Living Routes closes down

Living Routes, the non-profit study-abroad organization from the USA which had been sending university students to Auroville, Findhorn and other ecovillages for the past 15 years, closed down in January this year. By the end of March, Living Routes (USA) will legally dissolve as a non-profit organization. In Auroville, this not only means no more Living Routes students visiting, learning from and contributing to Auroville, but also Living Routes-Auroville as a project under the unit Auroville International Programme will also cease.

Living Routes is closing down because it lost the academic accreditation from the University of Massachusetts for all the programmes it was due to host in the current Spring 2014. The university cited concerns about Living Routes’ response to a health and safety situation that occurred during the Fall 2013 programme in Costa Rica. While the revoking of academic accreditation was, from the perspective of the university, merely a suspension for one semester, the loss of income from the Spring semester meant that Living Routes could not financially survive.

Living Routes was unique in many ways. It believed in experiential education that sought to bring about transformation in individuals in the context of ecovillages or alternative communities seeking to be sustainable. The Auroville programme was remarkably holistic or integral in its approach in that its courses were interlinked to address environmental issues, community-building skills, and individual development through an understanding of our physical, mental, vital, and spiritual nature. Living Routes was the first, and perhaps the only, study-abroad programme in the USA that sought to calculate and offset its carbon emissions. And the first programmes of Living Routes were offered in Auroville and Findhorn. The semester programme at Auroville was hugely popular, and Living Routes had run courses continuously in Auroville for two semesters each year without a break from 1998 to 2013. In recent years, Living Routes had also started to offer a short 3-week winter course at Sadhana Forest. In short, Living Routes was one of the first groups to embrace the potential of Auroville as an educational campus and to consistently act on it.

In summing up its lifetime accomplishments Living Routes (USA) notes in its last newsletter that it 1) provided 1,485 students with the skills, knowledge, experience and wisdom needed to become social, cultural and environmental change leaders on local, national and global levels; 2) supported the growth and development of sustainable communities worldwide that serve as models for a more just and sustainable way of living with and on the planet; and 3) led the way for other organizations and institutions to offer more dynamic and sustainable alternatives within the study abroad field. The team of Aurovilians who ran the Living Routes programme in Auroville thanked the community for being a fount of inspiration and a positive, transformative crucible for the students.

A student testimony

Rachel Moore: Studying with Living Routes in Findhorn and Auroville had a profound impact on my successive studies and life path. Living in ecovillages empowered me with a progressive and idyllic vision of what is possible to achieve within the human challenge of sustainability. Returning to my college in the States I shared my experiences of ecovillage living and often found myself as the voice in the classroom saying, "Yes, I believe it is possible to transition to a sustainable future." Living Routes instilled this belief supported by the unique experiences I enjoyed while living and studying in an ecovillage. I hope that one day the programme may be revived and students can continue to take part and be inspired by the Living Routes experience.