Colegio Johannes Kepler

How one school’s Regenerative Design and Permaculture programme turned it into a leader in education for sustainable development.

Colegio Johannes Kepler, an independent school in Quito, Ecuador, has successfully created a regenerative design and permaculture learning environment that focuses on six key areas: energy, zero waste, green construction, water management, seed-soil-food and ecosystem restoration. Where the concept of sustainable living used to lack coherence between campus and home, approximately 60% of the school’s families now have urban gardens, and the school has managed to neutralise over 90% of its campus’ carbon footprint and to recover 80% of the biodiversity and biomass on campus.

The school has installed 68 solar panels and a wind energy generator, while implementing a systematic plan for zero waste management, with biodigesters and worm composters. It has also built eco-efficient classrooms, using natural materials such as bamboo and integrating them with nature to promote forest school pedagogy. The school has even integrated an Edible Forest Design and Agroecological Garden with an Andean animal farm, nursery classroom, and gastronomic club.

The edible forest itself is part of a larger restoration project that has seen a locally exotic forest converted back to a native forest, restoring ecosystems, and providing the school with student-developed trails and class spaces for biodiversity interpretation, with species mapping, descriptive and signage sheets, and artistic illustration.

Further contributing to its sustainable development achievements, the school has reforested forests, ravines, and urban trees, bringing together students, families, companies, government institutions, NGOs, and civil society to plant trees required by Ecuador for carbon footprint compensation. So far, this network has planted 2.2 million trees.

If Colegio Johannes Kepler wins the World's Best School Prize for Environmental Action, it will continue to develop the Regenerative Design and Permaculture project and expand its impact by creating a replicable model of ecological sustainability for schools worldwide, promoting a holistic approach to education that instils in students the values of regenerative practices and global citizenship.