Shawn Alimohammadi

The focus of his thesis was on urban agriculture and how to improve food security in Cape Town. He recently stated convening a module called ‘Sustainability Sciences’ for primary and high school students at a Montessori school called Newberry House.

Shawn says that what drew him to being an educator at Newberry House, having not studied to be a teacher, was the fact that the school emphasises on experiential learning, or, learning by doing.

This is something he stresses as a matter of utmost importance, as for Shawn, knowledge without experience can be dangerous, especially in an ecological sense.

“A lot of the problems we have today are created by people who get paid a lot of money, but they don’t have any experience with nature. They lack understanding of nature.” Therefore, teaching sustainability at a grassroots level is something that Shawn is passionate about.

Shawn says that people have become eco-illiterate. He provided some insight into the origin of the word ‘ecology’, which comes from the Greek word meaning ‘home’. He says that just as we have our residential homes, we also have our planetary home, however, political-economic decisions frequently lack consideration of what the word fully encompasses.