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  • From: Pacific Edge Permaculture + Media <pacedge@magna.com.au>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Know of any projects here ?
  • Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 17:27:22 +1000

On Wednesday, July 31, 2002, at 09:28 AM, Claude Genest wrote:

Hi all,

Does anyone know of any EXCELLENT PC projects going on in any of the
following sepcific locations?

Melanesia – New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji

Hi Claude...
The Kastom Gaden Association (KGA) is currently working in the Solomon Islands. It grew from the Kastom Garden Programme (KGP) that, until 2000, was supported by Australian NGO APACE (Appropriate Technology for Community and Environment) until it opted out of agricultural assistance in that year.

APACE was also involved in microhydroelectric development, mainly in the Solomons and in one instance in PNG. APACE closed down last year. I was employed by APACE in project management and development education until 1999.

The KGP was financed through AusAID, the Australian government's aid funding body, part of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

SUPPORT
Following APACE's withdrawal from agricultural assistance and support for the KGP, the KGA was established in the Solomons as a local NGO and operates as a trust with a local board of management.

The present phase of work is supported via financial assistance from European Union Micro Projects office.

FOCUS
The KGA focuses on improving the food security of rural communities through training in small scale sustainable agriculture of the type known in the development aid industry as LEISA - Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture. People in developed countries would recognise this as a permaculture approach to farming because it is from LEISA that much of the permaculture approach to food production has been drawn. The term 'permaculture' is not used because it is unknown inn the Solomons and throughout the region.

The KGA approach is participatory, making use of established techniques familiar to NGO workers such as community food security assessment and participatory rural appraisal.

DURATION
The APACE phase of the programme started in 1994 with the Lalano High Altitude Farming Project. Work has been ongoing since then, initially through a series of AusAID-supported projects: The Kastom Garden Project (on Guadalcanal and Malaita island); the Lauru Kastom Garden Project (set up to raise additional AusAID funding to take the project work into Choiseul island, near Bougainville) and the Community Ethnobotanical Manual project which documented the bush food resource of central Choiseul.

During this period, the Solomon Islands Planting Material Network (PMN) was set up and continues its work today. Essentially, the PMN is a farmer-led seed saving, processing and distrubution network for non-hybrid seed which aims to increase regional self-reliance in planting material. In my opinion, the PMN is probably the most successful component in a successful programme of agricultural assistance.

STAFFING
Since its inception in 1995, the intention has been to boost the sustainability of the programme through training local staff and improving organisational capacity. This has proven a successful approach, with local women like Roselyn Kabu, who started in 1995 as a volunteer, now managing the work and Mary Timothy, who started as a seed curator, now managing the PMN's work.

The only Australian staff is Tony Jansen, a manager of the programme.

PUBLICATIONS
The organic gardening manual for the Solomon Islands, 'Sapa', was published in 1995 as the joint work of Tony Jansen and local organic farmer, Joini Tutua.

As I write, a manual for seed saving trainers in the Solomons (and useable elsewhere in the Pacific) written by Australian seed system consultant Emma Stone, who carried out training for the PMN, and that I edited and my partner Fiona designed is on its way to Honiara, capital of the Solomons.

We are at present working on an integrated pest management manual, written by Roselyn Kabu, that may be published by the South Pacific Commission. Another manual with competency-based teaching notes for the series of workshops offered by the KGA is nearing finalisation but awaits financial support for publication.

BOUGAINVILLE
Following the decade-long civil war with PNG which ended only a few years ago, there has been interest from a people in the mountains of central Bougainville in extending the agricultural training and seed saving into their area.

More recently, the KGA has been working with TaroGen, a project to document the diversity of the root crop Taro in the region.

PNG
As for PNG, there is nothing that I know of that fits your criteria. In the late 1990s I was project manager for CanCare Lae, a non-ferrous metals recycling project supported by AusAID funding.

There was also a project based at a hospital at Tari in the Central Highlands of PNG that provided training in food security and small scale agriculture but it is at present in abeyance.
......

Hope this info is of some use to you.


...Russ Grayson
Pacific Edge Media; TerraCircle regional development team
Sydney, Australia.



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