Interns

graceKaya is a joyous work in progress, avid meditator & self claimed recovering perfectionist.

graceKaya is also the founder of blesSINGS & abunDANCE; a multi-disciplinary company which focuses on creating Authentic, Unique & Soul-FULL art, workshops and performances for students of all ages. As a multi-sensory Improvisational Artist, with over 16 years of performing and teaching experience, graceKaya is able to express her passion for life, music, poetry, painting, circus & healing arts. After spending some time at the german eco-village Sieben Linden, she was inspired to expand her passion for sustainable movement into sustainable living. Recognizing the undeniable connection between one's inner world and outer world, graceKaya offers modes of teaching greater awareness, responsibility and commitment to living well with the earth using innovative, engaging, and creative facilitation styles. She recently completed the Gaia Eco-Design Training of Trainers program at Findhorn, Scotland's renowned Eco-village and Education Center, and wrote an essay that related her experience there to the Lab's Five Core Principles of Sustainability. graceKaya is both excited and grateful for the opportunity to become an intern with the Sustainability Laboratory.

graceKaya is a Certified Yoga Instructor, Professional break-dancer, Thai Reflexologist & Singer-Song Writer from Toronto, Canada. She currently lives in Europe. Working with the Sustainability Laboratory, she will develop a dance expression of the Five Core Sustainability Principles for young children.

Click here to read the essay 

2010 - 2011

Yones Nabari is Wadi Attir's Project Manager, and is responsible for directing the day-to-day work of the Project Team. He is a founding member of the Project Wadi Attir Cooperative, and also directs the animal husbandry enterprise.

He comes from a lineage of herders spanning many generations. As a young businessman, Yones was running a car-wash operation in Beer Sheva before he was tapped to join Project Wadi Attir.

Yones has led all aspects of the livestock plan including choice of animals, size of herds, fodder production, range of products, pens and processing plant requirements. As part of our capacity-building program, Yones completed an intensive course on organic agriculture supervised by the Ministry of Agriculture and will be responsible to ensure that the Lab's Five Core Principles of Sustainability will be faithfully reflected in the project's implementation and operation.

2010

Tashi Dorji, a native of Bhutan, has graduated with a Masters degree in International Affairs in December 2009 from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bhutan as a protocol officer before coming to Columbia University with a scholarship from Elysium Foundation in Switzerland. 

Inspired by the philosophy of Gross National Happiness, initiated by His Majesty the fourth king of Bhutan, where happiness of people is made the guiding goal for development in his country, and also by the work of Dr. Michael Ben Eli and the Sustainability Laboratory

with its own sustainability principles and dedication to making our world a more sustainable place, Tashi decided to intern for a few months with the Lab, upon his return to Bhutan.

He will be working on how the five domains of the sustainability framework can be implemented in the tiny Kingdom of Bhutan where sustainability of its environment and culture is given a high priority.

2009

Ben Bokser, a New York City native, is the Sustainability Laboratory's first summer intern. He is a 2009 graduate of Yale University with a degree in Ethics, Politics, and Economics. Much of his college work related to the issues of poverty reduction and the environmental from the wide degree of angles provided by his interdisciplinary major, capped off by a thesis researching ethical restaurant certification in Israel.

Following the fall 2008 semester spent volunteering and studying in Nepal, Ben has also developed an interest in sustainable agriculture, the focus of the Sustainability Laboratory's Project Wadi Attir. Ben will be developing this interest in a hands-on way in fall 2009 in an apprenticeship program in an ecological farm in Israel.