Hello All,
We are glad to announce the launch of the School of Ecological Nurturance. (SEN) This is an introductory post covering its genesis, core intent, and collaborative nature.
School of Ecological Nurturance
The School of Ecological Nurturance was launched in October 2025, emerging out of nearly three decades of apprenticeship-based ecological work at Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary (GBS). This work has unfolded through long attention to land, daily practice, and learning by doing. A Rainmatter-supported pilot in 2024 helped gather this experience into a more intentional learning structure through workshops, volunteering, and apprenticeships.
SEN now brings together four organisations working in different landscapes: Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary (Wayanad), The Forest Way Trust (Tiruvannamalai), Upstream Ecology (Ooty), and Adavi Trust (Mysore). While each place is distinct, the collaboration rests on a shared commitment to long-term engagement with land and to learning shaped by place. The collaboration has two primary objectives: (a) building communities and a core cohort for ecological restoration and (b) shifting public mindsets about nature and engagement with ecosystems.
The School builds on Gurukula’s adult apprenticeship programmes, which emphasise hands-on ecological nurturance, sustained observation, and responsibility carried over time, outside formal academic settings. Over the years, these programmes have shaped practitioners working across several habitats and communities. Conversations with partner organisations revealed the need for a shared structure that could connect such learning across sites without losing depth.
Adavi Trust joined in the current phase, bringing experience in community-based initiatives and livelihood-linked land care, and supporting coordination across programmes and partners. SEN thus represents both continuity and change—strengthening long-standing apprenticeship practices while creating a framework that can hold this work over time and geography.
Approach and programmes
Across the collaboration, there is a shared understanding that ecological degradation is as much a breakdown of relationships as a biophysical problem. Repair requires time, continuity, and learning that unfolds through immersion and responsibility.
SEN works through two programme streams.
Long-term apprenticeships (three to six months) form the core of the school. Apprentices join the everyday work of partner organisations, learning ecological restoration as lived, place-based practice while engaging with questions of community, livelihood, and long-term care.
Short-term programmes (three to five days) include nature immersions, thematic workshops, and engagements with groups such as policymakers and forest officials. These are designed to shift perception rather than transmit information, inviting a different way of seeing land and forests.
Current status and next phase
SEN has welcomed its first apprentices this season: Nivedita at Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, and Kedar and Priyanka at The Forest Way Trust. Chandu and Anaswara joined GBS as volunteers, exploring longer-term engagement. Both intend to return for the three month apprenticeship by March. Also getting more involved in GBS is Isha from Mumbai, who comes for longish volunteering stints to make short videos of the plant conservation work. Upstream Ecology has partnered with Government Art College Ooty to host two or more restoration apprentices each term. Sam, Dinesh and Vignesh are all being trained in the practices of the trade at Upstream, everything from nursery management to documentation and light civil works.
The Rainmatter-supported pilot year clarified both what is possible and sustainable. SEN now understands itself as a long-term undertaking, with a five-year horizon identified as the minimum time needed to build a stable cohort of practitioners and deepen learning across landscapes.
In context of rapid ecological change and institutional short-termism, SEN seeks to hold space for ecological care, effective community-based action, and resilience. Time itself is a critical input for both restoration and the people who undertake it.
We end this post with an invitation to the Rainmatter community to watch this space for more updates and write to [email protected] if you seek information about any of the above.