Minni Jain is the project initiator of Earthlinks UK. She focuses her work in establishing Earthlinks as connector of projects that provide intangible and tangible exchange benefits for the West and the East.

She is an experienced networker and connector of people, places and ideas bringing a unique combination of intuition and focused holistic thinking to all projects she works on, along with her experience in resource (financial and other) mobilization and re-allocation.

Her work includes finding and assessing community projects in India and the UK; organising and planning international and local events, advising and planning a suitable framework for ecological community centres and projects across the world, initiating food projects that will change the way we engage with food and understand it as a nourishment both for self and planet; helping create clean water systems as locally controlled initiatives; women’s empowerment from the personal and pioneering experience of breaking many social taboos that exist for women in India.

Read more about Minni here

Philip Franses is faculty lecturer in Holistic Science at Schumacher College. Born in 1958 in England, Philip studied mathematics at New College Oxford from 1976 to 1980.

Academia’s dull explanation of the world inspired Philip on a counter-journey into the depths of experience, travelling and a re-sensitisation to quality.

In 2005, after a fifteen-year career designing intelligent software, culminating in a programme now used in The Netherlands by all Dutch courts, Philip had a chance encounter with Satish Kumar and was moved to come to Schumacher as an MSc student. Here he was especially inspired by the work and scientific approaches of Goethean scientist Henri Bortoft, the physicist Basil Hiley and the late Brian Goodwin, professor of biology. His thesis is Living Ambiguity

From 2006 Philip worked with Brian on a computer model exploring the interpretation of meaning within the DNA code. Taking up Brian’s work on complexity and chaos theory has also led to an exciting partnership with Abocca herbal health company, restoring the whole herb as the qualitative source of health.

From his search to the source of science and spirit, there has flowed a series of presentations, workshops, papers. The Process and Pilgrimage forum, which he began in 2009 using elements of Basil Hiley’s mathematics of process and Satish Kumar’s philosophy of pilgrimage, has now reached Italy

Martin Crawford is the founder of the Agroforestry Research Trust which he set up a few years ago. He is now one of the foremost forest gardeners in the world. He has planned and carried out all research related to various aspects of Forest Gardening at his two sites in Devon.

He has also spent over 20 years in organic agriculture and horticulture, including working for the Yarner Trust in North Devon (teaching small-scale organic agriculture); growing food for a small hotel on the Isle of Iona; restoring the walled gardens of a manor house in mid-Devon; and running his own organic market garden and tree nursery in South Devon. He is also a director of 'Gaia', a Trust formed by James Lovelock to further his work.

He is the author of Creating a Forest Garden published by Green Books.

Anne Phillips was at the forefront of the management team of The Dartington Hall Estate, Devon over the last twenty years and since 1993 steered Schumacher College to become a leading organisation in the ecological and Holsitic Science field. After her original degree she spent a year in East Africa doing VSO ( Voluntary Service Overseas) and returned to the U.K. to study education, and later, management.

Initially her work was in teaching and in particular she worked with the disadvantaged. She then became involved in project development and it was in this capacity that she first became involved with Schumacher College. Having been involved in the initial creation and design of the College she became Director after its first three years, with a remit to put the College on a sound footing both academically and financially. She retired as Director of Schumacher College in 2006, after 13 years in post.

She now divides her time in creative pursuits and caring for people in her community. She is the author of Holistic Education published by Green Books

Satish Kumar renounced the world when he was 9 years old and joined the wandering brotherhood of Jain monks. Dissuaded from his path by an inner voice at the age of eighteen, he left the monastic order and became a campaigner for land reform, working to turn Gandhi’s vision of renewed India and a peaceful world into reality.Fired by the example of Bertrand Russell, he undertook an 8,000 mile peace pilgrimage, walking from India to America without any money, through deserts, mountains, storms and snow and delivered packets of ‘peace tea’ to the leaders of the four nuclear powers.

In 1973, he settled in England, taking an Editorship of Resurgence magazine. He has been the editor ever since (30 + years!). He is the guiding spirit behind a number of ecological, spiritual and educational ventures in Britain. He founded the Small School in Hartland, a pioneering secondary school (aged 11-16), which brings into its curriculum ecological and spiritual values. In 1991, Schumacher College, a residential international center for the study of ecological and spiritual values, was founded, of which he is the Director of Programme.

In November 2001, Satish Kumar was presented with the Jamnalal Bajaj International Award for Promoting Gandhian Values Abroad. His autobiography, No Destination, was first published in 1978. Since then he has written many books all available with Green Books.

Satish teaches, lectures and runs workshops internationally on reverential ecology, holistic education and voluntary simplicity. He is the Patron and an advisor to the trust.