In February 2019 Permafund team member, Jed Walker, travelled to South East Bangladesh, to join Rowe Morrow and Ruth Harvey for their second PDC (the first was for local residents). Quaker Service Australia, working with the Bangladesh Association for Sustainable Development (BASD), financially supported the courses. Jed joined the course at Camp 19 in Cox’s Bazaar refugee camp, hastily built in the jungle where elephants recently roamed.
BASD, longtime advocates of permaculture in Bangladesh, provided generous and comprehensive hospitality, logistics, camp liaison and translation services for the Australian visitors.
Driven from Myanmar and fleeing for their lives into Bangladesh about 1 million Muslim Rohingya have found themselves living in limbo in Cox’s Bazaar, now one of the largest refugee camps in the world.
Signs of resilience are evident everywhere
Before fleeing Myanmar, the Rohingya were farming, living in villages or ethnic ghettos (internment camps) in the towns. The Bangladeshi government have welcomed the refugees, but the arrangement is temporary. There are still reports of violence occurring for those who try to return to Myanmar.
The bamboo and tarp classroom was located on the edge of the camp, overlooking rice paddies and brick works belching smoke. Among the 21 PDC trainees about half were young men plus some young women, older women and male farmers.
During the course Ruth, Jed & Rowe were also mentoring BASD staff to teach the course themselves and thence train the Rohingya students to teach other camp residents. The plan is for 15 of the class graduates to educate a further 100 families in permaculture.
“The class went well as the Bangladesh dialect in the nearby Chittagong region is similar to the Rohingya language. This helped a lot with translation. All students were remarkably positive considering their recent past.” said Jed.
At one stage the oldest man sang a lament about the loss of his land and people. Jed felt the older people had a sadness over them while the younger ones were as bright and cheery as elsewhere, maybe more so.
The teaching team heavily contextualised the course toward local conditions and knowledge. Working among very experienced farmers and forest dwellers the teachers stopped counting when their list of uses of various trees exceeded 50 (most groups run out at around 20).
Some students did a design for the teaching site which already included gardens and a food forest but also bare ground with no topsoil and little water management. Other students did a plan for about a hectare of the camp itself. There is really no room for on the ground gardening around the average camp hut so the strategies for growing food included making gardens in whatever was at hand – sacks, pots, boxes, water bottles or whatever plus hanging gardens were made from coconuts, gourds and plastic bottles filled with plants to hang from eaves.
Gardening in containers and bottle hangers
Jed had brought a bag of mung beans and introduced the idea of eating fresh bean sprouts. The adults were sceptical at first but followed the lead of their adventurous children.
Pumpkin vines were grown on roofs to also give shade. Average maximum temperatures there are within 3 degrees of 30 Celsius all year, with very high humidity in summer.
Coconut hanging garden
The housing was Incredibly dense as it’s for a million people in few square kilometres. More than 120,000 babies had been added to the camp’s population in the past year, Jed was told.
Huts made with plastic & bamboo lattices
“Despite the challenging conditions in the camps with overcrowding and scarce resources, residents in the camps maintain their houses and shops with pride and signs of resilience are evident everywhere” said Jed.
Most huts are plastic with a lattice of bamboo, vulnerable in monsoon rains and cyclone conditions. There are no gutters, so catching rainwater is not practical. The groundwater, delivered by hand pumps, contains iron at toxic levels.
Hand pumps for water
The course included disaster management with cyclones being the main concern reported by the group. They were reluctant to even speak of the circumstances surrounding their flight from Myanmar. “The students enjoyed having something else to think about and asked the old man to stop singing his sad songs” said Jed.
Despite the bleak conditions in the camp the PDC class itself lifted the spirits, with students soaking up the knowledge and making plans for every nook and cranny of the camp. Camp 19 has 50,000 people and there are plans being hatched to exponentially peer-educate every one of them.
For more information please contact the Permafund team permafund@permacultureaustralia.org.au Tax deductible donations to Permafund support this and other worthy projects in Australia and around the world.
So here it is… an open invitation to spend the weekend of 21-22 November in a superb permaculture homestead… your opportunity to meet fellow permies and the Permafund Committee to brainstorm how best we can help others.
WHEN: Saturday 21 & Sunday 22 November 2015
(Arrive Friday afternoon and depart Sunday afternoon) WHERE: Valley’s End Farm – NSW Central Coast – Jilliby, NSW 2259
The upcoming Annual Permafund Meetup — Gathering Momentum is a rare opportunity for the existing Permafund Committee and its supporters to gather in one space, share our stories, reflect on our progress, refresh our purpose and discuss the directions Permafund is to take in the near future.
Let’s admit it too, it is pure joy to be able to see one another, talk permaculture and aid work, enjoy some nice food and share whatever we have to help others.
The Gathering is also a wide-open-door for new people to come along, share their thoughts, skills, time, and have a good time too.
Permafund at a glance
Permafund is the committee that manages the registered charity of Permaculture Australia.
Since 2012, it has supplied supporting funds in the form of grants to over 15 projects overseas and at home. Funding is provided on application, each is assessed on need, on their alignment with permaculture principles and ethics and on their viability.
We ask the question “What does good Permaculture aid look like?”
Permafund is about ‘sharing the surplus’, whether it is money or time:
money — in the form of donations, is redistributed to permaculture-worthy projects that have the potential to drastically help communities in need, both overseas and at home
time — is what the Permafund crew is offering in managing the charity, the incoming donations and the fair redistribution through our grants process.
Activities planned for the Gathering (the basis of an agenda)
invite new members and ideas
appraisal of the 2015 grants funded work and reflection on the directions for 2016-2017
report back on IPCUK and conversations with other groups
review of Permafund’s volunteer administration, processes and general organisation
workshop ‘village planning design’ — this mini workshop will explore the usefulness of this permaculture tool in aid work
Permafund in Haiti — considering the ongoing work options
skype calls to key stakeholders including recipients of past grants.
Permafund Committee: John Champagne, John McKenzie, Boyd Attewell, Jed Walker, Virginia Littlejohn, Christine Carroll, Alexia Martinez, Bruce Zell, Miles Durand, Sarah Gorman.
Venue
Valley’s End Farm – a Permaculture Homestead
Jilliby NSW 2259 (address supplied upon registration)
Tel: 02 4355 1275 www.valleysendfarm.net
Valley’s End is a permaculture homestead in its third year of establishment. It features animal systems, extensive veggie patch, fruit forest, pastures, forests and lots of wildlife.
The homestead is located on the NSW Central Coast, 10 minutes to Wyong train station and shops, 20 minutes from the beach. Walking tracks start from the property which is backed by the Jilliby State Conservation Area and the Watagans State Forest.
Accommodation
The homestead can accommodate up to six people inside the house and an almost unlimited number outside in tents, combi vans or caravans! There is ample parking space.
The house is on rainwater tanks and there is an outdoor compost toilet.
Food
Easy wholefood lunches and dinners prepared by our host.
Depending on the final number of participants, we may require some outside catering. To be confirmed.
Telecommunications
There is a faint mobile coverage with the Optus network, slightly better with Telstra… but, we have ADSL2+ so you’ll be able to update your facebook page and skype your mates!
How to get there
Train: Get off at Wyong Station on the Central-Newcastle line and we’ll pick you up, or someone else would. Drive: Drive to Tuggerah M1 exit then turn left (Yarramalong). At the next T-intersection, turn right (Wyong, Dooralong, Wyee). Then take Hue Hue Road heading towards Dooralong/Wyee. At the Jilliby Cemetery, turn left on Jilliby Road. The homestead is a few kms down the road.
Participation fees
The host will provide all meals, plus some transportation as well as the use of the facilities. We ask that a contribution of up to $50 per person be paid to compensate for these expenses.
John and Sharon Champagne left Melbourne 20 years ago and resettled their young family onto 4 hectares of damaged land in Brogo.
The achievements in this time have made Brogo Permaculture Gardens one of the best examples of utilising permaculture principles in a temperate climate.
Open day — 25 January 2014
To celebrate this milestone and with the support of SCPA-South East Producers, there is an Open Day at the property on Saturday, 25 January 2014.
It was always our intention to showcase the property to the public as a demonstration of sustainable landuse and living.
There’s a lot of interest in growing healthy food and raising animals. It’s important that the process is planned to conserve energy during and post development. The design of the house and gardens need to reflect proven understandings of how elements relate to each other to reach any level of sustainability. Ideally planning occurs at the start but you can easily retrofit properties or urban backyards using the same principles.
Features on display at the Open Day include:
a passive solar mudbrick home with a standalone solar system
kitchen gardens with fruit orchards of stone, pome, berry, citrus, nuts, semitropical and native foods
serious shelterbelts
earthwork water harvesting techniques
greywater reuse and composting toilet
poultry integration into the orchard systems
extensive variety of resilient understory support species as well as plants which can be converted into mulch.
John Champagne adds “Its been interesting, the main comment repeated by recent visitors to our place is that it’s beautiful and I guess that’s been a pleasant byproduct of the design. Could you ever imagine though a future sustainable culture without beauty?”
If you can’t make the tour…
View Transition Bondi’s tour in January 2013…
Location
The property is located at 397 Hawkshead Rd in Brogo and directions can be found at – www.permaculturedesign.com.au.
Join one of the tours
There will be guided tours starting from the top of the property along Hawkshead Rd at:
9.30am
12 noon
2.30pm.
Entry is by donation with all proceeds going to Permafund, a registered charity able to assist permaculture projects here and overseas.
April 2013 ‘Yield’ by Formidable Vegetable Sound System (feat. Ensemble Formidable) from the album ‘Permaculture: A Rhymer’s Manual’ — Permaculture principle 3: ‘Obtain a Yield’ Written and performed by Charlie Mgee. Directed & animated by Dropbear http://www.dropbeardigital.com Featuring: Katrina ‘DJ’ Button, Lexie ‘Face’ Mgee, Zoë ‘Umlaut’ Wilson, Rebecca Metamorphograph & Jason Jpod.
Permaculture Pioneers, stories from the new frontier
Permaculture Pioneers brings into a single volume the stories of the people who have been instrumental in creating the permaculture design system we have today.
The book is at the same time an autobiographical collection and an oral history of permaculture. It illustrates how innovative ideas start on society’s fringes and over time spiral into the mainstream.
It is also fascinating reading.
Program
2:00pm Arrive for refreshments and tour our new Permaculture Interpretive Garden and Sustainability Education Hub.
2:30pm Welcome by Randwick’s Mayor Murray MatsonCosta Georgiadis (from SBS Garden Odysey) will facilitate a discussion with:- Kerry Dawborn, editor – David Holmgren, co-founder of permaculture and – pioneers: Fiona Campbell, Russ Grayson, Jill Finnane, Robyn Francis, Alanna Moore and Ro Morrow
3:30pm Launch of Permaculture Pioneers and Permaculture Diary and Calendar and signing
Features on display at the Open Day include:
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