Anyone who has spent significant time in Oregon knows that sustainable living is an integral part of the communally-focused lifestyles that are fostered here. Everyday recycling just doesn’t cut it, and that’s something that comes second nature to most around here. How about getting down with dirt, shoving tons of organic food in your mouth, and dancing in the forest all day?
That is what Aprovecho is all about. Well, maybe not exactly in that order, but nevertheless, the 40-acre wooded campus outside Cottage Grove has all the appropriate tools and technology to provide in-depth education on sustainable living and conservation.
“Generally Aprovecho has two main target audiences, and one of them is college- level programming for students and adult life long learners,” said Jeremy Roth, co-director at Aprovecho. “The other part is, we focus on K-12 and doing sustainability education in the public and private school systems, both in middle school and high school.”
The internships and programs that Aprovecho offers ranges from their Humboldt State University-accredited “Sustainable Living Skills Immersion and Permaculture Design Certificate Course” to a six-week-long, 100-mile diet course focusing on how to source locally grown foods and developing a nutritional diet using only foods within a 100-mile radius from one’s locale. During the first week of the 100-mile diet course, students are taught how to source local spices and herbs and are even brought to the coast to harvest sea salt.
“The first two weeks (are) spent doing inquiry and research into how native peoples lived without having food trucked in from California and sort of what is nutrition and what is available nutritionally from the local area and how you can sustain yourself on local foods,” Roth said.
The remaining four weeks of the program use that preparation to transition to a completely local diet. Aprovecho students and teachers source scarce materials like these from local grass-fed beef using lard for most of their oil- and fat-based nutritional needs.
The “Sustainable Living Skills Immersion and Permaculture Design Certificate Course” covers a broader range of topics from organic agriculture and permaculture to education in natural building and land use management and across almost every gamut of conservation resource management. The course is a residential program that lasts for a month and a half and rotates around the core areas of agriculture, forestry, permaculture and appropriate technology. Roth likens it to an experience one might have on a “study abroad” where one is immersed in a foreign culture and language.
“It is very much an immersive, experiential education,” Roth said.
Aprovecho is joined in Cottage Grove by its research center, an entirely separate entity from the sustainable living campus, but very similar in ethos. The Aprovecho Research Center focuses on the engineering and construction of small “rocket stoves.” These stoves are manufactured in China, where they source a specific type of clay to form the base of the stove and are then distributed cheaply throughout the third world and in developing nations where people mostly use biomass to fuel their cooking. Open-flame cooking, the primary method of cooking for most citizens of the developing world, is particularly hazardous to human health, not to mention the pollution and emission issues that go along with it.
“(Open-flame hazards) have to do with eye health issues, burning issues and deforestation issues with the increased concern over climate change,” said Tom Skeele, Corporate Operations Officer at Aprovecho Research Center. “So what Aprovecho Research Center has done is for almost 30 years as consultancy and more like 17 years as a project of the original Aprovecho, and now five years on its own has designed one of the types of stoves that is more commonly used out there called a rocket stove.”
Aprovecho Research Center staff has been involved with developing and writing the U.S. Agency for International Development’s book titled “Fuel-Efficient Stove Programs in Humanitarian Settings” as one of only six organizations acknowledged. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EPA have lauded the organization multiple times and also elicited their help in developing policy and expertise on issues of emissions and indoor air pollution.
On all fronts, domestic and international, Aprovecho stands out. Here in Oregon, it has provided the education that is needed to avert climate change and catastrophic changes to our environment. In an international context, it has helped developing countries implement sustainable living methods even in the most dire of situations.
“People come to Aprovecho knowing that there’s a different way to do things and knowing that they can live more sustainably, but not necessarily knowing how,” Roth said. “We teach them the nuts and bolts and they leave and they become the change agents.”
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