Gaia Academy is an education institution for holistic lifestyle studies. Gaia Academy is part of Estonian Ecovillage Association and both are working together to contribute for sustainable development education. We offer different Gaia Education based courses for adults and host different other holistic courses.
Our Story
The idea of Gaia Academy as an educational institution took 10 years to become into reality. A small group of people started to closely research and visit various international eco-villages, invited foreign lectors from these communities to Estonia and did a lot of study on available written materials.
It became soon very clear that eco-villages are very inspirational places, where the solutions to transform the society into a new paradigm are being tested. Some solutions, which appeared to be viable and sustainable, simply worked much better compared to any old ways.
At the same time in year 2005 the Gaia Education Curriculum was completed followed by the organization (acting as the partner of UN) that develops and certifies it under the name of Gaia Education and which we also teach. The movement of Gaia Education in Estonia has from the very beginning organized various informative events and small training courses with foreign lectors. In 2011 took place the first EDE – The Ecovillage Design Education intensive course based on Gaia Education Curriculum. This initiated concrete new phenomena’s to be born – Gaia Schools in Tallinn and Mõisamaa eco-village, which today has many new branches, also the Small Footprint Community that acts in Mõisamaa eco-village.
In autumn 2015 started Gaia Academy with the yearlong EDE based course “The Basis of Holistic Lifestyle” (TEA), followed by the course “The Conscious Teacher of our time”. Today the Gaia Academy circle has bounded together a community of hundred’s of “gaia” people and our experience shows that people truly change after acquiring this education – they learn to trust themselves, become bold and get to know the group’s support.
At the end of summer 2017 the international Week of Strategy of Gaia Education and co-operation of Gaia Schools took place in Estonia, when a long time spokesperson of Gaia Education May East visited Estonia. An official co-operation pact was signed between Tallinn University and Gaia Education organization that develops and conducts the Gaia Education in order to strengthen the already existing co-operation in the field of sustainable development.
In July 2018 the international Eco-Villages Movement (GEN) Conference “The Wisdom of Conscious Communities” took place in Estonia, which brought together up to 700 participants, including the representatives of 40 different communities around the globe. In the Conference it was concluded that Estonia has become the pilot country to represent Gaia Education, since this educational approach is today available from the elementary school up to the University level, including the continuing education for adults.
The life practices born from the eco-villages are contributing to the holistic approach of life and human beings – from composting toilets to the meditation, these two practices can be easily compared and related. So, the saying goes: feet on ground and head in the sky! We dear to claim that such educational institute which clearly formulates the above as a starting point and base values have never existed before in the land of Estonia.