• Aili Pyhälä
• Stefa Roth
• Lars Schmidt
• Martin Gemeinholzer

Aili Pyhälä

Aili Pyhälä is a socio-environmental scientist specialised in sustainable natural resource use and hands-on participatory community development. With a B.Sc in Environmental Science and a Ph.D. in Development Studies, she continues to explore the spaces and linkages between the natural and human realms, always with a focus on sustainability. She has lived and worked around the world, including with several different indigenous communities (particularly in South America and Africa). In addition to her grassroots-level work, she has over recent years worked with national governments and inter-ministerial working groups in issues related to sustainable development, development cooperation, global responsibility, and biocapacity, particularly in Finland, Australia and the Andean Community.

Aili is currently researching questions related to global justice, sustainable communities, as well as solutions towards energy, climate and food security. Amidst her own research and occasional consultancies, she intermittently teaches permaculture courses (as a certified Permaculture Design teacher). Born in Mexico to Finnish parents, bred on four continents, and speaking seven languages, she considers herself a world citizen.

Stefa Roth

Artist, Filmmaker, Dipl. Permaculture Designer

Stefa is trained and gained experience internationally in different creative areas (acting, film, Tango Argentino). Her talents and interest made her engage in bodywork-techniques (massage, Shiatsu, Yoga) as well.
Being in nature and observing nature, the rhythms and patterns of it, is one of her most precious inspirations and teachers. Living and working on organic farms in France and Italy she got involved in Permaculture and Systems Thinking.
As everything naturally evolves in cycles, also a learning process is not a linear one, thus being an ever present aspect of Stefas life and work.
Integrating all this different approaches and knowledge, she is now working as artist and sustainability educator. Focus of her projects are the communication and implementation of an eco-centered, integrated way of experiencing, thinking and living.

Lars Schmidt

Ecoartist/Dancer, Facilitator, Dipl. Permaculture Designer //
Passive Activist

As founder of Art, Ecology & Education, initiator/co-developer of Integral Ecoawarenss Training and Practice and author of the Declaration of Cultural Revolutionaries 2009, Lars is a pioneer and visionary in the field of creating and facilitating transformative processes and projects for integrated, sustainable living.

He has explored the creative process in many different art forms. He studied acting, dance and singing, as well as photography, in Germany and the US, worked internationally as actor for film, television and theater, as acting coach, photographer, musician/singer/songwriter, filmmaker and poet.
Due to his love for nature and curiousity about personal processes he has been living and working on organic farms in France and Italy, and is engaged in permaculture and living systems theory for several years.
Lars continues to be a researcher and learner, engaging in and including fields as versatile as body- and energywork, argentine tango, various forms of percussion and herbology.

His work would like to inspire authentic access to knowledge and insight about an integrated way of perceiving, thinking, acting and relating – regarding life as a creative, self-organizing process and providing the opportunity to develop a lifestyle which is sustainable, meaning- and delightful.

www.passiveactivism.net

Martin Gemeinholzer

B.Sc. Agricultural Sciences, Webdesigner, Musician

Martin studied agricultural sciences and worked during and after his university time on several organic farms and communities in Germany and New Zealand. He gained deep knowledge of permaculture principles on the famous Rainbow Valley Farm and later on applied these methods on a vegan-organic gardening project. Now berlin-based he works as a freelance webdesigner. He maintains the AEE-website as administrator.