What we do
About Eliya.
I am a nature-based community facilitator with over 10 years experience working at the intersection of people and place. My practice seeks to re-connect communities with their natural surroundings, nurturing symbiotic & rippling webs of care and curiosity.
With a deep reverence for the science and art magic of nature, and creative approaches for engaging the arts, play and experiential meaning-making with groups to respond to each other and the natural environment, my work urges climate action grounded in collective holistic wellbeing, and in so doing harnesses hope to move us towards a more just and joyful future.
Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart
- Robin Wall Kimmerer
Credentials
About Seed Scholars.
The Seed Scholars solution to Richard Louve's described "nature deficit disorder" is not new, and looks to the long traditions from ancestral ways of knowing to re-form a multi-branched approach to the deep and impactful work of nature reconnection, reaching young people & their networks in a range of spaces.
Nurturing Creative Problem Solvers & Empathy Builders
This work supports the development of creative problem solving, expression, teamwork, empathy development, and confidence-building skills. Seed Scholars' all-weather outdoor sessions, which attend to the head, heart and hands, include:
Familiarising with place with an ecologists' lens
Nature-oriented games, songs, and storytelling to promote sensory awareness and community building
Nurturing food from seed to table - cultivating an edible garden
Encouraging biodiversity throughout the seasons
Using tools, knots, clay, & natural materials for creative nature crafting
Fire-making & fire-tending
Wild foraging & cooking
Climate awareness & action
“If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, then let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it.”
- David Sobel
Values.
Learner led, experiential education - following participant curiosity to co-construct.
Meaning and engagement.
Process > product (not that product isn’t also great, but centering process).
Promoting Growth Mindset.
Cannot promise specific outcomes - but do commit to supporting everyone on their journey, meeting them where they are at.
Promote holistic wellbeing.
Recognise multiple pathways of development.
See this as work of the head/heart/hands; attending to health of mental/ physical/ emotional/ social/ spiritual realms.
Culturally responsive practice.*
*(Ladson-Billings, 1994)
Shape equitable programmes that deeply honour indigenous lands and practices, inclusivity and diversity, ongoing work of this, hoping to keep moving towards justice and equity.
Seed Scholars does not wish to culturally appropriate, but to work toward decolonising the field, naming and honouring past/present/future ancestors of our own identities and the identity of the places where we spend time
Recognise the intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) of pursuing this work in a holistic way
Welcoming and safe space.
We seek to provide a welcoming space to a wide diversity of people where no one feels unfairly prejudiced against. We do not and shall not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status, in any of its activities or operations. These activities include, but are not limited to, hiring of staff, selection of volunteers and provision of services. We are committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our staff, clients and volunteers.
Place-based: programmes attend to specific sites, and the cultural, natural, and built heritage there. Build ecological awareness and regeneration through this lens.
Honour cycles of seasons, work in tandem with them, not against them.
Seeking right relationship - rooted in justice, gratitude, and our natural cycles.
And seasons - honouring, developing and growing relationship with self/human and more than human web and world/land (rooted in teachings by Joanna Macy).
Centering the whole person/whole place/whole ecosystem of living and nonliving world - relationships as the key to all other work
Toggling with local/global - active citizenship, agents/stewards nudging toward positive change (climate action, ecological regeneration)
Relationships built on gratitude and mutual reciprocity (Robin Wall Kimmerer teachings)
Acknowledging the (essentiality of the) twin heads of light and shadow.
Some things are paradoxes to be managed/not problems to be solved (Ester Perrel teachings).
Ongoing heartwork of finding the balance between urgency and relaxed, elevated and grounded, the inevitability of learning to hold the ever presence of joy and grief all at once.
Life, Death Life Cycles - Trifecta of Birth/Death/Rebirth (Clarissa Pinkola Estes teachings, The Trailblazery).
Deep humility in the work with land and relationship.
My work is imperfect - I am a teacher/learner; this is a dialectical praxis; I have a lot of unlearning and learning to do - please know I approach this work humbly and with great reverence for the land, human and more than human world, my ancestors and the ancestors of the land on which I live, love and practice.
That being said, please hold me accountable! I commit to trying my best AND I know at times I will fall short, and will work to do better.
Collaboration, not competition.
We love to collaborate with other organisations and people. The capitalist system urges us to subscribe to the fallacy of scarcity- that there isn’t enough to go around for everyone and thus we need to compete for resources. However, we see abundance in this world and strive to collaborate, support and celebrate each other in whatever way we are able to.
Leave no Trace.
We see ourselves as part of nature, not apart from it, and recognise humans as ecosystem engineers and capable of making a positive impact on the world. We love the earth and all its inhabitants and recognise that, as mammals, we do leave a trace on this world. We try to minimise our impacts as much as possible and to make positive changes to the world around us. As such, we do not follow the leave no trace principles as we believe that it is in interacting with the natural world that we can learn from it and so make connections to protect it. We want our practises to be regenerative to place and so learn from a teacher who has millennia of experience in doing just that - nature.
Professional Standards.
We will adhere to legal requirements and to commonly accepted best practice.
We will ensure to be up to date with all legal, professional, technical, environmental and safety matters. We will respect the responsibilities of other institutions and professions that share a common interest in protecting the land and sharing knowledge that promote awareness and respect of the natural environment.