Learn how to restore the health and vitality of Earth's water systems, no matter where you are.
The Core Course is designed to empower students with the skills and knowledge needed to take effective action and achieve results. There are three pathways to choose from to ensure that each student can reach their unique goals.
Do you want to earn your livelihood healing the Earth and bringing water back to land? If your answer is yes, this course is for you. The Core Course will train you with essential skills to establish or enhance your career as a land regeneration professional. You will learn all of the facets of providing water cycle restoration services, from how to get work and create estimates, to delivering finished projects. This course prepares you with everything you need to step into a vocation as a water restoration practitioner, including mentorship and a professional community dedicated to progress, success, and support.
.jpg)
Land stewards like farmers, gardeners, and land managers face uncertainty from water scarcity and climatic extremes. This course will guide you in enhancing the health of your landscape through partnership with natural processes. You will learn how to create water retention interventions, maximize the health of your local ecosystems, and create eco-oases suitable to your context, soil type, and climate. You’ll gain the insights you need to steward your land with confidence, whether doing the work yourself, or working with others. Above all, you’ll see a new potential to rehydrate your land, and make it beautiful and abundant for generations.
.jpg)
Become a voice for the voiceless. You can make an incredible impact on your ecosystem, local water cycle, and climate by being an advocate for water and nature. The living systems of Earth don’t have a voice within human decision making - they rely on us to speak for them. Students in the Core Course will learn how to create community movements for water restoration and how to develop political, legal, and organizing strategies to help facilitate changes on a large scale. Raising awareness is an essential first step in restoring the health of our planet. No matter your age, location, or background, you can make a difference in restoring the Water Cycle.
We live in a time of flood, drought, water scarcity, wildfire, and climate extremes. While these problems seem massive, and even hopeless, there’s actually a lot we can do to restore the stability of our water systems and the health of our environment. The Core Course takes you on a practical journey of how to work with nature in order to heal the water cycle.
The core course is a gateway to the fundamental skills you need to retain water on landscapes and recharge aquifers. You might want to create a water abundant landscape on your land, or start a meaningful career building water retention systems, or be a champion of water cycle restoration in your community.
Whatever your background, the Core Course will provide you with the foundational understanding of how to re-hydrate landscapes - no matter how degraded. In this course you’ll learn the how and why of water cycle repair.
Beyond sharing the practical stories and videos, the core course is designed to help you undergo an even more important mental shift that will help you see the landscape in a new way. Each module has a series of actions and activities for you to implement. This is where the real learning will take place, and where you’ll gain the confidence you need to proceed. In the course community we share our experiences and learn from each other's approaches and results - a community of practitioners helping, and supporting one another.
The Core Course contains the essential information distilled from decades of practical experience, my own and my mentors’. Gain my key insights from more than a decade of experience working around the world (6 continents) implementing decentralized water retention. Learn how these techniques work, their purpose and function, and case studies for their use. Learn how to actualize this approach in your own life.
The course features the insights of Water Heroes like Sepp Holzer and Rajendra Singh, who have restored landscapes, rivers, and rainfall through water retention and ecosystem repair. By the end you’ll understand how they captured water, rehydrated landscapes, and led their communities to large scale ecological repair. You’ll also learn their mindset, and the mental fortitude that’s required to make true systemic change.
.jpg)
The landscape is always speaking, it’s just a matter of developing the awareness to be able to hear. Learn how to read from the book of nature and see the land with new eyes, gaining the ability to read how water is moving through a landscape and how a landscape has changed over time.
Over the last 10,000 years humans have had an increasingly destructive impact on the water cycle, leading to cycles of flood, drought, fire and the desertification of ⅓ of Earth’s land. Learn the key factors that have contributed to this and how the water cycle has been fundamentally changed by humans.
.jpg)
Humans can have a positive footprint, and there are examples from all around the world. Learn from some of the best examples: what they did to be successful in their efforts, the underlying concepts and approaches that are shared between them, and how humans can be the keystone species in the restoration of the earth’s water cycle.
Each kingdom of life offers its own abilities and opportunities. How we relate to the animals, plants, fungi, and other living organisms in our environment has a direct impact on the water cycle. Learn how our relations with each of the major branches of the tree of life have meaningful impacts on the health and productivity of our environment.
.jpg)
This is the how of water cycle restoration. Learn how to create earthworks and take actions that have long term positive impacts on the water cycle. Learn how to create decentralized water retention landscapes and how to rapidly prototype your ideas; learning from the reactions and ripple effects that you observe.
Mentors help us quickly gain new skills and abilities and provide invaluable connections within our desired community. They are not always easy to find or remain close with, and it will often require some growth and compromises on your behalf. This module is all about how to find and endear yourself to mentors, so you can rapidly level-up your skills.
What does it mean to be a voice for the voiceless? It requires civil courage, a clear understanding of truth in your heart, and a relentlessness to follow it. This module will instill you with the energy and skills you need to become a powerful yet respectful steward of Earth.
Communities can join together to create massive change, in fact it is the most proven way to create positive impact. Learn how to align your community through facilitated dialogue, in order to unify for meaningful change.
.jpg)
In order to achieve the amount of restoration that is necessary to re-stabilize our climate, policy change and legal reform will be necessary. Around the world there have been different examples, this module shares them along with a framework for you to work within.
Now you know what you can do to make a meaningful positive impact, but how can you turn that into a vocation or career so that you are supported in your efforts? This module is all about how to shape your zones of brilliance, and interests around the water cycle, into meaningful work on a professional or personal level.
.jpg)
At the end of the day you need to pull it all together into projects that achieve results and are completed on a reasonable time frame. This involves a wide range of skills and abilities to bridge all of the gaps between parties and make change happen. For people who have never managed projects, this will serve as a primer, and for those who have, this will provide a framework and strategies to improve your project management skills.
A disciplined psychological approach is essential to success in your efforts. There will be many challenges to overcome and problems to resolve. This module is an invitation to grow a strong psychological approach that will lead you toward success.
True change is only achieved through action. No one has ever changed the world by sitting on their couch and wishing that someone would do something. The Core Course teaches you how to revive water systems in order to create healthy land, abundant water and strong regions for generations. Be that someone, do that something. Get started with the Water Stories Core Course.
Protégé of revolutionary Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer, Zach is the first person to earn Holzer Practitioner certification directly from Sepp - through a rigorous two-year apprenticeship. Since Zach has worked in 23 different countries spanning 6 continents, covering a wide range of climates, contexts, land-forms and ecosystems implementing Decentralized Water Retention.
Do you want to join the course but don't have the time for the full experience?
Do you prefer to work at your own pace and have more time to watch the videos?
Do you not care about certification, the workbook, or the live sessions?
Then the content only option of the course might be a good fit for you.
This option will be available starting June 2023.
• 6 months access to all 12 video modules
• Bonus video content
• Bi-monthly office hours with Zach
• Workbook with actions and feedback
• Certification for successful completion
• Access to an exclusive community of practice
• Alumni rate available for continued access
• 12 months access to all 12 video modules
• Self paced, all modules open immediately
• Can be purchased at any time
• Available starting June 2023
