permaculture

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe@silcom.com>]

Palestine Permaculture Workshop Announcement

March 28 – April 4
Marda Village Salfit District, West Bank, Palestine

Join internationally acclaimed Permaculture
instructors Starhawk, Jan Martin Bang and Murad
Alkhufash in Marda Village in the West Bank of
Palestine for an 8-day Permaculture Fundamentals
Course. Work side-by-side with Palestinian farmers as
you learn—and apply—permaculture design principles and
techniques that can be translated to multiple
environments.

The focus of this workshop—due to extensive loss of
communal Palestinian farming land and water to Israeli
settlements—is intensive farming on small acreages.
Topics addressed will include orchard and garden
design, natural building with cob and stone,
traditional Palestinian terrace construction,
rainwater harvesting and graywater recycling, swales
and keylines, vermiculture, composting, cover crops,
bioremediation with mushroom mycelium, chicken
tractors, and more. Participants can expect to learn
through hands on projects including planting of an
orchard and construction of a chicken coop using local
soils, stone, and straw.

The Marda Permaculture Farm is located within Marda
village, in the West Bank of Palestine. Marda has a
population of 2,600, and lies under the shadow of the
Separation Wall and one of Israel’s largest
settlements, Ariel. Learn about the on-the-ground
reality in Palestine—from the people themselves,
rather than all those who would speak for them.

Instructors

Starhawk is one of the most respected voices in
earth-based spirituality. She is the author or
coauthor of ten books, including the classics The
Spiral Dance and The Fifth Sacred Thing. Her latest
is Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of
Nature. Starhawk is a veteran of progressive
movements, and deeply committed to bringing the
techniques and creative power of spirituality to
political activism. She travels internationally
teaching magic, the tools of ritual, and the skills of
activism. Her web site is www.starhawk.org.

Jan Martin Bang is a qualified Permaculture Designer
and teacher with extensive experience in the Middle
East, now a co-worker at Camphill Solborg in Norway.
He was secretary of the Norwegian Permaculture
Association, and has been active within the Norwegian
Ecovillage Trust. He is currently on sabbatical leave
for a year with his wife, Ruth Wilson.

He has written two books on Permaculture Ecovillage
Design: “Ecovillages: a practical guide to sustainable
communities” and “Growing Eco Communities: practical
ways to create sustainability.”

Murad Alkhufash comes from a family who has farmed the
Marda region for at least ten generations. His passion
is in restoring the connection between his community
and the land. The people of Marda, as in most West
Bank villages, have been losing their ties to
traditional farming methods due to loss of land,
stress of the occupation as well as pressure to
transition to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
Murad received his permaculture training and
certification at the Ecovillage Training Center at The
Farm in Tennessee and acted as an instructor at this
Center for four years prior to returning to Marda
Village to establish the Marda Permaculture Farm.

Cost to attend the Marda Permaculture Fundamentals
Course is $500, which covers food, lodging, and
coursework.

For more details, and to apply, please contact:

Tami Brunk
Marda Farm International Coordinator
<mailto:tamibrunk%40yahoo.com>tamibrunk@yahoo.com
(505) 243-3080

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood
and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather 
teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
-Antoine-Marie-Roger de Saint-Exupery