There’s more to studying than sitting in class or reading a textbook. Connections are made and learning is deepened when students see interactions and relationships in the real world. Scientific concepts such as ‘ecosystem’, or ‘alluvial deposition’ become more tangible for students when they’re immersed in a woodland or paddling in a stream. Environmental issues take on new meanings when they can be studied in the field and experienced in the market place.
Encountering living environmental and social systems first hand brings abstract ideas to life for a student. Classroom learning is enhanced when students begin to think holistically and creatively in an exciting hands-on context. Ecowise Italy was founded on these ideas, and our mission is to lead the way helping students to reconnect with the non-virtual world though tailored active learning residential trips in rural Italy.
Ecowise Italy provides environmental education and other outdoor educational experiences to schools who are looking for interdisciplinary and innovative field trips in beautiful natural landscapes. Our programs compliment and reinforce school teaching and syllabuses by providing an educational arena in which children relate their classroom learning and knowledge to real processes, structures and ecosystems.
We are based in the north-western Italian region of Piemonte and conduct our programs in its unspoiled nature, making full use of the area’s spectacular terrain and precious ecological biodiversity. Our zone has just been declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This acknowledges its unique and very special character.
Our field trips provide valuable out of the classroom learning situations designed to stimulate students both physically and intellectually. They allow children to engage their senses and imaginations, to connect with nature at a deep and personal level and to be open and creative in their interactions with each other and the natural world.
Our teaching methodologies involve fun and exciting hands-on activities, exploration, play, group work, story-telling, as well as artistic and creative expression. Students are encouraged to think critically and problem solve, considering scientific principles and methods as well as referring to ideas from other cultural perspectives and theories of knowledge.
Our Team
Adam Rose
Is the creator and facilitator of our programs. Adam is English and has a BSc. in environmental science from the UK and a MA in geography from the University of Hawaii, USA. He has many years of teaching experience and has written and conducted a wide range of programs for schools, universities and other groups in England, America and Italy, as well as working in the fields of environmental education, ethnobotany, ecotourism, conservation biology and human ecology.
Adam has lectured in various Universities, where he has taught courses in Environmental Science, Environmental Ethics and The Psychology of Sustainability. He has collaborated with The Natural History Museum of Trento (La Muse) and writes and teaches about outdoor education. He lives with his partner and two daughters in Piemonte Italy where he runs Ecowise Italy.
Yenka Honig
Yenka, B.S.S. M.R.S.S. A.B.T, is English and was brought up and educated in London, where she studied art, photography and dance. She worked professionally as a theatre and dance photographer for the following years while she studied traditional Chinese medicine in a series of prestigious London schools and masters. She then moved to Los Angeles where she worked with celebrities and become known as ‘The Dr. of Rock’, due to her career spent touring the world with rock bands as their alternative doctor and photographer. She moved permanently to Italy in in 2012 and joined Ecowise, where she has enriched the organization with her artistic, photographic and medical skills and her patience, humour and lively sense of fun.