Education broke when we lost connection, and connection is what a village restores.
of parents reported improved connection at home
of parents reported stronger curiosity in daily life
of campers felt more seen and included
Your support moves the dial on what actually builds connection, and can be the turning point for a child.
The village needs builders. Take action today, and change a child's education.
Recurring gifts keep the hive alive and growing. Come buzz with us, and become one of Gedi's Honeys.
Fund tools, programs and real classroom experiences for children and educators.
Help fund a pilot, sponsor programs, or bring Gedi to more families.
Partner with Gedi →Join a growing network of educators rethinking what learning can look like.
Enroll your school →We're a lean team. Every dollar is accounted for. As a registered Canadian charity, we publish where support goes: the tools, the programming and the classroom experiences it makes possible. Real children, real classrooms and real people in the village.
Learning keeps going past the classroom door. Our Family Festival Weekends invite parents and caregivers to join their campers for two days and one night at Haute Goat Farm, shared meals, workshops, hikes, and quality time under the stars.
Because at Gedi, families are part of their children's learning. When parents show up, connect, and grow alongside their kids, the whole village grows stronger.
School was built for a different century. The world it was designed for is gone, and students, teachers, and families are all feeling the gap.
It's the ground the rest of life grows from.
The model is over 120 years old, designed for an industrial economy, to produce workers who could follow instructions and pass the same test. It rewards standardization. Meanwhile the world it was meant to prepare children for has disappeared. Students are anxious and checked out. Teachers are stretched past capacity. Families are kept at the edges of their own children's learning.
The village model of education is a way of learning where children, families, and educators grow together as one community. It's a village that raises the child. Relationships, belonging, and emotional intelligence are treated as the foundation of learning, right alongside academics.
Before there were schools, there were villages. Children were raised by communities, with learning woven into daily life, every adult knowing your name, every child with a role. This is community-based learning: education rooted in relationships and place, where the people around a child are part of how they learn.
Social-emotional learning (SEL) is how children learn to understand themselves, manage their emotions, build relationships, and make good decisions. As AI automates routine work, these are increasingly the skills the workforce runs on, and the ones traditional school is least built to teach.
At Gedi, SEL is the centre, and it's measured. After three weeks at Camp Gedi:
of families saw improvements in their child's emotional regulation
of campers developed stronger empathy and conflict-resolution skills
of parents felt more connected to their child's growth
Montessori, IB, traditional school, each does something real. Here's the honest difference.
Montessori and IB reimagine how a child is taught. Gedi reimagines who learns together, the child, the family, and the community around them.
Camp Gedi has run for three summers here. School pilots are launching across the city, with more internationally. The first Gedi micro-school will open in a Toronto neighbourhood close enough that families can walk in and see it for themselves: the village next door.
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The village model has a structure. We call it the Beehive Model.
"Nonchalant" became part of the English language less than 200 years ago. Its positive form, "chalant," is the one we're reclaiming. Somewhere along the way, we lost the word. And maybe, slowly, we lost the practice too.
To be chalant is to care. To be invested. To stay open and present in a world that rewards detachment. To show up fully for other people, for your community, and for the future we're building together.
In 2026, nonchalance often feels like the cultural default. We scroll. We shrug. We say "it's fine" out of habit. We've been taught that caring too much is cringe. That earnestness is embarrassing. That being deeply invested makes you naïve, dramatic, or try-hard.
Gedi Village Foundation exists because we believe caring is infrastructure. In our work with schools and camps, we're raising kids who think critically, feel deeply, act boldly, and participate in the world around them, kids who are emotionally aware, community-minded, and courageous enough to care out loud.
The hat says the word "Chalant" in bold letters, but it also makes a statement: caring is the most countercultural thing you can do in 2026.
Being chalant means resisting numbness. It means noticing people. It means showing up as a participant. It means believing that empathy, connection, and community still matter.
One word, worn where everyone can see it, a signal to your kids, to other parents, to strangers in the grocery line, that you care and you're proud of it. And every hat helps build the village.
Get the hat and put the word where the world can see it.
Tell us what you're Chalant about. Tag @gedivillage.
Raise kids who care out loud. Be the parent who shows up.
Modern culture glorifies being "nonchalant." Gedi Village and Whelm Co. choose to care.
Whelm Co. exists to bring a little joy and care with positively curious words, while Gedi Village exists to reclaim the human spirit in education by teaching kids to think critically, feel deeply, and act boldly.
7,000 languages. Most are still locked for AI translation. We started with Luganda in Uganda, and now we're asking educators everywhere: which language should we unlock next?
Press play and click the screen to swap languages.
Imagine teaching in your language. The words land the first time. Every student follows. Just… teaching.
For most of the world's 7,000 languages, professional development for educators is out of reach. The research, the training, the tools arrive in English, if at all.
🇺🇬 In Uganda, that change just became real. Nampwera Frank and his teachers can now access professional development courses in Luganda, the language they think in, dream in, and teach in.
🇵🇭 A teacher in the Philippines just got her first training in Cebuano.
🇧🇩 A school leader in Bangladesh finally reads the research, in Bangla.
🇪🇹 A trainer in Ethiopia opened a course, in Amharic, for the first time.
There's a river. On one side, educators with easy access to the latest research and training, all in English. On the other, equally committed teachers blocked because what matters still arrives in a language foreign to their community.
Braiv's AI translation technology and Gedi Village Foundation's professional development programming came together to bring self-paced learning to Luganda, the language of more than 5.5 million people in Uganda. The first beneficiary: Nampwera Frank, head teacher at Bright Early Age School, and his teachers.
Educators submit the language their community needs. One form, 30 seconds.
It takes a community to unlock a language: 100 nominations triggers the unlock.
Braiv makes the language available on the platform, Gedi's courses go live, and every nominator is notified.
Educators anywhere can submit a nomination.
By submitting you acknowledge Braiv and Gedi Village Foundation may process this nomination for the Speak to Learn campaign, including outreach when your language unlocks.
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Speak to Learn lives on both the Braiv and Gedi websites, two front doors, one movement. Wherever you land, you can nominate the next language and help decide what unlocks next.
Children were raised by communities. Learning was woven into daily life, hands-on, relational, real. Every adult knew your name. Every child had a role. Your contribution to the community was part of how you learned who you were.
For over 200 years, the same model has shaped how we educate children. It was designed for an industrial age.
Student disengagement and anxiety are rising.
Teachers are burning out inside compliance-driven systems.
Parents are locked out of their own child's education.
Children are increasingly disconnected from the natural world, spending less time outdoors than ever before.
It means knowing yourself. Working with others. Belonging to something. Becoming equipped and empowered for the world right now.
A village always delivered exactly that.
Gedi Village Foundation is building the different way. We've created spaces where children belong, where adults are partners in learning, and where education serves life.
Small groups, known teachers, families woven into every decision made.
Children who know themselves. Parents who belong. Teachers who stay.
This is what change looks like.
"Camp Gedi was truly remarkable. Both my children were terrified, filled with anxiety about starting camp and joining a new group… That changed real quick. In the end, they left crying, both not wanting it to be over, really having loved every moment and the unique bonds they created."
"Seeing the impact of Camp Gedi, where so many children are able to participate regardless of financial circumstances, makes it very clear that this is not just a vision, but work that is already meaningfully changing lives."
Schools
Children
Educators & Caregivers
Movements like this start with people like you. Help us shape the future of education.
Rooted in relationship and powered by purpose, Gedi prepares people to thrive in life, with empathy, curiosity, and the courage to lead a different kind of future.
A living, breathing framework shaped by how real learning happens: in relationship. It replaces rigid hierarchy with deep collaboration, and sees every child, family member, and educator as an essential part of the whole.
Leveraging the latest in research to break down silos between subjects, roles, and learning contexts.
Embedding critical and creative thinking, collaboration, and adaptability into everything we do.
Engaging the whole child and the whole community, because learning keeps going past the classroom door.
Gedi was founded by Ashley Baylen and Quinn Simpson, whose work spans community-building, child development, educator coaching, and school culture transformation. Together, they are building a more connected, human-centered model for how children, families, and educators grow together.
We're ready to scale what's already working. Now we're looking for a small group of visionary partners to help expand this work into more schools and communities.
If you believe education can be more human, more connected, and more effective, this is your moment to step in.
A communal learning ecosystem, a K–8 school, a hub where educators and caregivers learn too, and public spaces for play and co-learning. A living laboratory where everything we develop becomes a model other schools can use.
We're already building it in real communities. What's needed now is the support to scale it.
Camp Gedi is entering its third summer, with school-based pilots launching across Toronto and internationally. In just three weeks:
of families saw improvements in their child's emotional regulation.
of campers developed stronger empathy and conflict-resolution skills.
of parents felt more connected to their child's growth.
All of it through Pay What Feels Good, because every family deserves access, regardless of what they can pay.
The reason why I love camp Gedi is because you get to connect with a lot of people, and you get to know them more as the camp goes on. The three weeks with my friends were great. I loved it a lot.
I'm really looking forward to Family Festival Weekend. What makes it so special is that they'll take you around to do whatever you want. You just have to ask them, and if they say no, they probably have something even better planned for the day.
I wasn't there for it, but they supposedly got ice cream. I hope everyone had a good time!
I honestly love this camp. It's so special in my heart. I'm turning 13, so I won't be able to go next year, but I'll see when I'll be able to come back and volunteer.
The village needs builders. Take action today, and change a child's education.
Small monthly gifts help keep the hive alive and growing. Come buzz with us!
Fund tools, programs, and real classroom experiences for children and educators.
Fund a school pilot, sponsor a micro-school, or leave a gift that outlasts you.
Real change in a child's life happens in the showing up, again and again. Monthly support is what lets Gedi plan ahead, keep programs running, and be there when a family needs us most.
Every Honey helps children learn the way they were meant to, outdoors, in relationship, and through real experience.
Children arrive unsure and leave knowing they matter, seen by peers and adults who show up for them.
Parents and caregivers become part of the learning.
Teachers rediscover why they started, supported as whole people, free to do the work that changes lives.
Every Honey widens the circle, more children, more families, more places the hive can reach.
We treat your gift the way you'd want us to, with care, and in the open. Your support helps Gedi continue growing and serving the children in our community.
Your monthly gift funds programs children experience firsthand, camp, gatherings, and classroom pilots.
Recurring support lets us plan a full year ahead, the difference between surviving and building.
You'll hear where it went, real stories and updates from the hive. Cancel anytime.
Gedi Village Foundation is a Registered Canadian Charity (#837700939RR0001). Monthly gifts are tax-receiptable in Canada. US donors can give through every.org.
Wherever you are, your monthly gift joins a community that keeps growing, from Ontario to Colorado to the UK.
Become a Honey today. Small monthly gifts keep the hive alive and growing, and there's always room for one more.
We're committed to transparency, accountability, and care, just like we are with the children and families we serve. Official donation receipts for income tax purposes will be issued for gifts of $20 or more. Gedi Village Foundation is a Registered Canadian Charity (#837700939RR0001). We comply with Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) to keep your information safe and secure.
Your support transforms how children learn and grow in our community. You fund something specific, and you see exactly what it did. You funded this summer's Camp Gedi session. Here's the cohort. Here's what they built. Here's their faces on the last day.
That's the whole point of a Pollinator: your resources, a real thing that happened because of them.
Pick a project and fund it, anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000. You'll get the proof after, the cohort, the photos, the "you made this happen" moment.
Soon you'll be able to turn a milestone birthday, a book club, or a work retreat into a funded project, with your own fundraising page and a story kit. We're building it.
Help us make more Gedi magic! Every gift, no matter the size, reaches directly into the lives of children in our community. Every dollar helps create a summer of joy, growth, and belonging for children and families.
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Every one of these is a project you can fund today, and fundraise toward soon.
Fund your first project and you become a Founding Pollinator, a badge dated to the year, and your name on the Founding Wall. It's a small way of saying thank you, and a place in the story you helped begin.
Some Pollinators come closer, to a Gathering, a Family Festival Weekend, and find they want to do more. The door stays open, and you walk through it when you're ready.
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Fund a project now. Rally your people soon.
Gedi is inspired by the beehive: a living system where every person is both an individual and an essential part of a community. It mirrors the intelligence and interdependence of a hive, built on the belief that humans thrive when they feel connected, respected, and responsible for the world around them.
You are the kind of person who can help build this. You understand that education needs imagination, courage, and a village. Every level of giving plays a distinct role.
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We are ready to scale. And we need visionary partners to help make it happen for the children in our communities. By investing in Gedi, you are co-creating a movement that will reshape how education is approached for generations to come. Early philanthropic support has already started to turn this vision into reality, funding pilot programs, expanding Camp Gedi, and shaping the future Gedi Village. Help us build the village they need to thrive.
Some of the most important gifts cost nothing today. By naming Gedi in your will or estate, you help make sure the village is still standing for children yet to be born, a belief that keeps working long after you. If it's something you're considering, we'd be honoured to talk, and to make sure your gift is used exactly as you intend.
Your own advisor can help you shape the legal and tax details.
A relaxed, honest conversation with Quinn and Ashley about what you care about and what you want to see exist in the world. If there's a fit, we build a plan together, and you get real proximity to the work: early access to what we're learning, a seat near the decisions, and proof of what your gift made possible.
Founding Hive conversations begin with one question: what do you want to still be true in the world twenty years from now?
If this is the kind of thing you've been looking for, start a conversation whenever you're ready.
When parents, caregivers, and neighbours engage in meaningful learning alongside children, the ripple effects reach far beyond the classroom. Adults gain deeper self-awareness, stronger communication skills, and new ways of showing up, in their families, their workplaces, and their communities.
Our long-term vision is to create a permanent space that brings all parts of the Gedi model to life: a school and centre where co-created learning is the norm, not the exception.
The Gedi School & Centre will be a place where children, families, educators, and community partners come together to learn, lead, and grow. It will embody the Beehive Model, interdependent roles, shared responsibility, and continuous learning, all under one roof.
It's a hive for human development, designed to evolve with the people inside it.
Gedi recognizes what many education systems overlook: families are essential collaborators. Parents bring insights that reach beyond the classroom, and when they're included meaningfully, learning deepens for everyone.
This is co-creation in action: listening, learning, and evolving together.
Connect with like-hearted families, educators, and community leaders at one of our in-person or virtual events. These gatherings are where new ideas, and relationships, take root.
Interested in bringing the Gedi spirit to your neighbourhood? We'll help you create a small, meaningful gathering where families can connect and learn together.
Join us for a weekend of shared meals, music, and co-created learning. Our Festival Weekends are joyful, immersive events that bring the Gedi community together.
Bring your energy, skills, or love of nature to Camp Gedi. From guiding activities to supporting campers, your presence helps make the experience unforgettable.
We're inviting families, educators, and community partners to help shape our future school model. Join us in testing ideas, offering feedback, and building what comes next.
Stay connected to everything happening at Gedi. Get updates on upcoming events, community tools, and resources designed for families like yours. Unsubscribe anytime.
More and more teachers, families, and students want change, and education systems pivot slowly. Educators are asked to innovate inside structures built to stay the same.
We believe meaningful change starts with listening to those already doing the work. You're shaping lives. That's why educators are core to everything we're building. Your insight, care, and experience are foundational.
Facilitate immersive, social-emotional learning in nature, alongside families.
Lead workshops or take part in reflective community experiences that bridge teaching and connection.
Join values-driven conversations that shape the future of learning through storytelling, dialogue, and deep listening.
Collaborate on designing and testing a school model grounded in care, flexibility, and collective growth.
Experience a culture where ongoing support for educators is built into the foundation.
Access community-aligned tools, practices, and content developed with real educators, for real classrooms.
Gedi is a collaborative experiment grounded in care, purpose, and community. We believe educators like you are essential to building a system that actually serves children, and the people who teach them.
Reach out for deeper conversations or partnership opportunities.
of families reported meaningful growth in their children's confidence, emotional regulation, and connection to community, in just three weeks.
A single school can be redesigned in one academic year. This is already happening. What happens next depends on who chooses to step in now.
Early partners help shape this work.
For partners, schools, and major supporters looking to help scale this work, from prototyping the school to opening doors in new communities.
Support the work monthly and help sustain what's already underway. Every level of support plays a role in building and expanding the Gedi model.
Your support turns the Beehive Model into a scalable system that can reach more children, more communities, and more families.
Expand access so more children and families can experience the model firsthand.
Bring Gedi into classrooms through year-round programming and full school implementations.
Build the permanent home for this work, a campus designed for learning, community, and scale.
The businesses, schools, farms, and makers who show up for the village, donating space, time, talent, and heart.
We're building this with a small group of committed partners. If you're interested in getting involved, reach out and we'll follow up directly.
The Beehive Model is how Gedi helps children flourish, by building the conditions around them and the whole community with them.
Most education reform works on one piece at a time, a better curriculum, a trained teacher, a more engaged parent. The Beehive Model insists all of it is tended together. A child thrives only when the classroom and parent community thrive too. Learning becomes relational. Community becomes the curriculum.
The Beehive Model is a framework for learning that treats the whole community, children, families, and educators, as one interdependent hive. It holds that a child's growth is inseparable from the ecosystem around them, so it builds five conditions across the whole community at once. The hive is the unit of flourishing.
Five conditions are consistently present when a learning community flourishes, and consistently absent when it struggles. Gedi builds all five, for the children, the educators, and the families, all at once.
The body has to feel safe before the mind can learn. Safety is the presence of regulation. Children need to feel safe with the adults around them, and adults need to feel safe enough to be genuinely present. A regulated adult is the most powerful learning tool in the building.
Humans learn best in relationship. Belonging is the felt sense of being known, wanted, and held by a community, for exactly who you are. It's structural as much as warm. And it's intergenerational: when parents belong too, a school becomes a village.
Skills grow through daily practice. Capability is what lets a child think, function, and contribute in the real world, planning and focus, critical and flexible thinking, and the emotional skills to name feelings, navigate conflict, fail and recover, ask for help and offer it. These are foundational skills, built daily, and modelled by every adult in the room.
A real community shares a life beyond the curriculum. Connection is genuine relationship across age, role, and background, built through shared experience: making things, eating together, being in nature, solving problems that matter to everyone. It reaches past the classroom, into the relationship between school and home.
Children who know why they're here learn with more drive. Purpose is the meaning condition, the answer to "why does this matter?" Real rigour lives in meaning-driven thinking. Children, educators, and parents who feel purposeful engage with more depth and far less burnout.
The conditions work as a whole. They're built at the same time, and the absence of any one weakens the rest:
The blueprint is a shared language, and every community builds it in its own way. When something's off, you can name the condition that's missing and respond to it directly.
Every Gedi program builds two or more conditions at once, across children, educators, and families.
In-school sessions building emotional literacy, regulation, and relational skill, with teachers as co-participants.
Nature-based, pay-what-you-can summer camp where children from different backgrounds share real experiences together.
Parent sessions that bring families into the learning ecosystem as genuine members with a real voice.
Community events designed for shared experience and genuine connection.
A whole-school partnership co-designing all five conditions across the full community.
The academics are strong, and the community around them is the difference.
SEL is the operating system, woven through the whole day.
The community is structural, built into how decisions get made.
Educators choose, shape, and own it.
Designed to be replicated, so any community can build its own hive.
of families saw improvements in their child's emotional regulation
of campers developed stronger empathy and conflict-resolution skills
of parents felt more connected to their child's growth
Camp Gedi, first summer, three weeks, through a Pay What Feels Good model.
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The model is a blueprint. Camp Gedi and the Guilds are where it's already being built.
Questions, ideas, partnerships, or just want to say hello, the hive is always listening. We'd love to hear from you.
Tell us who you are and what's on your mind. We read everything and reply as soon as we can.
Prefer to give directly? Send an Interac e-Transfer and we'll issue your tax receipt.
donate@gedivillage.orgGedi Village Foundation is based in Toronto, on the traditional territory of many Indigenous Peoples, including the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 and the Williams Treaties and remains home to many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.
At Gedi, we believe that learning begins with relationships. Before we can understand one another, we must first understand the places that hold us. The land beneath our feet is not simply where we gather, learn, and work. It is a living teacher, carrying generations of knowledge, stories, stewardship, and connection.
We recognize that the systems shaping education today were built alongside histories of colonization that continue to impact Indigenous communities. Acknowledging this history is important, but acknowledgement alone is not enough.
Our commitment is to continue learning, listening, and building relationships with Indigenous educators, knowledge keepers, families, and communities. We strive to create spaces where children and adults develop a deeper respect for the land, for one another, and for the many ways of knowing that have existed here long before us.
As we imagine new possibilities for education, we do so with gratitude for those who have cared for this land across generations and with a responsibility to contribute to a future rooted in reciprocity, respect, and community.
