domingo, 13 de fevereiro de 2022

Ivan Sellers (Jun.2021)

 I was very fortunate to grow up with a lot of greenery around me, in contact with nature and its living creatures. I was not aware what impact this would have on my life. 


When I was 20 and studying t university I walked by a whole block next to the university that was filled with rows of vegetables being grown. I enquired within and they told me that they were students growing vegetables organically and giving the food to the soup kitchens in the area for people who could not afford food. I joined in and found out that I absolutely loved to have my hands in the ground and to grow things organically. I was not aware how important this would be for the well-being of my life.

Some years ago a very sad set of events upturned my life and I found myself leaving everything i thought I was for something new. This journey brought me to Portugal and to want to introduce mindfulness, socio-emotional learning, and contemplation into schools as a way to better prepare a next generation for its encounters with the world.

Today I am part of a movement to create the Foundation Terra Agora. The idea behind the foundation is to be able to free land by owning it through an entity committed to never selling it again. Next to this initial concept is the idea of being collectively guardians of nature and not its owners or usurpers. So the question arises how we can regenerate the land we are privileged to have access to. The question also arises how we can set an example of a new way to relate to land, not by owning it but by taking care of it. We are a few weeks away from launching the foundation (I believe) but already it is having an impact on our lives.

More and more I believe that to make this world a better place, we need to shift our values. I am trying to do this by giving greater value to conservation and restoration of nature; honouring the one thing that sustains me in this life above all else. I pray that others are coming also to this sense and that together we make work to bring a sense of the sacred to nature.

Our efforts now our focused on getting the foundation to be a reality, on finding funding for the guardians that will take care of the land and funding to buy additional land. We are also keen to build an eco-system that gives the outmost support to these guardians in their quest to regenerate and to honour mother nature.

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Multidão I4F em Outubro // I4F Crowd in October * 2022

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