The Center for Ecoliteracy (CEL) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to education for sustainable living

Sustainable living

Sustainable living is a lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual's or society's use of the Earth's natural resources and his/her own resources. Practitioners of sustainable living often attempt to reduce their carbon footprint by altering methods of transportation, energy consumption and diet...

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About

Located in Berkeley, California

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

, the Center for Ecoliteracy's stated mission is to support schooling for sustainability

Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...

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It was founded in 1995 by philanthropist Peter Buckley, physicist/author Fritjof Capra

Fritjof Capra

Fritjof Capra is an Austrian-born American physicist. He is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, and is on the faculty of Schumacher College....

, and think tank director Zenobia Barlow to apply ecological, systems thinking principles to K-12 education. Its origins arose from a shared belief in the importance of promoting systemic leadership and change in the context of whole schools, honoring the wisdom of indigenous people, and nurturing a reverence for all life.

The Center for Ecoliteracy has supported projects in habitat restoration, school gardens and cooking classes, partnerships between farms and schools, school food transformation, and curricular innovation. Together with the Chez Panisse

Chez Panisse

Chez Panisse is a Berkeley, California restaurant known for using local, organic foods and credited as the inspiration for the style of cooking known as California cuisine. Well-known restauranteur, author, and food activist Alice Waters co-founded Chez Panisse in 1971 with film producer Paul...

 Foundation and Berkeley Unified School District

Berkeley Unified School District

Berkeley Unified School District is the public school district for the city of Berkeley, California. Its administrative offices are located in Berkeley's old city hall on Martin Luther King Jr. Way between Center Street and Allston Way...

, the Center for Ecoliteracy implemented the School Lunch Initiative to provide local, seasonal, and sustainable meals for students as well as experiential learning

Experiential learning

Experiential learning is the process of making meaning from direct experience. Simply put, Experiential Learning is learning from experience. The experience can be staged or left open. Aristotle once said, "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." David A...

 in gardens, kitchen classrooms, and cafeterias. Using a systems approach, the Rethinking School Lunch program offers a planning strategy for revamping food service programs.

The Center for Ecoliteracy’s latest initiative, Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability, aims to provide a framework based on four guiding principles: “Nature is Our Teacher,” “Sustainability is a Community Practice,” “The Real World is the Optimal Learning Environment,” and “Sustainable Living is Rooted in a Deep Knowledge of Place.” It identifies four potential pathways to schooling for sustainability—food, campus, community, and teaching and learning.

Publications

• Michael K. Stone/Center for Ecoliteracy. Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability. California: Watershed Media, September 2009.
• Big Ideas: Linking Food, Culture, Health, and the Environment. Berkeley: Center for Ecoliteracy/Learning in the Real World, 2008.
• Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow, eds. Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books
  Sierra Club Books
  Sierra Club Books is the publishing division of the Sierra Club, founded in 1960 by then Sierra Club President David Brower. Volumes intended for club members had been published prior to 1960. In addition, books under their name had been published before 1960, but done through already established...
  
  , 2005.
• Center for Ecoliteracy. “Rethinking School Lunch Guide.”
• Zenobia Barlow, ed. Ecoliteracy: Mapping the Terrain. Berkeley: Center for Ecoliteracy/Learning in the Real World, 2000.