Addressing climate change’s impact has never been more urgent. For Christabel and Ruby Reed, founders of the Earthed platform, that means healing our planet and ourselves by leveraging the power of community to restore biodiversity and a sense of purpose at the same time.
Earthed, the nature skills platform founded by sisters Christabel and Ruby Reed, is working to foster a worldwide movement dedicated to ecosystem restoration. With support from supermodel Cara Delevingne who serves as a founder and trustee, and a growing global community of teachers and students, the platform says its existence is “to make every river, city, farm, and balcony burst with life.”
The platform does this primarily by promoting grassroots involvement and skills development courses led by experienced teachers that Earthed says can help to dispel feelings of climate despair as well as challenge misleading solutions, bridge social divides, and combat apathy, showcasing that local actions can indeed drive significant global transformations. Christabel calls the Earthed teachers the “wisdom holders who not only have dedicated their lives to restoring nature, but are generously sharing their skills through the Earthed charity.”
She says Earthed exists to close the knowledge gap and scale ecosystem restoration globally through giving people access to the skills, networks, and funds they need to restore nature on a high quality, multilingual learning and community platform. “Earthed is committed to nurturing a mass-mobilised movement of people restoring nature and growing food regeneratively by upskilling members through online video classes, by generating funds for restoration through member donations, by mainstreaming restoration knowledge through cultural partnership and celebrity engagement, and by increasing network capacity through an engaged community sharing their knowledge, progress and challenges,” Christabel told Ethos via email.
The group’s 2024 Digital Earthed Summit, an expansive virtual event, is designed to empower individuals everywhere to partake in efforts aimed at reversing environmental degradation. Set to go live on February 28, this digital forum will unlock access to more than 20 insightful talks and panel discussions that took place during the Earthed Summit in November, offering strategies for ecosystem restoration and sustainable food cultivation.
The summit targets a broad spectrum of attendees, from individuals keen on ecological restoration to experts, businesses, and organizations committed to nurturing nature, the summit aims to disseminate actionable knowledge for revitalizing local ecosystems across various settings, from urban centers to expansive rural areas. We caught up with Christabel to learn more about Earthed, its impact, and the 2024 Summit.
*This interview is edited for length and clarity.
Ethos: What inspired the creation of Earthed, and how do you envision it impacting global environmental restoration efforts? How did Cara Delevingne get involved?
CR: The idea for Earthed was born when we were running a climate action campaign called EcoResolution. We started this with Cara and together set up the charity Initiative Earth around it. Through EcoResolution we got thousands of people making changes to their daily lives, communicating those changes on social media, and nominating others to do the same. Loads of celebrities got involved and we had great reach and impact however we soon started to feel that in order for us to enable tangible change that goes beyond the surface we need to not just be raising awareness and fostering conversation, but building a mechanism that enables people to access the practical skills they need to get their hands in the soil and start regenerating nature themselves, whether that’s on their balcony, in their garden, by their local river or forest. We fell in love with the transformative power of ecosystem restoration and wanted to support people everywhere to get involved. And that’s when we set up Earthed through the Initiative Earth charity with Cara who is a founder and trustee.
The reason we are focusing on ecosystem restoration is because it is one of the most powerful solutions to slowing and preventing the worst impacts of climate change, to preventing 60 percent of predicted species extinctions, and to improving food security for more than 1.3 billion people. The United Nations reports that the only way the essential target of 1 billion restored hectares by 2030 can be met is if local people everywhere can take part. However, there are barriers to action and that’s where Earthed comes in.
Ethos: Can you explain the unique approach Earthed takes in combining online learning with practical, hands-on environmental restoration?
CR: Earthed is an online learning platform that offers members access to high-quality video classes. These video classes are led by world-leading Nature Teachers who teach practical steps to start restoring nature and growing food. Earthed currently has 16 courses on the platform with multiple courses released every month. Topics include everything from urban gardening to biodiversity, earthship building to river restoration, biodynamic farming to growing mushrooms and microgreens at home.
Ethos: How does Earthed balance the need for accessibility and inclusivity with sustaining its operational and charitable goals, especially regarding the ‘donate what you feel’ model?
CR: Accessibility lies at the heart of our mission. Earthed is free for anyone who needs it, ensuring that we are creating an inclusive platform. For those who can donate, they can choose whatever price they feel comfortable with. The donations then go to supporting the charity, to the Earthed Teachers, and the creation of the Action Fund that will enable members to apply for trust-based grants to help start or scale their own restoration projects.
Ethos: In what ways does Earthed facilitate community engagement and collaboration among its members, and why do you believe this is vital for successful ecosystem restoration?
CR: Being part of an engaged community that shares knowledge, asks and responds to questions, and shares updates on their successes and challenges is one of the most important parts of sustaining successful growing and restoration projects, as well as nurturing a global ecosystem restoration movement.
One of the biggest barriers to sustained climate action is people thinking they are alone in their action. When we realise that our actions are connected to a global web of others taking action, we realise our power and our human potential to be life-affirming regenerative forces on the planet. We are nurturing this global community on the Earthed.co platform by giving members access to community forums where they can share knowledge, direct message with each other, and attend online events to connect and learn. The community area is currently in its Beta version but will soon be updated with further functions such as translation to multiple languages and gamification.
Ethos: How does Earthed plan to evolve and expand its offerings in the future, particularly in reaching regions or communities that are currently underrepresented in environmental action?
CR: Earthed is continually expanding its offerings through regular release of high-quality courses taught by teachers from around the world, representing a wide variety of biocultural practices, perspectives and skills. This is absolutely essential to our mission and vision and something we were advised not to do in order to focus on particular “target audiences”. However, we want Earthed to be for everyone. That’s also why we’ll be translating to at least two more languages this year, offering free membership to those who need it and developing global partnerships to get those who need it most benefit from the platform.
So a key challenge is how to create something scalable whilst not sacrificing depth, attention to detail, and human-to-human connection.
-Christabel Reed
Ethos: Could you elaborate on the Action Fund and the process for Earthed members to apply for grants to support their local projects?
CR: The Action Fund will be launched in 2025, so we are unable to share the processes yet. However, we can share that the Action Fund is an essential part of Earthed. Skills and community support are big obstacles for many people wanting to learn to grow and restore, but access to funds is one of the biggest challenges for both setting up a project and maintaining it. Our vision is to leverage the e-learning market, forecast to reach $185.20bn in 2024, in order to direct funds into the global ecosystem restoration movement through participatory grants that engage the membership base in the process.
Ethos: What challenges have you faced in launching and growing Earthed, and how have you addressed them?
CR: The journey to launching and building Earthed has definitely come with challenges. We have a big and ambitious vision of supporting hundreds of thousands of people to overcome the obstacles preventing them from restoring nature. So a key challenge is how to create something scalable whilst not sacrificing depth, attention to detail, and human-to-human connection. We’re overcoming this by taking everything step by step, by making decisions based on member feedback, and by prioritizing quality and care whilst not hindering our ability to grow in the future.
Another challenge was fundraising. We’d never done it before and were definitely “learning whilst doing” – how it is most of the time, being a small and young team! Whilst there were challenging moments, what saw us through was our commitment to a clear and radical vision that became shared with a few incredible people and organizations that stepped forward to financially back us in these start-up years, namely Cara Delevingne, Neal’s Yard Remedies, Farmacy, and Vivobarefoot. Without these aligned people and organisations, Earthed wouldn’t have been able to launch.
With a beautiful platform and community, now our challenge is to get Earthed out into the world and turn the masses onto the transformative power of nature restoration and growing food until we reach critical mass and together restore our world.
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