About the Institute

The Sustainability Institute is an international living and learning centre located outside the South African university town of Stellenbosch. Surrounded by the breathtaking beauty of the Cape's towering mountains and rooted in an agricultural community needing to break free from its' racial past, the Sustainability Institute provides a space for people to explore an approach to creating a more equitable society that lives in a way that sustains rather than destroys the eco-system within which all society is embedded.

The Sustainability Institute forms part of the wider Lynedoch EcoVillage. This is an emerging ecologically designed socially mixed community built around a learning precinct, the heart of which is the Lynedoch pre- and Primary School attended by 450 children who come mainly from the families of farmworkers. This emerging community offers a unique African setting where creative work and learning can be inspired by the joys and challenges of sustainability in practice.

Founded in 1999, the Sustainability Institute provides residential accommodation for visiting writers, artists, activists, volunteers and scholars, and a learning space for participants in the Institute's various educational programmes.

The Institute and the Lynedoch Primary School share a large ecologically designed building. This is why children seem so present in the daily life of the Institute. After the chattering and giggling children have gathered in the hall for the morning assembly, the Principal leads them in a prayer that often starts with a word of thanks for the beauty and wonder of the Western Cape's unique ecosystem which includes the grand mountains peaks, the exceptional diversity of the 'fynbos' plant kingdom, the ancient history of local settlement, and the wild and windy coast. Although the children come from some of the poorest families in the country, the Principal reminds them of the promise of a better life through education. He offers them the possibility of hope. And this, in essence, is what sustainability is all about.