study in depth. The topics that I have spent more time with include (but are certainly not limited to):
Urban gardens, Peak Oil, sustainable communities, organization development; leadership development, GMO’s (genetically modified organisms), socially responsible business, alternative economies, and local living economies.

While I have spent that last two years immersed in the world of green and sustainable while working on my Masters degree from Goddard College in Socially Responsible Business and Sustainable Communities, not everyone else has gone as in depth in the same topics, even industry professionals.

Let’s face it, many people still think of sustainability as a topic that stands on its own, when it is really a lens through which you see the world.

So, don’t assume that if you bring up something like the Andersonville Study in a conversation about why buying local is important that the person you are talking to has a clue to what you just referred. Ask if they have heard about terms, studies, and topics that you otherwise might take for granted that they know. It will help you to educate yourself as well as others and that is what we need to have happen in order to build the breadth and depth of our information.

What a great opportunity we have in our everyday lives to educate others about ‘going green.’ Teachable moments are often given to us several times per day.

I think that sometimes they pass not because we have not taken the opportunity, but because we do not know that there is an opportunity there.

In the words of Joni Mitchell…
“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till its gone”

Let’s not make that mistake. Let’s work to have discussions with those around us. You can educate without pontificating (instructions to follow.)

I know that I feel totally immersed in the green movement and sometimes when someone asks me ‘what’s new?’ I feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin. This also happens when asked ‘what can I do?’ There is just so much and so many way to answer that. I think that the main difficulty is because it is hard from an open statement like that to judge a person’s level of knowledge and understanding.

My suggestion is instead of waiting to be asked, begin a conversation and listen – really listen – to where a persons interests lie. Ask them questions. Eventually you will find the intersection of your knowledge and their interests and will have a natural opportunity for discussion that is not forced.

Someone I know was recently sitting on a bus in the Pioneer Valley and two college-aged women were nearby. One of the women pulled out a carrot and started to eat it.

“Where’d you get that old fashioned carrot?” the other girl asked.

That comment shows us the disconnect that many people have to the food that they eat and where it comes from. It also tell me that education is important so that people know what vegetables look like out of the ground and before they are processed.

I think at some point we have all heard that we are teaching today’s children for jobs that do not yet exist. How do you do that?!

One way is to look into the future and imagine what skills the children of today will need. I believe that in order to accomplish this a revolution in teaching style and content is necessary.

So let’s imagine…
Based on the current environmental situations around the world we are looking at a few different possible futures (adapted from Green for All/ Van Jones):
eco-equity – Green for all
eco-chic/ apartheid – Green for some but not all
eco-apocalypse – Green for none

Since the key is to success is working towards the positive, let’s imagine then the best possible outcome. The one in which equality is key. What would you need to teach today’s student so that they are able to have the skills necessary to not just live, but to thrive in a post-petroleum world?

There in no question that we will one day run out of oil. It is a finite resource. You should believe this if you also agree with the statement “the earth is round.” What I am referring to is peak oil.

Since the question is not if but when we move to a post-oil world, we really do need to create systems and have them in place so that when this inevitability happens we are prepared.

I believe that our education system is broken and has been for awhile. I have felt this and wondered how to deal with it. I have been to conferences where it was discussed, but in the past 6 years I have not seen any major changes or revolutions.

I believe that we can, together, imagine, or re-imagine what we need to teach to students so that they will be prepared for the mess that they have been left. To teach the skills that will be practical for the jobs in sectors that don’t exist yet.

So let’s think.

Rebuild our education system in a way that we are teaching those skills.

What skills can you imagine might be important? What information is currently untaught or outside of the curriculum that becomes important?

And last but certainly not least->
Viva la revolution!