Luis Alberto Camargo: If you have a deep question, ask the forest | Benjamin Freud, Ph.D.

November 3, 2023

What might happen when the landscape is our place of learning?

In this episode, I speak with Luis Alberto Camargo. Luis was named the 2023 Richard Louv Prize recipient, in recognition of his life’s work, which has impacted 130,000 children and youth across Colombia. Luis is Founder and Executive Director of Organización para la Educación y Protección Ambiental (OpEPA – Colombia & USA), Co-Founder of The Weaving Lab, Core member of Regenerative Communities Network and Founder of Colombia Regenerativa, and Director at Thundra Outdoors. Global Change Leader, Young Global Leader (2008), Ashoka Fellow. Prior, he held a number of roles, including Adviser to the Vice-Minister of Environment of Colombia, Adviser to the Department of National Planning, Researcher at Universidad de los Andes and WWF, Wilderness Medicine Instructor at the Wilderness Medicine Institute of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) as well as wilderness educator in the U.S. We discuss:

🥥 Listening to the silence as means of connecting and convening;

🥥 Ways in which schools in urban settings can re-connect with/as Nature within their context;

🥥 How if we want to live as Nature, we must learn as Nature.

Check out the Coconut Thinking website.


You may also be interested in listening to more Coconut Thinking podcasts and reading articles written by Benjamin Freud, Ph.D. for Intrepid Ed News.

Benjamin Freud, Ph.D.

Benjamin Freud, Ph.D. is the co-founder of Coconut Thinking, an advisory that supports schools and learning organizations to co-create, co-develop, co-stress test, and co-implement ideas that nurture the conditions for emergent learning. Benjamin is also the Head of Upper School at Green School, Bali. He was previously the Whole School Leader of Learning and Teaching at Prem Tinsulanonda International School in Thailand. He was the Academic Coordinator at Misk Schools, one of the most prestigious and high-profile school in the kingdom. In 2018-2019, he was also the Head of Upper Primary and Middle School at Misk. Prior to this, he was Vice-Principal of the Middle School and High School at the Harbour School in Hong Kong. He holds a Ph.D. in History, an MSc in Education, an MBA, an MA in International Relations, and a BA in International Affairs. Benjamin was born and grew up in Paris, France. He moved to the U.S. when he was 15 and spent 11 years there in different cities before living in the U.K., Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and now Bali, Indonesia. He started his career in consulting for Internet start-ups in Silicon Valley in the late 1990s, working with people whose ambitions were no less than to change the world. This experience had a profound effect on Benjamin's outlook on education, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

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