Environmental Sustainability Education Initiative (ESEI)

ESEI recognizes the power of teaching to increase public awareness and knowledge sharing. We are committed to developing programs that focus on sustainability, conservation, and climate change.

The Environmental Sustainability Education Initiative (ESEI) aims to engage students, faculty, and staff in reducing and eventually eliminating schools’ contribution to climate change. Our environmental education aims to redesign curricular and institutional reform in the spirit of integral ecology, which fosters ecological awareness by touching hearts and minds.

What is The Environmental Sustainability Education Initiative (ESEI)?

ESEI focuses on leading the education efforts for sustainable development by connecting programs around the Lasallian schools in the Région Lasallien de l’Amérique du Nord (RELAN). This initiative builds on the Lasallian tradition established by Saint John Baptist de La Salle and promotes an innovative sustainable relationship with our environment to address issues that can impact our communities and our interdependence with nature.

ESEI serves as a promotional and coordinating entity for teachers, staff, administrators, and supporters of sustainability initiatives. The goal is to give students the educational programming and organizational culture needed to promote the development of environmentally conscious citizens. During their crucial developmental years, students spend much time in a school building. This is the time when schools must create spaces for creative thinking and develop a sense of awareness and responsibility in their students. The journey starts by educating students in favor of a healthy and sustainable environment.

Sustainability in God’s World

The word sustainability is derived from the Latin sustinere (tenere, to hold; sub, under, support). Since the 1980s sustainability has been used more in the sense of human sustainability on planet Earth and this has resulted in the definition of sustainability as: "sustainable development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.”

The simple definition of sustainability as improving "the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems" conveys the idea of sustainability having quantifiable limits. But sustainability is also a call to action, a call for a society founded on respect for nature, social justice, and a culture of peace. This call suggests a more complex figure of sustainability, which includes the importance of the domain of 'politics.'

Sustainability implies proactive decision-making and innovation that minimizes negative impact and maintains the balance between ecological resilience, economic prosperity, and political justice to ensure a desirable planet for all species now and in the future.

Vision and Mission

ESEI’s Vision

Fostering a culture of sustainability and environmental stewardship on the “Care of our Common Home” by integrating social justice, economic, and ecological values into our institutional policies, programs, and practices throughout our schools.

ESEI’s Mission

Our mission encompasses educating the school community on social and environmental responsibility. We advocate for integrating sustainability literacy across RELAN curricula, school operations, and leadership practices, aiming for comprehensive and lasting change.

Keys to Success

We have an ethical and moral obligation to our students and future generations to sustain our environment. When we don’t act responsibly, we exacerbate the problems for future generations. We have the responsibility and need to inspire our schools to make the right choices that will have a direct impact on the future.

Sustainable business models, succession planning, and leadership development are vital to long-term existence. Our interactions with the “care of our common home” are equally vital. We need to plan our sustainable school programs accordingly.

Respecting God’s Gifts

There is no waste in nature. It is an unending cycle of birth, life, and death. Nature has been very successful at transforming and evolving. Zero waste, even though very difficult to achieve, is the sustainability gold standard. We should inspire our schools to strive for the gold standard.

Biomimicry is the design and production of materials, structures and systems that are modeled on biological entities and processes, used to solve complex human problems. ESEI should promote nature-inspired solutions to school problems that improve the school environment.

Looking To The Future

ESEI's commitment is to build resilience to solve future problems and create the space for a sustainability discussion in our schools to raise awareness. This includes preparation for events such as pandemics, flooding, rising seas, water pollution, air quality, and so on.

ESEI Program Objectives

Objective 1: Students actively participate in a formation program with an understanding of the complexity of integral ecology challenges to become leaders who will use their knowledge to create sustainable impact in their communities.
Objective 2: The Environmental Sustainability Education Initiative recognizes that creating a sustainable campus reinforces our core teaching mission and it acknowledges that the challenges ahead of us are complex and interconnected, demanding a constantly developing approach to sustainability.
Objective 3: Creating awareness for every member of our community to reflect on what role they can play in enhancing our collective well-being for a more sustainable future.
Objective 4: Establish communications protocols that facilitate the sharing of best practices, ideas, and data among our schools.
Objective 5: Embrace health, diversity, environmental justice, and human rights as principles by which policies and processes are designed.