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Real stories and small steps toward a more sustainable life.
We talk to people building climate-friendly startups, making better choices in daily life, or just trying something new. Each episode is a chance to learn, get inspired, and maybe try one thing yourself.
Adi (00:00)
I remember when we had one lesson, one of the girls stood up and said, well, we care about nature now.
But when we grow up, we forget about it. We're going to take jobs. And the only thing we want to do is make money. And I was like, wow, it's a seventh grader, imagine!
we can all ask ourselves, regardless of cultural, economic, social background, do I really need to buy this? Because the world in which we live now, it's really inviting to consume.
So we invited all the other students from all the other schools on the island to come for the cleaning event. And then we invited our parents, our grandparents, we invited the scientists, the local scientists,
the drivers, the fishermen, we invited the entire community. And at the day of the event, we had 400 plus people showing up in the main town. it's still...
stands at the biggest cleaning event in the Galapagos Islands history.
Pramod Rao (01:05)
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Sustainably Curious. I started this podcast to explore the quieter, thoughtful ways in which different people live their lives with the intention and care for the planet around them. it's a pleasure to have Adi Benia here. I'm very lucky to have met him. I met him first as part of the course at Terra.do and
Right away, I knew that he's not just someone who is teaching about sustainability, but someone who actually lives it and goes about everything that he does is very thoughtful. And I thought it would be great to get his perspective on how he approaches living a sustainable life. the intention is to keep it a free flowing conversation, explore where the conversations go. And I'm hoping that you all enjoy this as much as I do.
and enjoy listening into the podcast. Adi, great to have you here. Thanks so much for taking the time. Why don't we start off with your introduction, and then we can jump into the conversation after.
Adi (02:05)
Thank you for having me, Pramod. It's a pleasure to be with you. I'm Adi Ben and I come from Romania. I'm just one of the many wandering souls that try to make meaning of the life I'm living. From the professional side of view, the narrative my mind tells me is that I'm a climate change instructor and I focus most of my time and energy
on education for the past decade. Was environmental education, then education for sustainability and now climate change education. And in between many, many other aspects of education. I had the chance to work in different environments, educational environments on different continents with amazing people online, offline, on site with different age groups.
from primary school to now adult education. And on the way, I realized that there are similar challenges and similar opportunities, regardless of the age group I was working with or regardless the context in which I was working. So I started to become curious what education can be beyond what it's already, yeah.
So this is what I do. And besides this, I'm a nature lover forever. I try to spend as much as possible time outdoors, connecting with nature through different activities. Over the years, I have the chance to explore some of the oceans and some of the seas of our planet, scuba diving, surfing, a couple of...
years ago, well, it's more than a decade already. I was also exploring the skies, was skydiving, snowboarding the mountains. And through these activities, I became a bit more aware of the connection we have with nature, but not only how much nature gives us, but also how much we lack in giving back to nature. So this, this
opened a wider window for me to explore how education can contribute to this lack of giving back to nature.
Pramod Rao (04:09)
Really wonderful and inspiring journey so far. I'd love to dive into the genesis or what sparked you to move in this direction around sustainability and education in this space. If you could recall, how did you get into this?
Adi (04:28)
I think it happened gradually. I grew up in Romania, I grew up in the corner of Transylvania in the mountains and our playground basically were the mountains. And we were playing outside with my friends during the summer and the winter, mainly in the mountains that were surrounding our small town in which I grew up. And it was easy to notice the impact we had on nature, the community in which I was living.
In the summer, for example, people were going to the mountains to pick up berries, blueberries, raspberries, wild mushrooms. And sometimes we were finding plastic bottles or aluminum cans behind. And we were wondering, why are the people not bringing these things back to them in town? Because, you know, they brought them with them.
when they were filled and heavier, now they are lighter and they just leave them here. And then slowly, slowly, I took this curiosity of why do we do this? And later I started traveling around the world. I had the amazing chance to explore the world back then. It wasn't very common for people in my country to go traveling, especially backpacking.
Very common back then. And I was lucky enough to end up in Indonesia where I had the chance to live for a year. And there I started working with a local NGO that was focused on different programs. And this sparked the curiosity in me on what the work of an NGO means and how the structure works and what the people do. And I was lucky enough to, because I was the last one to join the team,
This was one of, to put you in context, this was one of the first NGOs in Indonesia. It was created in the seventies and it had two main offices. One, was in the capital city. And the other one was in the city where I was living called Surakarta or Solo. And because as the last one who joined the team, the director of the NGO told me, hey, we don't have any office available for you.
but you can use the library. So we're going to put a desk in the library. So it's fine with me. It's perfect. I was a volunteer. I didn't mind. For me, it was an amazing experience just being with the people, working with them, learning the language. And I noticed that in the library, there were many, many books from many, many global organizations at the time, the Worldwatch Institute,
Worldwide fund and so on. And the books in the library, they were untouched because they were in English. And the only person in the organization that was reading English and speaking English was the Director. And I was curious and I started to open the books and they opened the books one by one. And I realized, wow, something, you know, it was like a light turning on. Wow.
as a society, as a global society, we faced so many challenges along the way. And there are people who dedicate their life in finding solutions to these challenges and say, wow, this is amazing. You can really have a life doing this, doing things that for me at that time, I found them really meaningful. And that was a moment that shifted in my perception of what I can do, how I can...
live my life in a meaningful way. And at the same time, I was invited to to guide students at the University of Muhammadiyah in Pono Rogo, a city a couple of hours away from from Suracarta, Pono Rogo. And I was invited to they asked me to to create a program that motivates the students to learn English.
Because they sense there's a lack of motivation in students to learn a foreign language, especially English. And they took advantage of that and I created two programs. One was Why English? Why we learn English? And I changed a bit the narrative and I invited them to see English language as a tool that can help us in the future to create our own future rather than something we have to learn because
our teachers tells us, our parents tells us to do it. And I use my own experience and I explain them, hey, you know what? I couldn't be here in front of you today if I wasn't able to speak English. It's not my native language either. And I know it might seem that we are influenced by foreign languages, but.
this is a language that is used internationally today. Who knows, maybe in a decade or so it will be Bahasa Indonesia. But for now, it's English. And let's explore together how we can use it. And back then, we didn't have artificial intelligence. We didn't have access to so many things in an easy way. The only thing there was, it was Google, the search engine. And a simple example I was giving them was, imagine you're passionate about photography
and you type in photography strategies or photography skills and everything that comes out to you is a million answers because you typed it in in Bahasa Indonesia. But if you do the same thing in English, you will end up with a billion answers because there are people all over the world who have the same passion as you have and you can learn from different people, from different cultures, with different perspectives.
And the same example extrapolated to a professional learning a foreign language. It means not only that you're able to speak a foreign language, but it also shows that you are able to do your cognition, your way of looking at things. You're able to learn new things. You're eager to learn new things. You're open to towards new cultures. And slowly, slowly students try to open up.
And then I realized that in Indonesia back then there was a huge problem with plastic pollution. And I couldn't understand why. Because people in Indonesia are absolutely amazing. Amazing people, warm, kind, friendly. And I couldn't understand why there's such a difference between the way the people are and the way the local context looks like.
And I realized there's just a lack of understanding of the impact, the choices we make have on the environment around us. And I created this program called Choice. And invited students for one month to bring to the university all the plastic they produce through their consumption. So if you change your toothbrush, don't throw it away. Bring it to the university.
And after one month, we weighed all the plastic that we gathered. And then we multiplied that by 140 million people, because back then there were 140 million people in Indonesia. And we came up with a huge amount of plastic. And then they realized, wow, this is incredible how much we produce. And based on that, slowly, I did a series of environmental.
focused activities and by the end of them, I saw a change in students. And that's how I fell in love with education. said, wow, imagine how powerful this is as a tool to raise awareness in the young generations. And I stuck with it. Since then, I dedicated most of my time and energy to understand.
Pramod Rao (11:45)
There's lots to unpack and thanks so much for sharing that with us. So I think it sparked from your days in Romania, like you were observing and it's a common observation, I think across the world where, like you said, people carry this when the bag is heavy and then they throw it, you know, when it is actually lighter, like they throw plastic around and don't care to just dispose it responsibly
or even figure out alternatives which are non-plastic in nature. And it's great to see how that surfaced back again in your teaching journey in Indonesia. I really like how you
brought about awareness of the size of the problem. Because like you said, everybody has good intentions. But they probably don't realize what is the collective impact of some of these small actions, whether it is purchasing a new toothpaste or, let's say, packets of milk that we throw and so on. But if you add up each household and multiply it,
like at the society level, there are enormous volumes of waste which we dispose of. And small actions can actually compound to a huge impact at a society level. So curious to know.
what are some of the changes that you've seen? For example, in Indonesia or anywhere else, or any stories that you've seen in your own journey from bringing about awareness or even showcasing examples of here's a small change that you can do which can have a outsized impact if more people do it. Anything that comes to mind from what you've seen.
over the years.
Adi (13:22)
One of the things that happens, and I think as an educator, is the best things that can happen after an event, a learning journey, a course that you have with someone, is that when they come back and you feel that genuine thank you. And this happened in Indonesia, and that's why I fell in love with education. It was at the end of the project, some of the students came back and
I remember one of the students specifically, and she said, thank you so much for this. I've never thought of how much impact I have in the world. And it's interesting because this goes two ways. We have impacts when, when, when it comes to contributing to an issue, like plastic pollution, for example, but we also have impact when it comes to contributing to a solution. Like, like what you're doing now.
So we have the impact in both ways. But once we are aware of that, we choose in which way we want to have that impact. So to put you in context, in Indonesia, through these two programs, I realized that, this will be great for me to replicate somewhere else. So I created this project called Indie Gaia that at the beginning was comprised
by these two programs, one English and Choice. And because back then I was a traveler, this was in 2014, I took these projects with me everywhere I travel. So from Indonesia, I went to Cambodia, from there to Vietnam. I had the chance to implement them in Vietnam, in two different areas. And then I came back to Europe. Short story long, I moved to Ecuador.
I worked as a teacher on the coast of Ecuador for one year. I implemented the project Choice there as well. The students loved it! And I realized these problems are everywhere. Europe, Asia, South America. And then I ended up in the Galapagos Islands. And in the Galapagos Islands, I started a journey in education for sustainability. I was working for a local school, alternative school. ⁓
And our mission was to integrate sustainability concepts in K-12 education. And one of the stories that is really close to my heart, I had a group of seven graders that I was guiding and they were really, really smart these kids. And I thought it would be really interesting to create a cleaning event with the students because
if they go out on the streets and they clean the streets and the beach and the forest and the mountains and the hills and everything, most probably they won't throw any garbage into the forest, on the beach, in the sea, in the park, because they clean it. That was my philosophy. OK, let's try it out. And I proposed to my students to
to just explore the impact humanity has on the environment. So we were exploring through different natural science lessons. And at a certain point, I wanted it to come from the students, not from me, because if I was proposing them and implemented for them, it was my project, but I wanted it to come from them. So in a certain moment, some of the students said, well, this is really sad.
When we got to the part of the plastic pollution ending up in the ocean and the impact it has on the marine life, especially when it becomes microplastics. And they said, well, this is really sad, but there's nothing we can do about it. What can we do about it? We are dependent on plastics. We're using plastic. Everyone is doing it. And I said, well, you know what?
There is an interesting project in Europe back then, it was a project called Let's Do It, when the country and Eastern European countries, think it was Lithuania, they cleaned the entire country in three days with the help of volunteers, they created a huge campaign. It's a really, really interesting project. I hope I'm not mistaking the country, but the project's called Let's Do It. So.
That project was replicated in other European countries. And I told them about that project and I said, we can do it here in the Galapagos Islands, in the main island, the Santa Cruz Island. And they said, yeah, it's interesting. We could do that. And we stopped there. And after a while, everything, you know, week or two, everything cooled off and the interest, you know, disappeared. And I said, well, it's OK. Again, I wanted it to come from them, not from me.
And we continued with the natural science lessons. I was taking the kids outside a lot. I wanted them to really experience the things we are talking about, not just looking at the images, but really touching them, smelling them through their senses. And I remember when we had one lesson, one of the girls stood up and said, well, we care about nature now.
But when we grow up, we forget about it. We're going to take jobs. And the only thing we want to do is make money. And I was like, wow, it's a seventh grader, imagine! And then another student stood up and said, yeah, that's true. And what can we do? We are just kids. And I told them, hey, remember the project I told you about? If you really want to do it, we can do it. And the kids became like, yeah, let's do it.
And we started working on it. We created short videos with the phones in which the students were inviting members of the local community to come to the cleaning event. We called it MINGA. MINGA means a gathering of people working on something together. inspired from the Kichwa language spoken in the Andes and in the Amazon
areas of the country, in many areas of the country, Kichwa people are a big percent of the Ecuadorian people, and they are the descendants of the Incas. And in Kichwa, Minga means a gathering, working together or something. So we invited all the other students from all the other schools on the island to come for the cleaning event. And then we invited our parents, our grandparents, we invited the scientists, the local scientists,
the drivers, the fishermen, we invited the entire community. And at the day of the event, we had 400 plus people showing up in the main town. There was a small main town, then a couple of towns in the highlands, a couple of groups were cleaning the beaches, the coastline. until now, it's still...
stands at the biggest cleaning event in the Galapagos Islands history. The local, the national television came in and did a short overview of what's happening, who created the program, the students. It was really, really great. And this empowered the students to understand that regardless of the fact that they are just seven graders, they really have the power to do something about it. And when they go into life with this,
you know, this agency of, yeah, we can do things. It's up to us to do it. Imagine what they can do when they become in charge of a local government or they become in charge of an organization.
Pramod Rao (20:20)
Really amazing to see how it came about. And I really like the philosophy of, you know, it has to come from them. While you probably had some idea of how to bring about the entire project, but like you rightly said, the motivation and the drive, if it comes from them, then nothing is impossible. Right.
So from this one event that happened, let's say 400 people came in, did the drive. What were the second order effects of this? What kind of impact does this have generally on
immediate surroundings and also on the culture or like you know people around there.
Adi (20:58)
So one other thing that I noticed happened is I can't say if it's because of this event, but I have a feeling it contributed to this. It's more schools and more groups of students doing events in the community. And I feel that's a gap in education because if we keep students in the school, we kind of isolating them
from the real world they learn about in the school. And when we take them out in the real world, they learn from the real world. It's not just learning about the world, it's learning from the world. And the same thing happens with not only learning about the environment, the natural environment, learning from the natural environment. And the only way to learn from something or someone is
to relate with it. If there's no relationship with it, it's just learning about it. And it was the first, based on my knowledge, it was the first event in which students went out in the community and involved the local community. Not only did something for the community, but involved the local community as well in their own project. And then I noticed other projects coming from educational institutions.
that are already involved in the community.
Pramod Rao (22:10)
Got it. If someone had to do this locally in their own, neighborhoods, approach schools or get people more involved with, let's say, a cleaning drive,
what do you recommend, for someone who wants to maybe do this but does not know where to start? I would love to brainstorm on what would it take to do a cleaning drive, let's say, around here in Bangalore.
Adi (22:32)
So imagine I can share a bit more, a couple of more details about how we did it. And then if someone who listens to us is interested in doing it, maybe they can relate to their own local So the first thing is the most important one that is the one that you also put emphasis on it, is to come from the students. And in order to come from the students,
I feel there is a need for them to really understand. So first, there's a work of later, a couple of years later, I realized that actually this work, it's really similar to the way we work the soil before we're planting the seed. And there's a concept of it that comes from Theory U creator, Otto Scharmer, that says the social field.
Cultivating the social field. So the small group of students were the social field in a way. And before I planted the seed without thinking of it in these terms or concepts, I prepared the soil. So I offered them the information they needed in order to get to a certain understanding and understand, hey, yeah, there's a real problem and there is something we can do about it. And then I planted the seed.
this kind of event that we can replicate here at a smaller scale. And then I let them express themselves. How can we do this and come up with ideas? And the students came up with the idea of why don't we create some short videos that we can share on WhatsApp groups that we have and ask our parents to share with their friends. And then everyone finds out about the event we're going to create.
And soon enough, the entire community knew about the event. And then they thought, hey, why don't we go to the local market on Saturday morning and explain to the people in the market what we are going to do? So on Saturday morning in the farmers market, the students were there present with their small tent and a table showing everyone what we're planning to do and inviting everyone to come to the event.
And then they said, hey, what if we go to the local radio station and talk on the station and tell everyone what we're to do? And this is the way most drivers learned about the event because they listen to the radio while they're driving, the taxi drivers in the community. And then they said, hey, let's invite the mayor. And we went to the local government and invited the mayor. The mayor came to the event as well.
And then we went to the representative of the government on the local islands and to invite them as well. So the kids were really ingenious with who should we invite and how we can do that. they also imagined that on the way they practice so many things, not only
cleaning the streets or the beach or the forest or the highlands or the streets of a small town, but also communication, preparing a project, structuring a project, working in teams. There are so many skills that were practiced during these small projects that we did together. So again, prepare the...
the students, prepare the groups and make sure they understand, show them the possibilities, show them that it's possible. Allow them to be creative, to be free. Because, when we, I realized that as a teacher, when we really impose students what to do and the way to do it, it's not that engaging anymore. But when it comes from them,
and their idea, they're really, really eager and excited to work on their own ideas. So allow them the space of freedom to play with the ideas and work together. And students that are not really happy to, and not really inclined to work in teams, you're gonna see them totally changing. Yeah, let's do it. I want to do this part. You're gonna do this part. And then naturally everything flows. And always treat them from...
not where they are, only where they are, of course, coming to meet them where they are, but also what they can be and encouraging them constantly. You can do this. Look what you have done so far. This is amazing. I don't know anyone who who who did this before. And, you know, it's a it's a feedback cycle of all motivation and encouragement and
they can do amazing things without a doubt. Now imagine the community in which this happened. It's a small community. Back then there were 17,000 people. if you look at the numbers, was around 3 % of the population participated in the event. But if you extrapolate that to a big city in India, that 3 % might mean a million people. So imagine a million people on the streets doing something.
It's impossible to miss it, not to notice it. And that sparked something into the local population. There were people who were stopping, looking at the kids and they were clapping and say, wow, this is beautiful. Like the young generation is doing things. And there were also people who were looking away, like almost embarrassed, know, like, like they didn't want to acknowledge it because
I don't know what the reason might be, but maybe they realize that, the kids are doing it, you know, and I'm not doing anything about it. Or maybe I'm the one who's throwing it, you know, throwing in the garbage and the kids are picking it up. But one way or another, it sparks awareness.
Pramod Rao (27:59)
And you had the initial set of kids who sort of got involved. You had the backing of the school. How did you start at the zero-eth point? What was it like?
Adi (28:09)
So we were working, the school I was working in, in the Galapagos, the methodology was place-based learning. Place-based learning means learning based on the context in which you're finding yourself learning. Instead of having separate lessons about separate topics, we have a project in which in a nice way,
Pramod Rao (28:22)
⁓
Adi (28:32)
we blend different subjects that talk about the same topic. So let's say the topic we choose is Plastics. We create a project in which the students have an end product by the end of the project. And on the way, there are different steps. And in these steps, they learn about plastics, all aspects of plastics. There are positive and less positive aspects.
through different subjects. Natural science, how plastic is made, what are the impacts of plastics, social science, how it affects the society, when it appeared, how it was created. In mathematics, they do...
They play with numbers, but around the concept of plastics, how many tons of plastic are produced every year. From there, you can play with whatever concept in mathematics you want to use. In arts, they use plastics to create arts, recycling recycled plastics, they can create whatever art they want, visual arts
that refers to the topic of plastics. So there are different ways to integrate different subjects to talk about the same topic. And doing so, the students don't become tired of the repetitive thing because they see it through a different lens. Now they see it through literature. Now they see it through mathematics. Now they see it through science. But it also reinforces the importance of this specific topic.
So I had the support of the school because we were one of the schools that was focused in nurturing this connection with nature. It was a different school. The school itself was in nature. But I also thought about how can this be replicated by a school that doesn't have this context and it's a normal school. I also had a chance to work in formal schools Ecuador and I understood that, it's different.
Teachers have different, they have to work with a different methodology. They have to have a different many things from planning to meetings to a way of evaluating the students. Each methodology has its own way, but it is possible to do it.
It is possible to do it, but that invites to the creativity of the teacher. And one thing that can help is to become, to become, to create partnerships with other teachers and with local organizations. And this is what I did. So I created this project in a partnership with a local organization. And by doing so, the local organization already had in their own structure
so many partnerships with other organizations. And only if they were helping us to promote the event, it was a lot. But by doing it in partnership, they help us with so many things and we did it together. And I encourage everyone to do it in this way, to become partners with teachers from other subjects and to become partners with organizations in the local context.
Pramod Rao (31:35)
If I had to recap, one, partnerships are key - to think who are the stakeholders who can come together to make this happen, whether it be in small parts could be providing visibility or
resources and so on. Second, like you said, it's important that the motivation comes from the children or the kids involved, rather than being imposed on this is the project, this is how it will work. And three, let creativity sort of emerge. They're the smartest and know what's best and different possibilities might emerge from that.
Provide a safe space for them to share ideas and collaborate with each other. But you basically play the role of a facilitator and encourage them with small progress and help them make it a reality.
And by doing that and also sharing, involving the local community, the impact radius sort of expands beyond just themselves.
Adi (32:29)
One other thing that I would add would be to really understand the local context, to really understand
who and why, the why, why we're doing it. And you said two interesting things here. Besides understanding the context, to not to go too broad on it, but not to go either too narrow, to limit the potential of the, to be open to it, to let it just emerge in the way it wants to emerge, but also understand
the resources, understand the real potential of connecting with people and to dare. You know, for the kids it was a bit daring to invite the mayor, but why not? Why not invite a local celebrity to the event and the local celebrity might bring 5,000 Instagram followers.
You you never know. You said an interesting thing about motivation. It's important to be an intrinsic motivation, because if it's only a motivation that comes from outside, it will always need to be there and to feed the motivation. And this happens, I think happens in generally formal education. We motivate students with grades, for example.
But if there's an interesting motivation, the extrinsic one, the one that comes from outside, it's smaller in percentage. They know what they want and they know why they want it. So they don't really need a lot of extrinsic motivation. And they have fun. And that's the key, yeah, this is the not to forget, fun. Because they had fun and that's why it worked and that's why really well.
Pramod Rao (34:11)
No, it's an amazing way to learn. Like you said, it's not just the impact that it has, but I can imagine so many skills packed into just this experience. It's like experiential learning, whether it's communication, leadership, organizing.
And it's more like real life learning rather than structured. What we usually learn is very structured and on certain topics. Here, you're actually learning it by being present and experiencing and working with others.
Adi (34:39)
Yeah, definitely. It happens. It's very common. Maybe it happened to you. I remember it happened to me, questioning some of the things I was learning when I was a student, asking myself, hey, how is this going to help me in life? Of course, they're the main things that we all need to have them as skills. There are certain things that after a certain limit, their potential
decreases if I'm not going to really use it in real life. And I can do that thing as a passion later. I can choose to be passionate about it or follow to study in educational context, prepare to study that specific thing. But I think it's really important, I believe it's really important to create this connection with real life. And when students see that connection with real life, they really understand, hey, this is how this can help me.
This is why we learned this. is the way this is useful for me and for everyone.
Pramod Rao (35:34)
There was a point where you said that as children, somebody brought up this point that while we care about this right now, when we grow up, we'll get a job and we'll forget about this.
Why does it happen, one? And two, have you seen examples where folks who are professionals or who lead a busy life come together and still have that childlike curiosity to solve these problems? What would it take to, get folks living in our society that are like 1,000 homes here
to start something in this direction.
Adi (36:10)
Okay, so the first question is why is this happening? Why do we, in a way, lose this connection with joy and looking at life and experiencing life through joy? Or I can share my own perspective on it. This is subjective, right? I think...
It's really interesting because if you think about it, each one of us, regardless of we live on the planet, we go through
through a series of events during our life that in a way describes the life of most people on our planet. First is education and then it's maybe we go to the primary education, secondary education, then university, then Masters and PhD. And then we have any of this level before
university before master's or before PhD, we started working, right? And there's an interesting connection that I spotted between this experience in education and joining the working class. So each one of us goes through a learning process. Now, what I understand from the work I've done in education so far,
is that the focus of education in general is on the social systems. And it's less on nature or the individual itself. Because we all want the well-being of our social systems. These social systems became our own environment in which we are born, in which we grow, for most people on our planet.
Now these social systems, in order to be well, they need natural resources. And these natural resources come from the natural systems. Now we have a connection between social systems and natural systems, between society and the environment. Now having a focus on the social system, we don't really deepen our understanding on the environment beyond
seeing it as a source of resources. So we bring resources, we bring those sources, and what we give back is mainly this behavior of extending our habitats, extending our lands for agriculture, giving back the waste we produce. And on time, what we see is what we experience today as a global society.
These environmental challenges, different aspects of the environmental challenges. And I have a feeling that having a focus on the social systems also contribute to these challenges we face. Now, imagine that you and I, went through an educational process. Through this process, we learn about the social systems. We also learn about the natural environment.
But the main focus again is on the social systems. When we end a certain learning journey, maybe it's 12 years, 14 years, 20 years, we are already prepared to become contributing members of our societies. But the focus of our contribution will be again the social system. It's not a natural system. And through what we do through our contribution,
basically there are two ways of contributing, two-way road, consumption and production. We are productive members, we work, we have our own role to play in the society and we consume, right? And in this two-way road that we are making our life busy every day with, we don't tend to think a lot of the natural environment and the natural environment almost becomes something separate one.
It's nature, it's out there. But if we go back to the roots, we are nature because we come from nature. We are animals, right? We come from nature, but slowly, slowly we create a different environment for ourselves. And when we understand that, hey, the social systems that we have are embedded in the natural systems, they are not separate. Actually, they are part of. And if you think of
if you think of events
through the lens of, hey, we need to save nature. No, nature doesn't really need us. Nature can do well on its own. We need nature. So it's not that we make nature, we make a favour to nature. The only thing we have to do is to leave it alone. But we can't because we need the resources. But what we can do is to understand
how we can take those resources in a way in which we can allow nature to regenerate. We can take enough to also allow for it to regenerate and for that finite resources to regenerate again and again. And this is what all the native people of all of the culture on our planet used to do. They were paying attention to nature and they knew when it's time to fish, when it's time to hunt, when it's time to.
put the seed when it's time to harvest just because they paid attention to it. And to summarize it and come back to the question, I think it happened gradually in our journey as a species. We alienated ourselves from nature slowly, slowly. It's something that happened over generations. Slowly, slowly, we became more and more focused towards the social systems
and less focus on the natural systems and to that contributed the changes we went through as a species, the industrial revolution, for example, the machines, the inventions of so many machines that facilitated life. Now we go through a new revolution, the artificial intelligence, which is part of our journey, of course, but it's interesting to see how we can maintain a focus on social systems, on the wellbeing of social systems
balanced with the well-being of natural systems. And how we can bring people back to it, this was your second question, is...
Pramod Rao (41:52)
Yes, yeah. And
have you seen in your own journey examples where you were able to bring people back to focus more on the natural system as well?
Adi (42:02)
I've seen some examples of people coming back on this reconnection with natural systems through the programs, through the program you also went through, the LFA Learning for Action from Terra.do. So what I sense that there are many, many fellows around the world, many people from around the world, they are joining this program because there is a deep feeling of
contributing. They realize that underneath there is a desire to really contribute and live a life with meaning. Beyond certificates, beyond names, there's a deep desire to live meaningful because I feel we are earthlings. We belong to earth.
Regardless of how we choose to look at it, through the lens of science, through the lens of spirituality, we are interconnected with each other, with all other living beings and with nature. And it's impossible not to sense it. It comes a certain point in our journey, individual journey as humans, when we sense that we want to do something with meaning. And it starts with the focus for our own families.
Create a safe space and a meaningful life for ourselves, for the people around us. But once this expands slowly, we really, know, most people deep down, they really want to live in a peaceful world and in a balanced world between humans and but also with nature.
So in order for this to happen is to have these spaces of reminding the people that, hey, this is possible. There's not only one way to go in life or two ways or five ways. There's an infinite ways to go in life. But regarding your own personal context, there is your way to go
in life because each one of us has a unique context
without a doubt.
Pramod Rao (43:54)
I think over the years, things have progressed towards where it is today. I also think that in the last 20 years, I think it has accelerated quite a lot. Oftentimes, I look at my parents and their habits.
The life was, while ambition and everything was still there, life was slightly slower. And they would enjoy their walks to the local grocery store to pick up vegetables there, like maintain the garden, or do things in a way, even simple things, like their furniture, for example, it's lasted for 25 years and so on. So I think today,
where convenience and access is almost instant, we're also conditioned in a way to expect more of that, more convenience, faster access, and more affordable. Those are the themes that define today's age, I think. And that has a much bigger second order or third order impact.
And that's one of the reasons about what got me to Terra as well. I'm also curious to know how I can make shifts in my own behavior towards being more conscious of some of these consumption habits. And is there an alternative to it?
I'm not saying that convenience is not important. Convenience is important, but can we be more mindful of the choices that we make? And that's sort of what was the purpose of this podcast as well. Can we talk about more of these examples where we slow down a bit when we make these choices and think of alternatives or be mindful of
the impact that it might have. And what are the small changes that we can make in our day-to-day lives that can contribute to the world that we live in? So curious, like your own personal life, right? What's the philosophy that you follow? And be it in day-to-day actions or otherwise, how do you approach this?
Adi (45:39)
In my case, I feel some of the changes I made in my own behavior are highly influenced by the experiences I lived mainly in education and this understanding of this interdependence we have with nature, with each other. And now I'm exploring how can this understanding be more available to explore for everyone?
Through this, I'm gonna try to answer to your question.
So I had the chance to work with these different methodologies, place-based learning, project-based learning, contextualized curriculum. At a certain point, I asked myself, hey, what would mean to have a learning methodology that's based on life, to be life-based learning? And then I searched if it exists and it already exists, a life-based learning methodology
and a lifelong learning methodology and approaches to education. And then I came up with this idea of life learning or learning from life. And this approach has the intention of balancing this focus I talked about earlier between the social systems, the natural environment, but also the individual itself.
Because the individual is the cell of the society. We cannot have a healthy society if we don't have healthy individuals. And we cannot have healthy individuals that we don't have a healthy society as a safe space for individual development. So it's like in itself. And when it comes to individual, I was thinking about myself and my own journey. And I remember when I first discovered
sustainability as the word. I heard it so many times, it became a mantra, sustainability. There was a certain time when everyone was talking about sustainability. But I remember when I first searched for its meaning, and it came up, sustain-ability, or the ability to sustain. And I think it's something, I feel it's deeply personal in a way because
the ability to sustain depends on what we want to sustain, the life we want to sustain. And it's so personal that my life is different than yours and what you need to sustain is different than what I need to sustain. And the ability we have depends on so many factors and the way we were exposed to these factors in our own societies. And in my context,
one of the things that really changed the way I sustain, I work on this ability to sustain myself, is to really question myself before I do something or before I acquire something. Remember I mentioned earlier about we are all contributing to our society regardless if we choose to or not, we are.
Either we produce, either we consume, either both. So I ask myself, what is my way of producing and what is my way of consumption? And if I put it in the context, it makes a lot of sense. It makes even more sense. And the context is what we talked earlier, that we are interconnected amongst ourselves and with nature. And we live on the same planet.
But if I take it out from the context, it changes a little bit. And I'm going to give you an example. So let's say I want to buy a new laptop, for example. Okay. I'm going to change my laptop every year because I need it for my work. And I need to sustain my needs to work. That's my ability to sustain. I buy a new laptop every year. But when I put it in context and I understand, Hey,
By buying a new laptop, I require new resources every year to be extracted and then transformed into the laptop I use. So I think twice about it. I think, hey, do I really need it? Like, do I really need to change this laptop or I can use it for one more year or for longer time? And then if I really need to change it because let's say I'm a developer and I need a really good laptop.
And I need to be, you know, going with the requirements of everything. And I need a powerful laptop every year, I change it, but I also try to give it to someone else to use it, to make use of it until, you you can't use it anymore. So that's one of the things that personally, it happened to me as a change to really question, do I really need it? And I think it's a question that
we can all ask ourselves, regardless of cultural, economic, social background, do I really need to buy this? Because the world in which we live now, it's really inviting to consume. It has the power to invite us to want this and that. But when we put it in the context again, we realize that maybe I'm OK without it. Or maybe like,
Pramod Rao (50:24)
Yeah, and
by doing that, you also extend the life of the product that you're using, let's say, the laptop. You're not discarding it. You probably use it for another year with a small fix, if that works for you. If that helps you sustain, let's say, you wanted to use it for your work, and a small fix can actually extend its life by one or two years, that's
better than, you discard it and buy a new laptop there. And that's something that me and my wife, we've been trying to inculcate in our own habits. Do we need to purchase a new shirt? We have an old shirt. There's a small fix. If you do that, we'd probably wear it for another year.
In fact, I also see like personal health also having impact. The more I've worked on my personal health, I have discovered that there were clothes from three or four years ago that started to fit me now. So I don't need to buy new clothes now. Just by being more fitter, it not just helps.
increase our own health and maybe longevity. But I think the things that are around us as well, they become reusable in some form. So that is just something that I observed in my own life.
Adi (51:24)
Yeah, I love it. Yeah. And also this is the way in which this is a way in which we consume, right? Consume goods and own goods. And this can be extrapolated. I said laptop, you said shirts. It can be extrapolated to everything we own and for the nature, house, land, cars, but also to activities. Before, I was traveling a lot.
Pramod Rao (51:51)
Okay.
Adi (51:51)
I
was moving a lot. I wasn't aware of the impact my travels had or the activities I was doing. I wasn't aware that skydiving, for example, had an impact. But I wasn't aware back then. It was part of my own journey, of course. But now, once I become aware, I again ask myself twice, do I really need to do it? Do I really need to
make this travel? Can we have this meeting online? Imagine do I really need to go to India to talk to Pramod or we can have it online.
And on the other hand, there is this aspect of, okay, how do I contribute? And back to what you're doing now, not only that you're reflecting on your own habits and on your own way of living, but invite everyone else to think about it. And this is what I admire about your project.
Pramod Rao (52:38)
Yes, thank you. And are there other personal habits that you've changed or you follow that you'd say are more thoughtful rather than just giving into convenience or access?
Adi (52:51)
Another habit that I changed is the way I eat. I can't, to be honest, can't say if it changed in a conscious way. So I mainly eat vegetarian. So I started 15 years ago. I wasn't really aware that eating vegetarian has an impact or doesn't have an impact.
But on the way I've learned is because most friends of family back then it wasn't common for people to be vegetarian in my own local context. And they were asking, you think this is healthy for you? Like we've been eating meat since forever. You have to think about it. And then I started to research and I became aware not only that it's better for me in a way, of course for me. And everyone has to think of their own.
on their own context and choices. But also I've learned that by eating a plant-based diet, it's also better for everyone else. There is a logic behind it. And many people choose to do it based on that logic because they don't want to contribute to more fields of soybeans that will feed cattle, that will consume
thousands of tons of water to become hamburgers and their choice is to not contribute to that. When I became vegetarian, I didn't have this understanding. I did it because something, my body just told me that I didn't really feel the call to eat meat. And also what happens when you change this, when you do this shift, you also start to feel better.
It's healthier, it's better for the body, it's body feels lighter. It doesn't need to consume a lot of energy to digest the meat based products, but it's easier to digest and that energy you can use it for anything else you want to do. So it's interesting that many of the habits that also help us to maintain a better relationship with
sustainability for us all, they are also healthier for all of us.
Pramod Rao (54:53)
Like you mentioned, some of these changes are not just good for the natural system, but also for you and also the people around you. But one observation that I've had is any shift that happens after, let's say, a habit is formed for years -
we've been in a society where we're conditioned for more convenience, more access and more affordability and like everything today is whether we seek an answer or an object or anything like it's almost instantaneous, you would get it. So when we introduce the concept of like, be more mindful, you know, think if there are alternatives or maybe the slower or alternative parts to this, the shift is quite drastic.
And I'm sure like when you switched ⁓ to being vegetarian, the shift was quite drastic. And a lot of times that will to continue or to regress back to the earlier ways, because it's very easy to fall back to older habits.
I know there's internal motivation, but yeah, just brainstorming, like, you know, what would it take for us to slowly shift towards or maybe not even slowly, but like, what would it take to shift towards like better habits?
Adi (55:57)
So what happened to me in this specific example, I remember exactly when I had lunch or dinner, a meal with friends that were vegetarians. I couldn't understand it. I said, why would you do this? I just couldn't. And one year later, I stopped eating meat. And I think it has an influence, the fact that I was exposed
to something that I didn't know it exists and I didn't know what it means. And then I noticed around me people becoming vegetarians. A very good friend of mine became vegetarian because we spent time together, we lived together. One of my sisters became vegetarian because also I spent, I visited her for a couple of weeks and...
I cooked vegetarian and she enjoyed it and she realized that, wow, this is interesting. And she started exploring it and she became vegetarian now. She's been vegetarian for years. So I think when we are exposed to things that we didn't know they exist and try them out and understand, change happens naturally. So for us, for those changes to happen, we need to be exposed to them. And this is what you're doing, for example
through this conversations, this space of conversation, we expose people to certain topics and then they know they exist and then maybe they will be interested in exploring them and then they become like, this fits me, this fits the way I want to live and it goes along with me, so I'm gonna keep this one. But also to have this understanding that...
we have different contexts, each one of us is unique. Even though we would like everyone to live like us, it might not be fair to ask everyone to live like us. They have different priorities. Before asking someone to become vegetarian, understand that maybe their first priority is to put food on the table. And then becomes the possibility of having options.
And then comes the possibility of, okay, I choose not to eat meat. So it depends on where we come from, right? And it's important to be aware of it and not make almost like a religion out of it. No, this has to be this way. No, this is the way you can do it. It's your choice. If you have a choice, my philosophy with it is eat what you have available
and from what you have available, eat what's best and healthier for you. And if through that choices, you can also be aware of everything else, great.
Pramod Rao (58:25)
And for the folks listening in, if they had to start making the shift in small actions that they can take, I know the context could be very different for each one of us. But is there something that people can try maybe this week or something in this month or today that
they can experience a new way of doing the same thing, but slightly differently. What would you recommend or suggest?
Adi (58:49)
It's exactly what you said, exploring experience. Let's do it for a week. Let's have a challenge amongst friends for this month. This month, let's say we stop buying poison that comes in two-liter bottles. And everyone is really a big fan of it. Let's stop buying that for a month and see what happens to our body.
And I went through this experience. That's why I'm sharing worked for a company that was selling poison in two-liter bottles. And with my friends, because we are all working for this company, we were drinking instead of water, this liquid. And we drink a lot of it for weeks. And when we went to the toilet, we realized that
when we were peeing, we were peeing a colored liquid that was similar to what we're drinking. I said, hey, this is not right. So we stopped and then realized that our body start to feel better. We can rest better. We can be more focused. We weren't anxious anymore. weren't like, and we realized it has an effect on our health. So my invitation is to experience with, with everything, experience with
with aspects that life allows you to experience. Food, the basic needs, right? Food, we all need food, experience with food, experience with clothes, experience with gadgets, experience with the home. For sure, especially in societies that have
the main class is a middle class. For sure, a person from a middle class society, they have so many things they don't use. If you create a list with all the things that don't use in your house, you'll be amazed. And maybe you don't use them because they are two years old. And there's a new model out there. Maybe it might be a blender or it might be a...
cup or vase or whatever. And imagine those things.
They just sit there, nobody uses them. You give them to someone who really needs them. You avoid extracting resources to create those things that someone needs them. And you also help someone who really needs those things. Maybe there's not a moment for them to acquire them right now because they can't. So it blends. It blends. Not only that, you make a better life for yourself because
you create more space in your house, but you also have someone else. Not only that, by avoiding buy things that are not healthy for your body, you have a better health, but also you don't contribute to a producer that is through what they do, they influence the health of many other people around you. So instead of with the same...
money that you buy that thing that's not healthy, you can buy something that's healthy from your local producer, and you help your local producer keep producing local and healthy things, instead of bringing things from a different country by ship or plane and contributing to other things. So it's thinking in context. How this affects me? How does this affects everyone around me?
How does this affect the planet?
Pramod Rao (1:02:05)
Beautiful. I think at the core of it is pausing to think about some of these aspects, like how one is, part with nature, and exploring few choices. What are the choices of doing this?
So it requires to maybe add a couple of layers of thought in our busy lives rather than just going with the flow. And that's my takeaway from what you said, that in everything that we do, if you're just mindful a bit more, and the habits will automatically shift towards being good for not just ourselves, but also for
the world around us. This has been a great conversation. I just have a couple of informal questions one is, if you had to give advice to your younger self, what would it be?
Adi (1:02:46)
Wow, that's a good question.
I would say...
Everything is possible. And it is.
Wow, that's a really good question.
Pramod Rao (1:03:01)
And yeah, curious to know any books or movies that has left a lasting impression on you that you'd like to suggest or recommend.
Adi (1:03:11)
There's so many. One of the movies that when I became vegetarian and I started to research if it's healthy or not for me and there was a talk from a guy named Gary Yudovsky. I'm sure you can find it and later I found out that he speaks a lot on the theme of food and everything we talked about it today.
And I watched that with a friend of mine. And after we watched it, he became vegetarian. I think I already, you know, I was a vegetarian before, but I really, you know, his approach is, it doesn't leave any room for, for, you know, like, well, you know, he explains it really clearly. So I Gary Yourofsky is one of the, the, the thing that came to me about food.
Regarding this interdependence between everything and everything, between humans and everything else, there so many great ways to explore it. One of the things that helped me personally to really understand it and how to contribute with more than anything, how to contribute to raising this awareness about the...
the challenges we face is a course from ULab is called, from the Presencing Institute and the book called Theory U. This is for the people who really want to contribute to the way the world is transforming. Then there are so many good resources out there.
The one thing book also, it's a good way of understanding that the energy goes where we put the focus. And when we want to create something, it's important to have the focus on one thing, especially for those out there who are looking to create spaces like this or create apps or create organizations. The work of...
the work of many, many spiritual leaders out there. Deepak Chopra is one of them that I see closely.
Pramod Rao (1:05:09)
Thank you so much for those recommendations. I'll maybe run it past you so that I can share it with the audience as well, some of the names that you recommended. Lastly, I think there's a lot of wealth of information that you shared, whether it be a format of teaching, like you said, there's project-based or learning-based. If somebody wanted to reach out to you to learn more, what's the best way they can
do that?
Adi (1:05:35)
The best way to do it is to reach out through my LinkedIn or through the email I have for my project is contact at indigaya.com. really happy to share about it. And hopefully take ideas from it and build on it.
Pramod Rao (1:05:52)
Thanks so much, Adi. This was a lovely conversation. I enjoyed talking to you. I know we went over time a bit. But yeah, it was amazing to learn the journey and also brainstorm a few things with you.
Adi (1:06:03)
Likewise, Pramod, again, thank you for inviting me. It has been a real pleasure. Thank you.