Landscape Architecture Pit
The SEDRD Speaker Series presents:
Ben Reid-Howells
Ben’s talk “Beyond Resilience: Stories from the Field” explores his three-year journey from India to Scotland in which he and his partner Kumar Prashant undertook projects of peace, sustainable living and community wellbeing. This session will take place on Wednesday January 29th at 12 pm in the Landscape Architecture Pit. Pizza will be provided.
All are welcome to attend!
About Ben:
Ben is an international educator and community organizer with a degree in Interdisciplinary sustainability and a background as a trainer, wilderness guide and educational program designer. At Mahindra United World College of India, Ben co-developed the service-learning department and led the Peace and Justice project-based learning stream (IB CAS). Ben is the founder of UWCMC’s Mindfulness Program and the Uniting for Peace Youth Festival (2017). He has trained youth, teachers, community groups and government officials in community-led processes, project design and peace-work in Canada, Guatemala, India, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Greece and Scotland. On the Vasudhaiva Ride, Ben coordinated training projects, communications and the global network-building that made this transnational project-series possible: project partners, media, volunteers and international support.
Ben’s parents are immigrants to Canada from England and Scotland. At sixteen he left home to live and study at a United World College where his passion for social and environmental justice became his compass for finding his life’s work. During his undergraduate degree in Sustainability, he saw the path of academia was distancing him from the front-line communities he most wanted to work alongside. He decided rather than pursue a Master’s degree, to spend several years exploring diverse ways communities are working to address pertinent issues, and thus find the form of service that would best suit him and his work alongside communities working towards positive change on Turtle Island (modern-day Canada, USA and Mexico). After five years of solidarity work internationally, Ben is now back on Turtle Island, based in Ontario and seeking to collaborate with regional initiatives to bring about resilience and regeneration: ecologically, socially, culturally, economically and politically.
