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The Professional Distance Learning School for Vegan Nutrition

About Us

The Professional Distance Learning School for Vegan Nutrition

About the ecodemy® Professional Distance Learning School

As a professional distance learning school for vegan nutrition, ecodemy provides science-based professional foundation and additional training. We focus on vegan nutrition; we strive for bothprofessional correctness and good comprehensibility. We train specialists and teach people who are hungry for knowledge and health-conscious. Who want to find their own way through the jungle of myths and facts around vegan nutrition. Practical, solution-oriented and cutting-edge course content together with state-of-the-art didactics and user-friendly e-learning form the basis of our location-independent training.

In everything we do, we try to look at the bigger picture. Together with our team, our student community and our partners, we are committed to the environment, our fellow humans and other fellow beings. We do this consciously, with empathy, and science-based. Our financial goals serve stability, development and sustainability.

Our History

Hello, my name is Dominik Grimm. As the initiator and co-founder of ecodemy, my story and the history of the company are closely linked.

How it All Began

Since I can remember, two subjects have always fascinated me: I was fascinated by nature, the animals and life itself in all its facets, and at the same time I was desperate to understand how things work. As a little boy, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I went on to other careers, but my love of all living things and my scientific interest have always been a part of me.

At some point, I came across the plant-based diet. Minimizing animal suffering and simultaneously helping our ecosystem seemed to me as the logical consequence in the present time. So I turned vegan - and failed miserably. My meals consisted of jam sandwiches and other meals “without animals”. I became grumpy, I wasn't well, and I quickly fell back into my old eating habits. Now I am not someone who gives up easily. I read all the literature around nutrition that I could get my hands on, attended lectures, booked seminars and also continously did research myself. At the same time, I completed my training as a Biological Technical Assistant, which put me in a position to really understand all the information. Two years later - and a lot smarter - I went back into the world of plant-based meals: This time more healthy, highly motivated, and genuinely enjoying my new lifestyle.

In social media but also in my direct environment I increasingly heard sentences like: 'Completely without meat and cheese? I think that's great, I've already tried it. But it was so hard and my health wasn't good at all. Now I'm eating like I used to.' Since I had also felt the same way with my first attempt, I began to give lectures and webinars in which I made my knowledge and experience available to the public in a condensed and easy to understand way.

No One Knows Exactly How to Do it Right

One evening I was talking with some of my lecture attendees about the fact that a plant-based diet is not as difficult to implement as many may believe - provided you know how to do it. The big problem: It was not possible to get well-founded information from one source. There was no school, no institution, no gathering point. Every person that was interested in plant-based nutrition was more or less forced to gather the necessary information themselves. Myths, health-endangering half-truths and scientifically untenable nonsense made the search for information even more difficult. Everyone had an opinion about the plant-based way of life ... but hardly anyone really had a clue about it. Looking back that was the moment ecodemy was born. I founded such a school that, I found, was missing, and help all the people to learn about the healthy vegan diet - in a way that is easy to understand and based on science.

The idea of founding a school seemed wonderful in the morning and absurd in the evening. It should be accessible to everyone, so it would have to be a distance learning school. Then of course the whole thing should be done with rhyme and reason. What legal conditions would such an undertaking have to meet? And although I had acquired extensive specialized knowledge in the meantime, I was not a nutritionist. What had I just gotten myself into?

ecodemy Team
It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.Paulo Coelho

There are ideas and visions that just won't let you go, no matter how rocky the path may be. I often talked about my idea with my boyfriend - now husband - Philipp who, as an IT specialist, had already assured me of his support in the web area. The final step that got me on the way was, when I overtook one of these death transporters on the highway. Pink trunk noses and one panic-stricken eye... I drove home, sat down at my desk and started to write down a first concept.

I had a web specialist, now I needed additional nutritional professionals to collaborate on the creation of the teaching material. At lectures and seminars that I had either attended or held myself, I had the pleasure of meeting many wonderful people. Through these contacts, I was able to recruit a nutritionist and a molecular biologist for my project. In February 2016 everything was set: Cast off and Ship ahoy.

On the Test Bench

Eight very intensive, exhausting, but also fantastic months later, the first milestone had been reached. The course had been designed and created to such an extent that we were able to submit it to the State Central Office for Distance Learning (ZFU) for review in October 2016. On January 1, 2017, we were planning to start the first registrations.

On December 7, 2016, the ZFU replied, and sent the evaluation of an expert who had been consulted by the federal inspection authority. His statement was ... devestating. We had already expected that a vegan training course would not trigger a standing ovation from an expert of the DGE (the German Nutrition Society), was something we had already expected.

However, we were surprised as to what had been criticized. Too few pictures in the course books? We wanted to offer well-founded teaching material, not comics. After we had overcome so many hurdles, was this the one where we would fail? Many people had already signed up for our newsletter and were keen to get this course going! 24 days until we wanted to start - Christmas holidays included! - and the desire not to disappoint any of our potential future students. This time has been challenging but we, ecodemy, rise to a challenge.

The ZFU had clearly indicated that they would generally promote our idea of offering the course, provided we managed to convice the expert. So we went back to the drawing board. Justified criticism was accepted and implemented and we were able to disprove the remaining objections raised by the expert. And then we had to sit and wait again.

On December 22, 2016, the ZFU replied again: The expert had approved the course, which means we had the provisional approval and the course could be released as planned on January 1, 2017! That was our very personal little Christmas miracle in 2016.

Today

A lot has happened since the "VEA" (as we affectionately call our first distance learning course) was finally approved at the beginning of 2017. We have grown as a company, personally and also as a team. We could develop further and grow together.

In the first two years, we were already beginning to develop the study materials and to constantly improve the user-friendliness of our platform. Additional features such as the ecodemy nutrient database were implemented. We could create 5 new job positions, which allowed us to design the first additional trainings and launch our own magazine with professional articles being pubished regularly. In June 2017, we launched our Facebook group 'ecodemy Family', where we offer people interested in us, our foundation and additional training the opportunity to directly get in touch with our students and graduates and thus receive real testimonials.

At the beginning of 2018, we were able to offer the first advanced training about vegan sports nutrition, followed by the advanced training for professionals in summer by the advanced training for professionals, with which we could enable nutritional professionals to close their 'vegan knowledge gap' and significantly expand the expertise they already have.

In 2019, we put out the additional training 'Vegan Nutrition for Mother and Child', thereby helping young vegan families become more confident and certainty through providing them with sound and implementable nutritional knowledge.

Development as an Ongoing Process

In the meantime, the team has grown to 13 enthusiastic ecodemics: Nutritional and health scientists, ecotrophologists, biologists, teachers, coaches, IT, support and design specialists and a vegan recipe developer ensure a cutting-edge and practical learning experience.

Our team of scientists has now reviewed more than 4,000 studies and has integrated them into the course material.

We have also expanded our magazine, including a section with recipes we developed ourselves and the first of our eBooks has been published.

“If you’re doing something the same way you have been doing it for ten years, the chances are you are doing it wrong.” Charles Kettering, US-American scientist

Because we love what we do, we know: Everything we are really good at today, we can do even better tomorrow. That's why the further development of the course content by our scientists and that of the platform by our IT team has become a permanent process, whereby we focus especially on the needs of our students - and wherever possible also on their wishes:

  • We have developed a study compass that makes it easier to start learning and ensures good access to study materials. Because learning should be fun right from the beginning.
  • Our main distance learning course, the "VEA", has been equipped with an additional course book as part of the bonus material.
  • The ecodemy nutrient database, which our students can also work with after graduation has been completely revised and the application has been designed even more user-friendly
  • An expanded mix of our learning media helps integrate learning even better into everyday life: All course books have also been made available in the form of audiobooks. In addition, we have developed a new video concept, which we are already implementing step by step.
  • Around half of our students use the "VEA" to live their enthusiasm for the vegan idea on a full-time or part-time basis. Of course, we want to support these graduates on their way to self-employment and have established appropriate measures or expanded existing ones.
  • Our Directory for Vegan Nutritionists has been revised and optimized for search engines. People who look for nutrition counseling can find our graduates now even better and faster.
  • Graduates who are already working in the field get the chance to introduce themselves in an interview with the broad readership of our magazine.
  • Graduates and students are entitled to use the ecodemy® seal ("approved & certified" or "in training") and to use them for their internet presence and marketing.
ecodemy Team

Since it is important for responsible, reputable nutritionists to know and take into account the difference between client and patient or the boundary between counseling and therapy, we have had specialized lawyers draw up a legal opinion defining the legal basis for differentiating between nutritional counseling and nutritional therapy in Germany. In addition, also in collaboration with attorneys, we have developed and made available to the student community guidances for the Vegan Nutrition Counselor’s privacy policy and the advisory contract.

Existing collaborations have been cultivated and deepened, and new friends and strong partners have been found, with whom we are working together to advance our mission of leaving the world a little better than we found it. For example, that is the vegan top chef Sebastian Copien, the Plant Based Institute, ProVeg International, Swissveg, Greenpeace Energy, BKK ProVita, the Vegan Masterclass and PETA.

Learn more about our friends and cooperation partners.

We have also expanded our freely available offers: Several new eBooks are available now and our magazine offers a wealth of recipes in addition to numerous infographics as well as scientific articles on various topics around vegan nutrition. There you will also find our science-based takes on headlines in the (tabloid) press.

Our 'youngest child' saw the light of day at the beginning of 2021: the additional training 'Vegan Nutrition for Athletes', a comprehensive further development of our additional training course about sports nutrition.

At the beginning of 2022, all of our distance learning courses were classified in the Distance Learning DQR. Our 'Vegan Nutritionist' course has reached distance learning DQR level 5. To our knowledge, this makes it the course with the highest rating compared to similar distance learning courses offered by other providers - another success for our goal-oriented work.

Some further developments are not immediately obvious but are nevertheless important to us for meet our student community’s needs. Therefore, we have created a modern Help Center where (almost) all questions are answered and which is regularly maintained and expanded by us to save students and interested people tedious searching and questioning.

What we are particularly pleased about is that despite these extensive further developments, we have been able to guarantee price stability since 2019.

The ecodemy Family on the Way Into the Future

The efforts and further developments of the past few years have more than paid off and I am very happy to have put my ‘quick idea' into reality with my wonderful team.

Because the success story of ecodemy is also the success story of healthy vegan nutrition and of all the people who, together with us, are committed to the future of our planet and all its living beings. We are very grateful that we can continuously contribute to this success, because we still have a lot to do ...

Bonn, 5th December, 2022
Dominik Grimm
Managing Director

Dominik
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