Eco-learning 

Trees of Hope is an eco learning project that draws respectfully on knowledge, understanding and forms of action that have been developed by indigenous communities and by organisations committed to promoting biodiversity, equity and sustainability. Trees of Hope supports the development of eco-social, bio-mimic and therapeutic pedagogies that draw on a diversity of music / arts and community traditions.

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Learning with Trees of Hope encourages participants to further the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It encourages shifts in self awareness and consciousness that as humans we ourselves are part of the natural world and that we need to care for it as we depend on its gifts for our survival.

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Learning with Trees of Hope focusses attention on the relationship between the natural sciences and the creative processes of music and the arts. Through participation in creative ecological actions and reflections, learners are encouraged to identify new ways of knowing, doing, being and living alongside others in harmony with nature.

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Trees of Hope upholds the principle of inclusion through promoting open dialogic approaches to enquiry and learning. Trees of Hope is envisaged as a listening project, prompting participants to be attentive to each other and responsive to the emerging calls of the natural world for support.

It is hoped that music, dance and arts experiences will encourage participants to make new connections and see environmental predicaments through the eyes of others. It is hoped that sharing learning from locally initiated action enquiries about biodiversity through equitable global partnerships will challenge residual colonial dispositions and contribute to social cohesion, ecological balance and personal well being.

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The particularities of the local flora and fauna, which derive from sandy soils resting on granite outcrops, form the backcloth of the ToH’s proposed permaculture activities. The interplay of local natural phenomena were well known to the ancestors of some of the participants as evidenced in ancient cave paintings in the vicinity. Understanding of these interconnecting features have also been portrayed in sketches by children working in the Zambuko Community Library and Cultural Centre (2002) and the more recent detailed memory maps created by Kennedy Tafara Chinyere.

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The complexities of this fragile biodiversity are matched in the social sphere which reflects the rapidly changing aspirations of a population that has experienced colonial oppression and apartheid, the ravages of the war of independence and the recent devastations of an HIV epidemic. These have all interrupted the flow of ecological understanding and know-how between generations. The team sought to establish ToH as a learning project that draws on indigenous knowledge and traditional skills - summarised by the concept of Chinyakare, the ancestral ways of being and learning - in ways that can influence local awareness and even the curricula of local primary and secondary schools.

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Historically the relationship with land has bound these people together and secured their survival. The ToH team is proposing a critical and dialogic action based learning programme that conjoins indigenous practices with the methodologies of permaculture organisations addressing comparable challenges worldwide. In early discussions this learning programme was named as ‘Chinyakare based permaculture education’ that promotes earth and people care practices through recognising the cultural traditions that have previously protected the natural interplay between local mountains, plains and valleys. It will also reflect other recent scientific findings that link farming practices and biodiversity protection. Thus, the ToH team is evoking the principles of dialogic and decolonising engagement that ensures respect for the knowledge base of the community and addresses the risks of experiencing an inappropriate extension of western methodologies.

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​Nick Clough, Jane Tarr and Kennedy Tafara Chinyere June 2024