We need to create a vision. We need to change the climate of our minds. We need to rebuild our inner landscapes. We need a positive, solution-focused way of thinking. We need to be inspired, and we have to act. We need to heal ourselves, our landscapes, our relationship with nature and our culture & communities. We need to learn how to reconnect with nature so we can mimic it in the design of our present and our future.
The Savour Soil Permaculture Design Course is committed to turning you into a better designer. The learning outcomes for this course have been built around the design framework to achieve this goal. Come delve in Holistic Decision Making, Permaculture Design and Keyline Design as an ordering framework to not only read our landscapes but design for a regenerative future
Limited to 15 participants to maximise learning outcomes
Cost: Early Bird: $700, Full Price: $1000
Follow your passion and immerse yourself in this Modular Permaculture Design Course held in the Beautiful Byron Shire. In this hands-on course you will discover how Permaculture principles can develop resilient systems, contributing to environmental, social and personal well-being. Through gaining a clear understanding of these principles you will be able to apply them to your everyday life and surroundings – from a small home garden to commercial production.
You will learn how to design, build and maintain abundantly productive food gardens within sustainable human settlements and be shown how to work with an appreciation and understanding of nature’s patterns and cycles. There is an additional focus upon practical activities in the garden including no-dig gardening, seed saving, plant propagation, food forestry, Hugelkultur, tree maintenance, animal care, composting and more…
The course takes place over 14 days held as individual short modules on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays throughout the year. The foundational 72 hour International Permaculture Design Course (PDC) curriculum is covered – plus loads of hands on experience and field trips. This modular course is designed to support flexible, part time learning with the opportunity to complete all the modules within a 4 – 12 month period depending on your availability to attend each one*. Upon completion of all 14 modules you will graduate with a Permaculture Design Certificate. The PDC course is held twice a year. The modules can be enroled in seperately but to take advantage of price savings, enrol in the PDC rather than in each individual module.
2020 course dates are:
Fri 28th Feb – Permaculture Ethics, Principles And Patterns with Bunya Halasz
Sat 29th Feb – Plant Propagation And Seed Saving with Bunya Halasz
Sun 1st March – Introduction To Permaculture Design with James Nash
Fri 27th March – Soils – Organic Management with Joey Venables
Sat 28th March – Trees And Perennial Crops – Creating Food Forests with Bunya Halasz
Sun 29th March – Vegetables – Integrated Organic Production with Bunya Halasz
Fri 1st May – Water Systems For The Home And Landscape with James Nash
Sat 2nd May – Settlements – Sustainable Housing And Appropriate Technology with James Nash
Sun 3rd May – Animal-Integrated Production Systems with Sharon Gibson
Fri 29th May – Community Design And Social Permaculture with Erin Young
Sat 30th May – Group Design Project with James Nash
Sun 31st May – Individual Design Workshop with James Nash
Sat 13th June – Ecology – Weeds, Pests And Diseases In The Garden with Joey Venables
Sun 14th June – Design Project Presentations, Locavore Feast And Celebration with Bunya Halasz and James Nash
The course will incorporate field trips to the award winning Mullumbimby Community Garden, Urban Food Forests, Intensive Permaculture Production Systems, Bush Permaculture gardens and Natural Forest Ecosystems.
The teaching team, led by Bunya Halasz, have a diverse, complimentary and deep range of experience and skills.
Other Tutors Include: Sharon Gibson, James Nash, Erin Young and Joey Venables
This course offers a great introduction to permaculture and is suitable for anyone concerned with the environmental and social challenges around them who wants to help develop positive solutions. It would also benefit students interested in studying Permaculture Certificate III or IV with Byron Community College in the future.
A PDC can be a life changing experience. Join us in the unique environment of the Rocklyn Ashram and be taught by a mix of experienced and enthusiastic permaculture tutors including David Holmgren and Beck Lowe. This is a fully residential, fully immersive, fully catered course running over 15 days with a short break in the middle.
Cost: Camping $2,600, shared dorm room $2,700, private accommodation $3,650. Early Bird until 30 Nov.
Jen Ringbauer, Rahamim Ecology Centre – Bathurst, a centre that goes about caring for our common home – Earth
The idea sprang from a meeting with our wonderful intern, Juliet – run a Permaculture Design Certificate to teach refugees and asylum seekers about sustainable living in Australia. Incorporating gardening, farming, community building and connection with local community, we approached the funding body, the Mercy Foundation, who jumped at the idea. As well as the practical aspects of permaculture, we were to address issues of Earth’s degradation and social justice. (more…)
Supporting capacity building and the establishment of permaculture food gardens to improve nutrition and a place to demonstrate and learn.
Introduction to permaculture workshop in a demonstration permaculture garden, Kambiri Kenya
Introduction: Thank you to Permafund and all those who contribute to it, for supporting programs that help vulnerable women and children in East Africa with a $1,000 grant.
In December 2018, I was invited to Uganda and Kenya by small community-based organisations to support local permaculture education programs particularly with women and children. I went as a volunteer and took my two eldest children, Maia and Hugh (then 12 and 10). As well as being helpers along the way, they also graduated with their PDCs from the course held at the Sabina Primary School led by young people from Uganda, Kenya and Liberia. The core goal of this course was to teach teachers.
(Note: As volunteers, my children & I paid for all our expenses & received no payment for our work.)
My children meeting the women’s self-help group leaders who are sharing permaculture in the local village and schools
Goal: The overall goal of this project was to enable communities to vision, design, implement and manage permaculture food gardens for education, food security, and sustainable livelihood capacity-building.
The project: The funds donated by Permafund were spent on helping to develop the practical land-based centres for learning about permaculture at two main locations.
A: Sabina School, near Rakai, south west Uganda
The school at Sabina is important for a number of reasons.
It is a place of learning for hundreds of local children
It is a becoming a teaching garden for permaculture teachers
It is becoming a teaching garden for school teachers
The funds were used to buy tools, fruit trees, seeds, building materials for compost systems, animal enclosures and animals, and provide educational materials.
This school was also the site of permaculture design course in December 2018 followed by local farmer training and local school teacher training programs.
The ongoing management of the project is the responsibility of the school, with the permaculture trained teachers and school students who attended training. A local permaculture organisation, BEU Permaculture is regularly checking in with progress.
Children at Sabina School learning permaculture with my children.
B: Women’s Self-help Group, Kambiri Village, Kakamega, Kenya
This region of Kenya is experiencing prolonged drought and the women have come together to find solutions. Permaculture makes good sense to them. Through additional crowdfunding, Ethos Foundation sponsored 5 people from this region to attend permaculture design courses at Sabina School in Uganda.
In December 2018 in Kambiri I offered an introduction to permaculture workshop and undertook an assessment of the area to understand the needs for developing a permaculture education centre. During this introductory workshop we undertook a collaborative process and drafted a design for the demonstration gardens. We also helped start a seed-exchange program.
The demonstration gardens are now being developed and a Permaculture Design Course was held in August 2019. Participants of the PDC were mostly women and they have returned to their communities to share permaculture design ideas and strategies.
Jane Amunga – the initiator of the Women’s Self Help group at Kambiri.
The Women’s Self-Help group leaders, Kambiri Kenya in their permaculture demonstration garden
The Permafund funds were used to purchase a water tank and seeds, set up for the permaculture training, pay a local translator and distribute educational materials.
Ethos sponsored four local leaders to complete their PDC in Sabina School, Uganda – principal, agriculture extension worker, support worker for girls health, disability advocate. These people are now teaching locally and supported the Women’s group PDC in August 2019.
Permaculture and the government: It’s also interesting to note that while in Uganda, we met with the East African Minister for Agriculture and the Ugandan Minister for Education, as well a number of local and regional officials. All of them are very keen to see permaculture developed further in the region. One particularly interesting discussion was around having permaculture taught in university to teachers, and there being a series of schools around Uganda where teachers could go and learn in-situ. It was identified that support was welcomed in helping to develop curriculum and teaching those who can lead such programs in university.
Meeting with the Minister for Education at her home in Uganda.
Permaculture and the refugee council: Also interesting to note is the community resilience work of the Danish Refugee Council, particularly that of Natalie Topa, in her role of Resilience Officer. I spent some time with her in Nairobi and was delighted to hear about how much her work is based on permaculture throughout East Africa and Yemen.
Natalie Topa with Morag Gamble in Nairobi. Natalie Topa works with the Danish Refugee Council and implements permaculture throughout her work.
Ongoing: Ethos Foundation is continuing to provide some additional support for the development of these gardens and is dedicated to sponsoring permaculture education programs that will help people implement and manage more of these types of local permaculture demonstration gardens. The aim is to create a network of permaculture gardens in local communities – places to learn, to demonstrate, to access resources and connect with others wanting positive change.
Impact: Several gardens have been renewed and/or established where people can come to learn about permaculture. Gardens and systems are developing for the seeds and plant materials to be freely exchanged. New networks of local permaculture teachers are being established.
About Ethos Foundation: The Ethos Foundation, a sister organisation to the Permaculture Education Institute, is a small registered permaculture charity dedicated to:
supporting the spread of permaculture education through practical community-based projects led by local people to address local needs in their local communities
mentoring, enabling and supporting local permaculture leaders and educators
providing micro grants to local projects to access the resources needed to implement sustainable food garden initiatives.
A sincere thanks again to Permafund for supporting these communities. I encourage you to continue donating to Permafund. The difference that can be made with a small amount of resourcing is quite phenomenal.
Report by Morag Gamble, Executive Director (volunteer), Ethos Foundation
Permafund is managed by Permaculture Australia and provides small grants to communities in Australia and internationally. Donations over $2 are tax deductible and are accepted as ‘one off’ or recurring donations. Find out more including how to donate here: https://permacultureaustralia.org.au/permafund/donating-to-permafund-is-easy/
