What is Consent-Based Education?

Consent-Based Education is the ethical counterbalance to self-direction. Consent is a process that needs to happen when one person’s self-direction comes into contact with another person’s self-direction (or the environment). Consent creates the opportunity for people to say yes, no, or maybe to what they participate in, to ask for more information if they need it to make an informed choice, and to change their minds at a future point if needed.

Consent-Based Education can only exist in environments that are trust and accountability rather than fear and shame based. Behaviour is regulated by authentic relationship and open and direct listening and communication rather than through means of coercion, reward or punishment. For consent to be meaningful, it must be freely given, informed, and coming from a deep sense of self. As facilitators, we endeavor to provide the community with the information, affirming culture, and critical lens that they need to make an aligned and informed choice about how they wish to use their time whilst there.

Consent-Based Education requires, and places in high regard the spiritual, intellectual, emotional, bodily and creative agency and autonomy of all people, whatever their age or stage, and the personal boundaries that accompany that.