Donella Meadows Leadership Fellowship for the author

March 14 2007. RIF/FIRE

The Sustainability Institute announced today that it has awarded María Suárez Toro a Donella Meadows Leadership Fellowship to continue her work on project about holism, women and global sustainability.

The fellowship recognizes Suárez's work on her book Women: Metamorphosis of a Butterfly Effect, which will be published by Editorial Farben/Norma this year. The book is based on her doctoral dissertation at the Universidad de La Salle in 2006.

The Sustainability Institute, and Suárez's research, aims to “assist new leaders in expanding their holistic skills and complex thinking in the development of their practical work through research." The fellowship will support her work publicizing the musical “Wings of the Butterfly” and further developing her methods to incorporate women's testimonies into the language of art. For the musical, Suárez drew on women's words from interviews around the world recorded by Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE).

By accepting this fellowship, Suárez shows that her priorities in developing her practical work on this issue during the course of the fellowship do not stand alone, but rather are rooted in the three collective initiatives that form the basis of her research: “Wings of the Butterfly,” Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE) and the feminist collective created with Dr. Constanza Rangel during their PhD program. The collective provided mutual support for Suárez and Rangel while they developed their theses on feminism and complex thought under the academic advisory role of Alda Facio.

Both FIRE and Wings of the Butterfly were developed in Costa Rica, but are international in scope. They are the result of the efforts of feminist collectives of women committed to the struggle for a world that is egalitarian, just and environmentally sustainable for all species.

The Donella Fellowship consists of lodging and financial support to attend the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vermont four times during 2007 and 2008 in order to participate in a series of four practical and theoretic workshops on integrating holistic programs. The workshops are interactive and are conducted in groups.

Six activists and academics from around the world were selected from 90 applicants concerned about the state of the planet and committed to paradigmatic change in the interactions between our species and the rest of the planet.

The fellowship was named in honor of Donella Meadows (1941-2001), a scientist who graduated from Harvard with a PhD in biophysics. Meadows developed a method for systems theory as well as the thought-provoking conversation on social practice which led her to found the Sustainability Institute in 1996. She was also a university professor, farmer and journalist.

While in development, Wings and FIRE received support from HIVOS in Holland and the Global Fund for Women, as well as from the feminist movement, which made possible radio and art committed to women.

For more information visit: www.radiofeminista.net and www.sustainabilityinstitute.org, the website of the Sustainability Institute.

Read about her experience there The Bathroom at Cobb Hill House.