The Global Living Project (GLP) is an outreach, educational and research-oriented non-profit environmental organization working as a project of AWISH (A World Institute for a Sustainable Humanity).
Since 1996, the GLP has offered programs aimed at creating examples of "global living" in North America, that is, choosing a lifestyle that doesn't use more than what the Earth has to offer humans and other species. We do this through:
- Education and Demonstration:
We offer workshops at schools, universities and conferences throughout the year based upon the tools and skills outlined in Radical Simplicity. The homestead Barra, in East Corinth, is a demonstration project that can be visited by appointment. Our goal is to work with educators, activists, businesses, organizations and leaders who will bring sustainability principals into contemporary culture. - Outreach:
Our Cycling for a Sustainable Future tour reaches thousands by sharing the results of our experiments in sustainable living with universities, schools and community groups. Our media outreach has touched hundreds of thousands with a very positive message on TV, radio, newspapers, websites and posters: "We can live satisfying lives with less stuff!"
- Research:
Our challenge has been to understand from a scientific, ethical and spiritual perspective a sustainable and desirable level of human influence on the Earth. To quantify our use of nature, the GLP applies the ecological footprint tool. To track our relationship to money and our life’s purpose, the life planning techniques from the book Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin are used. To help us learn the needs of other species, we take time for face to face encounters with wild nature.
The over-arching goals of the GLP include providing:
- A personal experience of ecological health - what does it look like, feel like, smell like? Our sites contain healthy forests, creeks and abundant wildlife. Staff and participants gain experiential information about our place as a thread in the web of life by immersion and reflection in wilderness.
- An understanding of carrying capacity, biodiversity, demographics, trends, human impact and ecological systems.
- An experience of simple community living "outside the box" of our culture including gardening and gathering wild foods and medicines, bioregional economics, wilderness survival skills, alternative building methods, energy systems, fixing a bicycle and life with very little use of cars.
- Tools to measure our progress toward sustainability that enable a person, family, school, business or nation to monitor their Earth impact, money spent, fulfillment and alignment with their personal or collective values.
- Resources, including information, contacts and support for those who face challenges in making big life changes toward sustainability.
- What is the minimum set of conditions necessary to achieve sustainability in 100 years?
- What will it take for more of the world’s billion high-income earners to voluntarily live on smaller footprints?
- How can we ensure that the one billion low-income earners who now live on less than a dollar a day come out of poverty?
- What can be done to encourage smaller families worldwide?
- What can be learned from social change theory and practice?
- What nations, regions, communities or individuals embody sustainable behavior? What can be learned from them?
- How can the urgent yet exciting challenge of sustainability be framed to unite and ignite a critical mass into action?
Through our research and practical experience we have discovered that low-impact, high quality lifestyles are possible in North America. The next phase of our research will try to answer some of the following questions:
The GLP invites interns to assist with answering these questions and finding workable, sustainable ways of living at the personal and societal level.