How it all get started?

It is against the background above that a need has emerged: a need for an integrated educational system with specific techniques and responses adapted to each age group. Gunter Pauli's work in sustainable manufacturing and agricultural system led to speaking engagements in a university setting. One such engagement in 1995 in Colombia became the catalyst of a major educational reform in that country. The strife and violence that exists in this country has spawned an urgent desire on the part of college students to rebuild their society. The professors and engineering students at University EAFIT in Medellin, Colombia, eagerly embraced an integrated educational approach, including a compulsory course in biology for engineering majors. As the concept spread to other universities, the need to mold the earlier educational tracks in this new direction became apparent; first in a High School in Manizales where ZERI’s coffee and bamboo projects have taken off, and then in elementary schools which asked for a version of this program adapted to their level, comparable to the Garden School projects of the Center for Ecoliteracy.

Parallel movements in Sweden and the UK, growing out of exposure to the ZERI manufacturing concepts, led to educational programs in which adolescents began to create a vision of a world without waste. These students began to envision local businesses as they would exist 20 years in the future, shaped by this new model. In Japan teh work took root

in the form of a group of young women from Kamakura High School who used this model to redefine the strategy of a major lipstick company, while learning "hands on" the impact of their own consumer behavior. And in Fiji, where a ZERI agricultural systems project has been established, educators now understand both the need for and the potential of integrating ZERI principals in their education programs.

Gunter's real breakthrough in the design of an integrated educational system came when he was faced with an enthusiastic worldwide response to his first children's fairy tale "How Can I Be the Strongest Tree of the Whole Forest?". After its introduction +1,000,000 copies were distributed in 27 languages, within months. The basic concept, to use fairy tales which sow into children’s learnings the seeds of systems, science, art, and emotional learning, was embraced by the environmental city of Curitiba in Brazil.

The ZERI network of volunteers then embarked on a rapid program of development and implementation that has spread broadly and which continues today.

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