10 Feb, 2019 | General
Emas Hitam is a small NGO operating on the Indonesian island of Bali in the village of Petula. They received a Permafund grant of $1,000 in February 2017 to construct two dry composting toilets on their community garden site called Ancut Garden.
Emas Hitam volunteers
One of the downsides of the popularity of Bali being a tourist destination is that it has created a water crisis. Stored groundwater is being sucked dry by the ever-increasing resort industry making water a finite resource for everyday use by the Balinese people.
Community area and composting toilet systems under construction
Signage has been placed inside the toilets with educational facts about soil, compost and water conservation for the many visitors expected.
Household scale system
The first toilet built used a small bucket as a collection point to demonstrate a household scale while for the second toilet, a wheelie bin was used for larger numbers of people attending the site.
Wheelie bin dry composting toilet in cubicle built using local resources
Help support projects such as this by making a donation to Permafund. Donations of $2.00 and over are tax deductible in Australia and are much appreciated.
For more information please contact permafund@permacultureaustralia.org.au.
8 Feb, 2019 | General
The team from Permaculture Australia’s Permaculture International Public Fund (well known as Permafund), is extremely grateful for the generous donations from individuals, key supporters and fundraisers that have enabled the 2018 round of micro-grants.
With donations of AU$13,000 to distribute, Permafund received applications from projects in India, Kenya, Nepal and Australia.
From 16 applications the Permafund assessment team has selected six organisations who have each received an AU$2,000 micro-grant as seed funding for their various projects.
IRDS (Integrated Rural Development), Salem District, Tamil Nadu, India.
Enabling 50 tribal farmers in 3 villages to cultivate indigenous millets, and vegetables through intercrops using permaculture and indigenous farm practices so that the soil fertility and soil moisture will be improved and micro-organisms increased.
Kiini Sustainable Initiative Kenya
Establishment and management of a Permaculture integrated land use design model in the Nyeri farm school. Education about greywater recycling, water harvesting and composting will be included.
Nepal Permaculture Group, Kathmandu
Rooftop gardening systems and 10 permaculture farms will be developed with three major aims: food production, research and demonstration using ecological technologies related to permaculture and climate resilient farming practices.
OTEPIC Kenya
Educating children about permaculture gardening at Tabasamu Orphanage Children’s home and Biddi primary school. The grant will support the purchase of teaching materials, gardening tools and equipment, seeds and fencing.
Permaculture for Sustainable Communities – Kenya
The project will focus on establishing permaculture as a fully-fledged occupation in the Kakuma Refugee Camp, Turkana County in the north-western region of Kenya, by providing essential materials to all supported households to fully implement permaculture to produce food, work and income.
(WORD) Women’s Organisation for Development, Tamil Nadu
Promotion of Indigenous millets cultivation through the creation of seeds banks for 15 villages and involving 75 farmers.
A micro-grant of AU $1,000 was approved to assist Ethos Foundation raise funds to support women and children in East Africa to establish permaculture garden systems under the guidance of touring permaculture educator Morag Gamble and family.
Each organisation will provide Permafund with project updates, photos and a completion report to share with donors, key supporters, Permaculture Australia members and the community.
What is Permafund?
Permaculture Australia’s Permaculture International Public Fund (i.e Permafund) is a unique, beneficial mechanism with huge potential for doing good in the worldwide permaculture community though the distribution of funds donated by the Permafund community and its supporters.
It is an organisation with Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status in Australia so is entitled to receive tax deductible gifts. You can only claim a tax deduction for donations or gifts to organisations that have a DGR status. Tax deductions for donations or tithes are claimed by the donor person, or business, that makes the gift.
Donations of $2.00 or more are tax deductible and are shared with grateful grant recipients who put the funds to work in a wide variety of creative and effective projects.
For more information please contact permafund@permacultureaustralia.org.au.
4 Nov, 2018 | General
The Tropical Permaculture Handbook by the Permatil (Permaculture Timor-Leste) NGO in East Timor has been completed after years of dedicated work by a team of authors, editors and content contributors, led by Ego Lemos and Lachlan McKenzie, working together with East Timorese illustrators.
Other partners involved in the production are xpand Foundation (an Australian social enterprise working predominantly in Timor-Leste) providing governance advice and project management, Disruptive Media (providing design and strategic communications for the NFP/NGO sector) who provide all the graphic design, marketing and media content and Kargan Media who designed, built and manage the website.
Permaculture Australia also assisted, through the Permafund committee, by supporting a variety of funding contributions. Many other individuals and organisations have made contributions in various ways to keep the project ticking over.
Ego Lemos and Lachlan McKenzie presented the Guidebook project at APC 14 in Canberra, where it received generous support. In the above photo left to right: Lachlan McKenzie, John Champagne, Ego Lemos, David Holmgren and Costa Georgiadis discussing the Guidebook at APC14.
On the 1st of October 2018 the English online edition was launched. This has raised substantial interest and been well received with orders from over 80 countries in only one month. In India, where Ego and Lachlan presented last year at the IPC 13, it has been most popular, and can hopefully be an important contribution to their fast-growing permaculture and agro-ecology movements.
Next Steps
The Tropical Permaculture Guidebook International Edition has been updated and written in English. This provides broad access to the guidebook, however for most tropical countries English isn’t the national or working language. This is especially true in rural areas.
The next step is to translate and re-create the guidebook in many languages. Currently fundraising and translating has started for the Tetum language version, for the guidebook’s ‘home’ country, Timor-Leste. Next are Spanish, Portuguese and French – prominent regional languages in the tropical countries, and there are many national and even sub-national languages as well.
An English edition of the Tropical Permaculture Guidebook will be printed and distributed when 100 orders have been received. The printed edition can be ordered on the website. It will be available first in Australia, with other countries and regions to follow.
About the guidebook
The Tropical Permaculture Guidebook builds on the success of their original Guidebook published in 2008. It focused on East Timor whereas the new, greatly expanded edition applies to tropical regions globally. “The core ethos and vision of the original book is retained and enhanced in this new edition, providing practical knowledge to anyone who reads it, especially in poor, low literacy and disadvantaged communities.”
The Tropical Permaculture Guidebook is a comprehensive resource of permaculture design, food sovereignty and environmental regeneration strategies. “Designed as a training, program and project base as well as a practical reference guide which can be used by a wide range of organisations, it will improve the results of all permaculture/non-permaculture projects and is a complete tool for farmers and communities.”
The Guidebook has been divided into three volumes: Permaculture & People, House and Garden and Regenerative Agriculture. The three sections are available for download individually or the Guidebook can be downloaded as a complete volume.
The Guidebook is provided online on the basis of “access for all” and is available at no cost for people and organisations that cannot afford to pay while those who are able are asked to ‘pay what you can’. All money raised will go toward further developing this project.
We encourage you to explore the Tropical Permaculture Guidebook and support this worthwhile project.
14 Jun, 2018 | General
A 2017 Permafund microgrant of AU$2000 is supporting THREAD Siddharth village to establish a demonstration food chain system for the benefit of 54 tribal womens’ organisations in Orisha, India.
The aim of the food chain project is to show tribal communities how to improve their food security and self-reliance. The eco food court and café run by the tribal women’s organisation, Nari Sugyani Samaj at Siddharth village has been set up as a model.
As fresh local chicken and fish are in strong demand, the demonstration involved the Installation of a poultry enclosure and tunnel system around the fishpond adjoining the café.
The project also included organising state-level tribal women’s organisations to visit the demonstration site to learn about the food chain system for replication in other communities.
Though originally designed to be a small-scale system, enthused by the idea the team assembling the cages and wire tunnels made it a large installation, which THREAD needed to support with extra funding. The construction of the poultry and fish system was completed on 12 May 2018.
Donated local chickens from Siddharth village were added to the food court’s existing chickens plus THREAD purchased an additional 300 young birds, known as King of the Jungle, from a breeder.
The poultry house, which is located at the end of the pond, has tunnels running all around the pond so the birds can rove through the system each morning. This has been an eye-catching attraction for the visitors to the food court while helping the women learn about poultry management.
The droppings of the chickens will be washed to the pond during the rainy season to provide nutrients for the fish. The fish are then added to the menu of the womens’ café for the benefit of the customers. The enriched pond water is also used to fertilise the adjoining fields.
As the birds are still growing, the income this system will generate has not yet been calculated. The outcome will feature in a future report from THREAD.
Meanwhile, the THREAD team organised a workshop for state-level tribal women’s organisations to introduce the idea to them and provide information on how it can improve protein production and generate income in their communities.
A total of 45 representatives from 30 tribal women’s organisations from all over Orisha participated the workshop to learn about the food chain concept in order to implement the systems in their own district’s blocks.
THREAD has also exposed top government officials to this idea and the Women and Child Development department has shown interest to support self help groups who would like to install similar units.
The project expenditure was exceeded unexpectedly due to the increased number of chickens and cost of materials due to GST. THREAD Siddharthvillage was able to complete the project by subsidising it.
THREAD Siddharthvillage (the Team for Human Resource Education and Action for Development) now is now lobbying government to support Indian indigenous tribal regions to initiate such income generating projects through self help groups.
They extend thanks to all donors to Permafund for the initial funding to implement the project.
Donations of AU$2.00 or more to Permafund are tax deductible.
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30 Apr, 2018 | Remembering Bill in Print
The Lost Stories are Bill Mollison’s articles published in the print magazine originally named Permaculture, then International Permaculture Journal and finally the Permaculture International Journal that was published between 1978 and 2000.
All stories and other content ©Permaculture Australia unless otherwise noted.
Story by Bill Mollison, 1985.
Feature photo: Bill Mollison in Tasmania. Photograph ©David Holmgren.
NO SOONER HAD we launched the idea of a Trust-in-Aid to help get resources to people who would otherwise find it difficult to pay for one or two of our teachers to set up a local, trained permaculture group, than several things happened at once! (It is always the case.)
Firstly, some of our members and readers sent in a total of $2500 for the Trust. We have spent most of it in these ways:
- new permaculture groups in Spain, Chile, Zimbabwe and Nepal have received life subscriptions to the International Permaculture Journal, books, and other booklets and pamphlets
- $1000 will be used as partial fares to Nepal to teach a full two-week permaculture design course in Nepal in November ’86.
Secondly, not only the above groups, but small farmer groups in Portugal, Thailand and an ecumenical aid group in Lesotho also wrote in to request education or other material aid.
Some additional funds were routed to groups from our tree tithe funds which are derived from the sale of our permaculture books. Such funds were sent to and used by tribal forest groups in Tamil Nadu (India) and to our group in Spain. Both were for tree projects.
Lastly, Lowell and Natalie Strombeck of The Friends of Right Livelihood visited here in Stanley, Tasmania and offered to help raise funds for a foundation trust to serve the Trust-in-Aid purposes. We hope that their initiative is successful, but as usual we are determined to proceed to help in any case. We hope for (but must not depend on) outside help.
Photo accompanying the original article.
Jon Correa, one of our New Zealand graduates, has (amazingly) raised $8000-$12,000 by his own work and is off to live in Chile, where the resident study group is to welcome him. We have promised to somehow get to him with teachers once the need arises, probably in 1987.
A friend in Brazil (Reinhard Hubner) has pledged to fund my fares once our representative there (Julto Taborda) has set up a study group to host (and attend) a course there in Porte Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul).
In all, we have a modest, busy, useful influence in areas of need. Many groups have contacted us after obtaining our books or after reading an article in translation or after recommendations by students of previous courses.
We estimate that is costs us about $6000 to get literature, seed and teachers to remote groups (and still stay alive ourselves), but wherever we travel (as to the Permacutture Convergence) we are able to earn paid courses to fund visits to nearby groups in need, so that we can often spin the money earned out to cover needs for nearby courses in areas of need. This will not work, however, for areas such as Nepal, India, or Africa.
I would remind readers that we have now established a rainforest trust and that they can take shares in this trust, at the one hit preserving rainforest and also funding the Trust-in-Aid with part of the mantes earned, or interest from that money.
We are also racking our brains to find ways to develop reciprocal systems. One way we will be exploring in Nepal and Thailand is to employ or fund local people to research local technologies and ‘recipes’, to illustrate them, and to share in the English-language publishing profits.
Jan Correa will also be investigating ways to publish in Chile, and we have given groups in need free access to our journal articles for local sale. Jon will also be seeking to collect and sell Chilean seed to USA and Australian companies such as Abundant Life (USA) and Phoenix Seeds (Australia).
We can set up mutual fair trade systems, then local teachers can help self-fund their native institutes by earnings.
Vithal Rajan (Right Livelihood Foundation) is anxious, as are we, to see teachers from areas such as India used in other (Western) countries.I believe that this will happen as we develop local institutes.
Of course, graduates from local universities such as the Arab University will also serve their country’s interests locally.
There is no reason whatsoever why our own Earthbank groups cannot lend modest revolving fund seed money (at fair interest of 10 percent) to newly-formed third world groups for local projects which will pay (eg. seed collection). Money can travel anywhere for little cost!
What we do need are local graduates to handle that money responsibly, or local ethical groups accustomed to assessing good projects.
How to help
How can you help? In any number of ways: direct modest gifts, bequests, tree tithes on your products or interest-free loans to our Trust-in-Aid (you get back the capital at call, we keep the interest and you are not taxed on it).
We have also contacted our lawyer to attempt to obtain tax-deductible status for our Trust-in-aid, but with the government spending so much on widgets, keep your fingers crossed.
Perhaps you can aid by tapping other sources of funds such as those of Live Aid; we really don’t have time! You can also invest in Earthbank.
Meanwhile, at home, our Aboriginal graduates and teachers (chiefly David Blewett) are hard at work in our own Australian third world of malnutrition illness and distress.
Shirley Peastey and other gallant ladies are working in the Enfield Urban Farm project and Rex Stuart is hard at work in the Baroota (South Australia) alcohol rehabilitation farm gardens.
We have come a long way on our own efforts. We have a long way to go. We certainly need more teachers to cope with demands!
Ideas
At this time, we would see some ideal of aid as follows:
- Respond to a contact from people in need by sending journals, books, seed and encouraging them to set up a project or study group.
- If a course is requested, try to have the study group convene a capable local group to train as designers and teachers.
- Reach this group, sending in teachers for two to four weeks to establish a group of trainees, giving emphasis to local climate, soils, species, existing local NGOs and educational establishment.
- Try to raise local and assisted revolving funds to start up more local projects.
- Explore the potential for reciprocal enterprises, intended to self-fund future enterprises in the local area.
- Try to establish a local teaching institute to continue education locally.
- Try to get land and capital organised locally for demonstration projects.
- Keep contact and explore ways to increase reciprocal contact.
Editor’s note
Bill Mollison mentions Earthbank in this article. More on Earthbank here.
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