permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

In the interest of offering solutions rather than more ideology, here are a
few proposals for how we can make courses more accessible to low-income
people:

1. Make it known that courses offer work trades, since most do. Although
some courses are inundated with work-trade requests, a lot of potential
students see the $800 price tag and simply give up. Conveners and
instructors could add a note to their ads that says "Limited number of
work-trades available."

2. Scholarships: one of the venues here in Oregon got a grant a couple of
years ago that allowed several students to attend a course free. I know
they're hard to get, but it can be done.

3. Scholarships, part 2: I'm probably asking for trouble here, but once a
course has reached the break-even point in enrollments (about 12-15,
usually), perhaps the conveners could agree to offer at least one
scholarship, maybe as a trade, maybe based on merit or financial need,
maybe in return for the recipient signing up more students (there's that
multi-level marketing scheme again!). Once the break-even point is reached,
it doesn't cost much more than food money to take on more students (tho of
course the teachers forego additional income). This would be a generous
gesture that would get more students to take permaculture courses.

What I don't have is ideas about how teachers could get paid a living wage,
or about how to attract people who can actually pay the full price. Oh
well.

Toby