Rooted Learning

Rooted Learning is an Expression of Life-Centered Education

This approach to learning recognizes that education does not exist apart from life—it emerges from it.

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For generations, Achuar children learned within their community—guided by family, elders, and the living forest.

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Knowledge was relational: learned through observation, responsibility, ceremony, storytelling, and daily participation in community life. Education was not something that pulled children away from life; it was something that prepared them to care for it.

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Today, many dominant education systems are human-centered. They prioritize individual achievement, extraction of resources, competition, and success measured largely by economic outcomes. While these systems can provide useful tools and credentials, they often disconnect young people from place, culture, community, and the natural world.

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Life-Centered Education begins from a different foundation. It understands humans as part of living systems—not separate from them. It values relationships over extraction, continuity over disruption, and responsibility over dominance. Learning is measured not only by academic progress, but by wellbeing, cultural integrity, and the ability to care for land, people, and future generations.

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Keeping Children Rooted

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In Sharamentsa, the absence of local high school options has forced children as young as 14 to leave home to continue their education in distant cities. This separation occurs at a critical developmental stage, often resulting in isolation, trauma, and cultural disconnection.

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Rooted Learning exists to prevent that travesty.

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By supporting Life-Centered Education within the community, students remain connected to their families, elders, language, and land while continuing their academic studies. This continuity protects emotional wellbeing and ensures cultural knowledge is not lost during a formative period of life.

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Walking Between Worlds

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Achuar youth themselves are clear-eyed about the future they are stepping into.

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They recognize that to protect their culture, community, and forest, they must be able to walk in two worlds. They need the tools of the modern education system—literacy, technology, critical thinking, and credentials—and the ancestral knowledge that grounds them in identity, responsibility, and relationship to the living forest.

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Life-Centered Education does not ask them to choose between these worlds.

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Instead, Rooted Learning supports young people in learning how to bridge them—to become future leaders who can speak for their community in broader systems while remaining deeply rooted in Achuar values, worldview, and stewardship practices.

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Education That Serves Life

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When students learn surrounded by family and guided by community, education becomes a force for continuity rather than displacement.

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This approach:

• Keeps families together

• Protects cultural transmission between generations

• Strengthens long-term forest stewardship

• Prepares youth to advocate for their land and people

• Supports emotional, spiritual, and ecological wellbeing

• Ensures that the beating heart of our planet continues to sustain life

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Life-Centered Education is not only about the success of individual students. It is about sustaining life—human and more-than-human—into the future.