Designing Across Generations
Bioregional Learning with Children in the Heart of It All
Those of you who have followed my journey through the last ten years will know that my relationship with my daughter (who is currently nine years old) has been a deep source of spiritual guidance in the regenerative work I help bring into being. When in moments of doubt or struggle, I found the light by placing children in the heart of what is needed and this has guided me in truly profound ways.
Today I want to share some of the fruits of this journey. We have an amazing documentary film crew in Barichara called Embodic Films. They lead our work through the initiative that we call Historias Regenerativas and have prepared a series of short films about our teachers who do the most important work with us in our learning ecosystem.
If you feel moved by what you see here, please consider supporting Sueños del Bosque in the current Ma Earth funding round — where we receive matching support for every donation that is made. These funds will help us create an off-grid permaculture learning site for the community on the land of Las Ruinas and also go directly to our teachers by providing salaries in 2027.
With no further ado, here is how we are placing children in the heart of our work to birth a bioregional learning center in the Northern Andes of Colombia.
Be Inspired by Children Growing Native Forest
When we began our work in Barichara back in 2020, I led a crowdfunding effort to purchase a heavily degraded piece of land that we call Origen del Agua. Watch this video to see Jessica Lisiewski sharing about how the children inspire her as she teaches them reforestation of the native tropical dry forest of our region.
Note how this is foundational for learning how to regenerate an entire bioregion. If you want to know more about Origen del Agua, there is a longer video that Historias Regenerativas created last year. You can watch it here.
The Garden As Teacher :: Regeneration of Community
Here is one of our teachers named Jona sharing how we are guided through our community gardens to reconnect ourselves with living soils, food security, and weaving of community. What we are discovering is that a regenerative pedagogy takes direct inspiration from the natural world.
The community garden garden program started earlier this year as a pilot on the land of Las Ruinas and is now expanding into several rural schools. Our main limitation in growing this program is staffing and salaries for our teachers.
Notice here that a pattern of territorial regeneration emerges among children and schools through the work of creating more food resilience and the sharing of local knowledge about how to work with living soils.
From Garden to Learning Center
Here is our teacher Nina sharing how her work with children between the ages of 4 and 10 is creating a pattern of regeneration as we move from placing gardens at the center of our pedagogy and begin the work of establishing a community learning center on the land of Las Ruinas.
My partner Penny Heiple has created a beautiful design layout for Las Ruinas as part of a permaculture design course that she took earlier this year. Here is a visual representation for how the land can hold a lot of biodiversity and become a living food forest for the children of this territory.
On the right is the community garden that we established this year. In the upper left, we plan to apply bioconstruction techniques for an off-grid design — meaning we will harvest rainwater from the roofs, install solar panels (and possibly a small wind turbine) to produce electricity, and focus on creating an agroforestry system that promotes ecological education.
You can follow our activities for Sueños del Bosque on Instagram. Check out the website too. And of course, donate to our Ma Earth campaign that runs through July 21st, 2026.
Please share comments below and let us know if you have any questions.
Onward, fellow humans!