During the 2012 NAFSA Conference and Expo, the GoAbroad Team was pleased to announce the winners of the 2012 Innovation Awards. As part of a continued effort to recognize the hard work and dedication this year’s nominees, GoAbroad will be sharing individual features of the 2012 GoAbroad Innovation Awards finalists over the coming weeks. This week, we are thrilled to bring you the Innovation in Sustainability finalists!
Please join us in congratulating the following Finalist of the Innovation in Sustainability Award:
Living Routes
“Study Abroad in Sustainable Communities”
Living Routes offers academic experiences of living in community with each other and the planet. Partnering with UMass Amherst and sustainable communities around the world, students help create positive visions and solutions for a transforming world. Host communities strive to live well and lightly together. While not utopias, they present ideal campuses where students create learning communities within living social laboratories. Through coursework and service learning, students learn about appropriate technologies, organic farming, group facilitation, ecological design, mindfulness practices, and much more.
What really sets Living Routes apart from other sustainability programs, however, is a focus on the integration of these systems within human-scale communities. Alumni can never again say, “It can’t be done”. They understand we can and must work together for a sustainable future and now have the knowledge, skills and motivation to do so. Living Routes social and environmental values are not “add-ons”. They are baked into our DNA.