Margarita’s journey is rooted in her passion for education, sustainability, languages, cultures, and the well-being of society. She holds a master’s degree in Educational Science with a specialization in Education for Sustainability from the University of Iceland, along with a degree in International Studies in Education. She is also a certified Life Coach and a trained facilitator with the Global Ecovillage Network, where she actively promotes holistic and regenerative practices.

Margarita currently serves as Project Manager for Outdoor and Nature-Based Education at Hjallastefnan Preschool in Selfoss, Iceland. She is the co-founder of Adventures for Students Iceland and Futureroots. Education, both dedicated to reimagining sustainability in education. These initiatives focus on empowering educators through capacity-building, well-being, and transformative training that integrates ecological, social, economic, and cultural dimensions into everyday teaching.

Her work emphasizes the power of confident, informed educators as catalysts for change, supporting them with tools, professional learning communities, and opportunities for deeper reflection and growth. Margarita also contributes her expertise as a member of the South Iceland education committee, run by the National Protection Agency. At the heart of her work is a commitment to environmental advocacy, community resilience, and meaningful human connection.

DescTaisa Mattos is passionate about Ecovillages and regenerative education. She has coordinated and taught Ecovillage Design Education Programmes since 2009, contributing to 30 certified EDEs in Brazil, Portugal, Mozambique, Argentina, and online. She was the lead facilitator of Gaia Education Training of Trainers in Mexico and a guest trainer of the ToT in Ukraine. Taisa is currently serving as Gaia Education Face-to-Face Programmes Coordinator and Gaia Schools Coordinator.

Professor at the Post-Graduate Program on Pedagogy of Cooperation and Social Methodologies (UNIP/Projeto Cooperação) in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo since 2014, Taisa holds a master's degree in Communities and Social Ecology (at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ), and is the author of the book 'Ecovillages: building a regenerative culture'.

Board member of the International Communal Studies Association. From 2019 to 2024, she worked as the Education & Research Coordinator at the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN International) and also as Networking lead, project manager, trainer and consultant.

Taisa is the co-founder of Terra Una Ecovillage (MG-Brazil) and also contributed, for several years, to Transition (Towns) Initiatives in Rio. She works as an international trainer, lecturer and consultant on topics related to sustainability, community building, social innovations and regenerative education.

‘I truly believe we can change the world and education is a core part in making it happen!’

All my service has been focused on integral regeneration, from my first steps in permaculture and education for sustainability, learning and living integral cultural and social approaches at the the Rainbow Peace Caravan in the early 2000, to the creation and development of a decade of Street Art through community integration, to regeneration projects for rebuilding towns post catastrophe, cooperation models in enterprises and organic entrepreneurships, experiencing social labs at gatherings, project design hubs and ecovillages, weaving public, private, academic networks and business for reforestation towards ecosystem restoration (www.ods15.com), cero waste education programmes (www.reciclaton.org) and now bringing all the harvests of integrative regenerative and social design tools into formal education, always learning and teaching.

My path has given me the opportunity to facilitate cooperative processes as trailblazers of the educative transformation, so that it serves to the purpose of sustainability, to solve problems, to reconnect humans and nature and let the schools be communitary nodes for resilient regeneration.May it bring blessings for all, Inshala

‘Education is the tool to reconnect humans and nature, we are living in this time, we are the ones meant to transform it’