The Earthville Network has begun work to establish a new eco-campus in the US as a part of the Earthville Education initiative to provide holistic experiential learning and empowerment for responsible citizens of our planet.

The new campus will showcase solutions for sustainable and compassionate living, including nature-sensitive and life-affirming approaches to building, landscaping, food-growing, water, energy, waste management and more.

After more than 20 years incubating the vision for the new institute and cultivating a global network of partners while conducting programs at our Himalayan campus, groundwork for the US campus finally began in 2021, on beautiful land in rural Colorado.

This page presents an overview of the vision and an invitation to participate in creating this exciting and promising project.

The vision

An integrated model for learning, service & sustainable thriving

The Earthville Institute in Colorado will support the lifelong study and practice of five interrelated disciplines integral to a flourishing society:

• Sustainable living
• Responsible local and global citizenship
• Sustainable business and social entrepreneurship
• Integrated personal development, including holistic health and well-being, communication, collaboration, and leadership
• Creativity and the arts, especially as applied to altruistic service and responsible entrepreneurship

The institute will embody an integrated organizational model, a hybrid of three core elements:

• A school for lifelong learning

  In addition to our formal events and programs, we make every aspect of our work (including the creation, operation, and evolution of the institute itself) available as meaningful experiential learning experiences for people of all ages and backgrounds.

• An incubator, living laboratory, and showcase

  Earthville Institute serves as a contemplative think tank incubating projects for a more compassionate world, and its evolving campus is a real-world proving ground and showcase for regionally appropriate solutions and best practices for ecological sustainability.

• A community of purpose

  Earthville catalyzes human connections among kindred spirits aspiring to live with compassion and contribute to a more harmonious world, and provides myriad forms of support for those relationships to flourish in collaborative service to the greater good.

While each of these three core elements is valuable and necessary in itself, it is the synergistic connections between them that makes this integrated model especially promising. As a hybrid institution with an interdisciplinary approach, it will serve as a fertile ground for real-world learning in the living context of the exploration and application of effective, holistic, and sustainable solutions addressing the complex challenges of our local and global communities. Equally importantly, the many benefits of integration, cross-pollination, and economies of scale created through the collaborative colocation of the various components will make all of them both more effective and more efficient: greater results with fewer inputs.

Similar to our eco-campus in the Himalayas, the new Colorado campus will serve as a showcase for regionally appropriate best practices for ecological sustainability, and the creation and evolution of these solutions will serve as a training ground for the pioneering social entrepreneurs, experiential educators, nonprofit leaders, ecological innovators, and altruistic creatives of today and tomorrow. As with everything else we do, we open up every stage of the development process as a living classroom so that others will have myriad opportunities to learn while helping us create the campus.

Current status

Place: A beautiful expanse of land in Colorado has been acquired, with ample space and natural features to support a thriving learning community while treading lightly on the natural environment.

People: A core team has converged to take the first steps to translate the vision into reality. Starting in April 2021, Earthville founder Mark Moore and Earthville board member and architect Daphne Charles undertook a traditional period of observation of the land through all four seasons (including wildlife activity, precipitation patterns, etc.), and in 2022 began the process of designing the campus’s first buildings, which will embody a blend of natural adobe, straw bale, and traditional timber framing techniques. In June 2022, Earthville was delighted to welcome James Simmons and Anya Chang-DePuy, both of whom come from Carpe Diem Education, to the core team for the new institute.

Infrastructure and facilities: Construction began in 2022 and will continue at a gentle and mindful pace for years to come.

Programs: Our first experiential education and service-learning programs on the new campus took place in August and September 2022, and these programs continue today. See Earthville Institute’s events page for details.

Website: earthvilleinstitute.org

Development roadmap

The development of the Colorado campus is envisioned in three phases.

Phase 1 — SEED STAGE (2021-2025): Site observation, architectural planning, team building, initial infrastructure, program development, resource-raising, and inaugural service-learning programs.

Phase 2 – CORE FACILITIES & INITIAL PROGRAMS (~2026-2030): This phase will also provide an array of service-learning opportunities for students, interns, volunteers, and community partners interested in sustainability, compassionate engagement, and organizational development. Long-term volunteers participants will have opportunities to be a part of bringing the campus to life and learn in the process. Details forthcoming.

Phase 3 – COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, CAPACITY BUILDING, AND OUTREACH (~2030 onward): Sometime around 2030 or so, we expect to have developed the basic infrastructure and facilities for the campus to the point where the learning community and programs will be well positioned to begin scaling up and reaching out. We’ll have more to share about the vision for this phase a few years down the road.

Help us make it happen

For those interested in supporting financially or materially, contributions are most appreciated and are tax-deductible in the USA.

The current estimated financial support required in the first two phases delineated above is as follows:

Phase 1 (including planning, initial construction, and startup-phase operational budget):  approximately $1.2 million

Phase 2 (including completion of basic infrastructure and operational costs through the sixth year and projected self-sustainability): approximately $3 million

Formal proposals available upon request.

To donate securely online via credit card or PayPal, use the button below.

For other donation options, see Earthville Institute’s donation page.

For those interested in supporting by volunteering your time and heart and ideas, or to discuss other possibilities for how you might support the establishment of the Earthville Institute, please contact us.

Got ideas? We’re listening.

Get Involved

There are several ways you can participate in the Earthville Education initiative and make your unique contributions to this exciting project: