We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Zoe Weil a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Zoe , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

After teaching week-long summer courses to middle school students in 1987, I realized the power of education to transform lives and motivate positive change, so I became a humane educator, teaching about the interconnected issues of environmental sustainability, animal protection, and human rights. I created a program in the Philadelphia, PA area that offered presentations, assembly programs, and afterschool courses to schools. I was reaching about 10,000 students a year and witnessing the profound impacts of this kind of education, but I knew this was a drop in the bucket. So in 1996 I co-founded the Institute for Humane Education (IHE) to build a movement in which education about real-world issues would be integrated into schools and communities across the U.S. and beyond. The goal was – and is – to help teachers and changemakers prepare people of all ages to be solutionaries able to identify unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane systems and transform them in ways that do the most good and least harm for everyone.

At IHE, we created the first graduate programs in comprehensive humane education, offered online through an affiliation with Antioch University, and our hundreds of alumni are now leading the humane education movement. We also developed free resources (lesson and unit plans, activities, guidebooks, videos) along with workshops and online courses that have reached hundreds of thousands.

A just, healthy, and humane world is possible, and educating people to be solutionaries is the most strategic approach I can think of to building such a world.

Zoe , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have always cared about suffering and injustice, whether to people or animals. I also want us to protect the ecosystems that sustain life. Thoreau once said, “There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one that is striking at the root.” The education system is the root system underlying all other societal systems, and I believe that it’s essential that we prepare people, young and old alike, to address and solve the grave challenges we face in our communities, nations, and world. Ultimately, everyone benefits from learning to be a solutionary and applying solutionary thinking and action through whatever professions they pursue.

At the Institute for Humane Education, we prepare people to be humane educators and solutionaries. We offer the only graduate and professional development programs of their kind in the world. If you want to build a more equitable, sustainable, and peaceful community and world, we are here to help.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

A better world is possible, but it is not inevitable. It is up to us to build a future where all life can thrive. Developing a solutionary mindset and practice is the most effective path toward collaboratively ushering in a healthy, humane future. This vision and practice drives everything I do.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Early in my career I believed that if people learned about the negative impacts of their personal choices, from what they ate to what they wore to the energy they consumed to the products they bought, they would make more humane, sustainable, and socially just choices. I discovered this was not the case. Despite knowing that they are causing unnecessary harm, most are unwilling to make different choices, either because they don’t want to be inconvenienced or because their desires eclipsed their values.

I realized that to create meaningful change, we needed to change the systems themselves (e.g., food, production, energy, transportation, defense, politics, etc.) so that these systems became more humane, just, and healthy for everyone. People tend to go along with whatever systems their lives are embedded in. To change the systems, I realized I needed to focus less on personal choicemaking and more on systems change. While we still encourage people to make compassionate and sustainable personal choices, we focus on preparing people to to be solutionaries who transform inequitable, violent, and destructive systems into ones that do the most good and least harm for everyone.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://humaneeducation.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/humaneeducation/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InstituteforHumaneEducation
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/institute-for-humane-education/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/humaneeducation
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@instituteforhumaneeducatio5665
• Other: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/humaneeducation/

Image Credits
IMSA (the watermarked one) Institute for Humane Education