ESTIA is a Maine-based ecological organization that promotes and facilitates sustainability and peace through education.

ESTIA was created as a means to advocate and support cultural and biological diversity and the preservation of vital living systems. The organization’s members work to develop workshops, courses, conferences and hands-on opportunities for people who are in need of exploring the realities of global interdependence. Members can be involved in many ways, from taking an active role in the on-going local or international planning and program development to attending educational events. As an educational community ESTIA serves as a catalyst for linking ecology and peaceful coexistence. As international citizens of an interconnected planet, we believe that we must participate physically, intellectually, morally and spiritually in the restoration of the indigenous and earth-based wisdom tradition of our world.

In practice, ESTIA has many members who work on projects across the globe in concert with this mission. On the local level ESTIA hosts a yearly conference centered around themes of ecology and peace or what we’ve come to know as “EcoPeace” as well as academic courses, community scale workshops, potluck suppers, storytelling events, permaculture courses and implementations.

ESTIA was formed in 2004, as a result of an opportunity to remediate a 60-acre island in the Penobscot River. ESTIA was created to bring community together with the intention of creating healing opportunities for people and the land.

ESTIA is:

• A non-profit, non-governmental organization dedicated to the protection of cultural and biological diversity and the preservation of biotic systems.
• An educational learning community pioneering an integrative human-ecological approach to education on issues of peace and sustainability.
• A model and a catalyst in the promotion of peaceful co-existence benefiting the local and the global community.