permaculture

[Marsha Hanzi <hanzibra@svn.com.br>]

       There is no way , in the space of a two-week course,that
participants really have time to do  anything more than "symbolic" work,
both designing and field.  Two weeks is enough time to change paradigms,
transmit basic prinicples, strategies, and techniques (just a few!)  of
Permaculture and how they reflect in the various areas of life rural and
urban. But there is no  way ( and I have tried !) to  present the wide range
of Permaculture areas of action and still have time for real practical
work.  The result is a worryingly low rate of multiplying effect:  people
are enthusiastic,but  get insecure when they return to the complexities of
their own situation ( unless they are implanting a backyard system, which
one can do quite competently after a course, I suppose...)
       I see a missing link which is  more( quantities)  structured training
programs, where  there are opportunities for people to have several months
on-hand experience.
    We are setting up such a program here, a three-month traineeship where
the person will work in systems starting in a 1,000-meter backyard
agroforest,up  to a 70-hectare coco system, ranging from rainforest to
drylands systems, including our own headquarters which is on pure dune
sand....  At the same time each participant will have to take a bare piece
of land and design and implant a system, will do a lot of designing, both
theoretical and real, and  will have to do some form of   field research,
write an article, and teach someone else ( a course or new trainees...)
Furthermore they will participate in the regular activities of the
Institute, so they can see a small activist NGO from inside out.   For the
program we are charging a small fee, which promises to  pay a reasonable
salary to the instructor.
          There has been tremendously enthuiastic response to the proposal,
with 5 people matriculated already for January, basically young university
or technical-school graduates who want to dedicate their lives to  creating
sustainable systems, but have had little or no opportunity for real-life
experience...
          I have real hopes that with this program  young professionals will
go to the field vastly better-prepared, having had  a wide range of real
practical experience.

    (PS  Although  developped for the local public, we could actually also
receive  foreign participants who want third-world tropical experience, as
the traineeship could also be given in English.  Portuguese lessons could be
arranged on the spot)

Marsha Hanzi
Technical coordinator,
Instituto de Permacultura da Bahia
Brazil


John Schinnerer escreveu:

>
>
>         Gee, I don't have any trouble *thinking* of change, in stages or
> otherwise.  It's *living* change that I find difficult often enough.
> This seems the case for most people I know well enough to guess about.
>
>         In the design course I took, we implemented a few stages of
> previously worked-out designs.  We didn't implement our group designs
> because a) we did 'em near the end of the course, as is typical and b)
> the community hosting the course needed time to consider, refine, and
> decide on what might be implemented of our designs.