Designing Ecological Habitats - Gaia Education

200 Designing ecological Habitats
Beginning a series
of meetings that
would become the
social infrastructure
underlying the
physical structure of
the new ecovillage.
Sarvodaya villages operate within the framework of a model of ‘moral
education for environmental protection’. This is based on traditional Asian
cultural values and differs from material-oriented, isolating development
models. The Sarvodaya model emphasizes balanced sustainable agriculture
based on eco-friendly farming practices; further, it promotes practices
conducive to sustainable natural resource management.
Development Objectives of Damniyamgama Ecovillage
Sarvodaya implemented the Damniyamgama Ecovillage Development
Project under its overall Tsunami Reconstruction Programme. The overall
development objective of the recently constructed ecovillage was to test
an innovative model that is environmentally friendly, operationalises
participatory planning at village-scale, and empowers communities to
effectively make their own decisions – thus leading to environmentally selfsustainable
development and education.
Through training, education, information sharing, courses, and
community interaction the Sarvodaya organisation worked diligently on
development of a social infrastructure that was to become the underlying
foundation for the physical infrastructure.
To achieve the above objective, several programmes were conducted by
the Sarvodaya before resettling the community. Environmental awareness
programmes were undertaken by the bio-diversity unit and included topics
such as the concept of an ecovillage, environmental degradation and
organic farming. The social empowerment division undertook programmes
to develop peoples’ positive attitudes toward their social relationships.
Trainings were undertaken on topics such as ‘conflict resolution’ and