Ananda College: Timeless Wisdom
& Off-the-Grid Living

What is it like for college students to live off-the-grid? Let's say truly off-the-grid, far away in nature, in an area where the electrical lines can't reach you? Ananda College of Living Wisdom is the first college in the US to offer a totally sustainable, off-the-grid campus. Founded in 2003, the college is a non-profit educational institution located on 80-acres of an original yoga and meditation retreat that has been off-the-grid in wild nature since 1967.

The nearest electrical lines are two miles away, so the college has created its sustainable "Eco-Village" campus with the ideal of showing students what it's really like to live in a remote, forested location.

Solar panels, wind turbine and a back-up generator power the 80-acres, and students, staff and faculty who live onsite learn how to survive with less of the comforts of home.

Says Samuel Pritchard, an 18-year old Inspirational Arts student from Los Angeles, "Coming from the city, there's no stress level here and the stillness enhances my artwork and ability to create. I meditate a lot more here which is helping my spiritual growth as well."

"It's a different world," says Kamran Matlock, a graduate student from Huntington Beach, who is studying Education for Life Teacher Training and already has a job offer as a senior teacher in a nearby high school as soon as he graduates. "It gives me space to discover who I am and it helps me appreciate what I have in life, empowering me to rely more on myself and my inner strength," he said.

According to Chitra Sudhakaran, a senior Inspirational Arts student who plans to have her own graphics design business, "This is what I've been looking for all my life—a place to go to college in nature, to be safe, and close to beautiful gardens and forests."

In addition to botanical gardens, the campus includes vegetable gardens where students and staff grow their own food for the vegetarian meals served three times daily in the campus dining room. The college is surrounded by thousands of acres of forests and is adjacent to a protected old-growth forest in the Yuba Watershed, 1,000 feet above the South Yuba River. Chitra adds, "I especially like to talk to the gardener, to hear his philosophy about living in nature and respecting it. I've been here for four years, so I've learned to appreciate it...."

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