TEDxTheHague - Rachelle Eerhart - Urban Farmer, Taking a Natural Cycles Perspective July 22, 2011

Favorite:

Rachelle Eerhart, Urban farmer, Japanologist, reader, writer and dancer. My first motivation is having a good life. Not the planet, not nature, me. In search of this good life however, I have found that living it more in sync with nature makes me happy. Taking care of the planet means taking care of ourselves, and truly taking care of ourselves means taking care of the planet. Seeing myself as part of nature means devoting more attention to the things that connect me to our natural cycles: food, relationships with others, taking some rest, slow travel, not wasting so much, maybe even cleaning. In the end, society is only an aggregation of individuals -- and can therefore do the same.

I took quite a detour to arrive at this take on life. I grew up in a small town near Breda, spent a year in Tokyo during high school and studied Japanology & Political Science. My true major, however, were my extracurricular activities: I spent a lot of time on all sorts of boards and committees. And this is how after graduation I landed a job as an internal advisor for the Works Council of then TNT Post. Two years I spent discovering this company in change, from helping out the mailmen to discussing big reorganisations with the executives. And again I found myself putting more time in the things I was doing next to my job. The overarching theme became 'sustainability'.

Being a member of IUCN NL's Leaders for Nature helped me to see the bigger picture. I learned about issues like biodiversity and ecosystem services. Working in the garden and growing my own food taught me about my place in this bigger picture. I organized No Impact Week NL, my attempt to let others experience the same: how the bigger picture and your role in it becomes a lifestyle, and how this improves your quality of life.

One night I met the director of IVN, a foundation that works on connecting people, nature and sustainability. He told me that all the things I was doing next to my job, I could do as a job for him. Needless to say, I took him up on his offer. I applied and now work there. So, in hindsight all the dots connect.

Videoproduction Edo van Santen / Talk&Do.TV
http://www.talkedo.tv

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