The word ‘sankofa’ from the Akan Twi and Fante Peoples’ languages is represented by the Bono Adinkra symbol of a mythical bird flying forward with its head turned backward, carrying a precious egg in its mouth.

Sankofa translates as ‘go back and retreive it’ (san – to return; ko – to go; fa – to fetch, to seek and take)- and in its essence, this is precisely what Earthrise seeks to do. Earthrise’s Sankofa Centre for Learning will host physical and virtual spaces for teachers, students and co-learners to collaboratively engage in the act of re-membering by drinking deep from the springs of ancient and evolving wisdom. The learning and growing at the Sankofa Centre is deigned to be an antidote to the dis-memberment wrought by the forces of colonialism and free-market capitalism.

The space offered by Earthrise has a threefold objective, through which we aim to embody the spirit of sankofa:

1. To remember, revive and celebrate the wisdom that we and our ancestors have always known in our cellular memory (but may have recently forgotten).

2. To break habitual patterns of thinking and acting by learning to abide in – and courageously act from – this wisdom.

3. To allow for our visions of the future to emerge from an alignment with ancient wisdom – to “go back and retrieve it,” then live and create into the future from these profound understandings.

We are building Earthrise into a vibrant online space and a physical place where wisdom teachers, warriors for the Earth, spiritual leaders, and visionaries of brave new worlds can come together to learn, dream and plan. Earthrise’s Sankofa Centre for Learning will be a pluriversity teaching different Earth-centered wisdom traditions and Earth-centered activism. It will be an imaginarium within which we dream new ways of organizing, living and serving  the planet with love, in alignment with the LifeForce/Wholeness of the Earth.