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  • From: Alex McCausland <alex1mcc@yahoo.com>
  • To: Lisa Schuster <l.schuster.m@gmail.com>, Alison Barfoot <alison.barfoot@gmail.com>, Alison Whitney McLallen <whitney.alison@gmail.com>, Permaculture Cooperative <permaculturecoop@gmail.com>, p <permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org>, permaculture-request@openpermaculture.org, permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] Next Permaculture Design Course at SFEL, Konso, Ethiopia
  • Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2011 05:38:38 -0700 (PDT)

Friends,

We are happy to announce that the next Permaculture Design Course will be
held at Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge in Konso, Ethiopia, from July 1st to 30th
2011. Please find the full details below or follow this link:
http://www.permaculture.org.uk/education/course/permaculture-design-course-interactive-training-permaculture-aid-work-developing-wo


regards,

Kenelm Piers Alexander (Abdurahman) McCausland
Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge: Director
www.permalodge.org info@permalodge.org  Mobile: +251 912 21 46 87Konso:  +251
46 884 07 55Addis:  +251 11 81 01 149London:+44 7733 770 449 Post (Eth): PO
Box 14, Karat Konso, SNNPRS, Ethiopia


Permaculture Design Course: Interactive
Training in Permaculture for Aid Work in the Developing World (30 Day Program
$2000 – optional 8-week follow-up internship program $1000)

 

Steve Cran brings his infamous Green Warriors (Permaculture-Aid
Workers’) Program to Ethiopia. This course is a full-on intensive, interactive
action learning program which will integrate a standard PDC program with a
more
advanced Training of Trainers Course, inducting the participants on the
practicalities of applying PC to the development of food security in rural
third world communities. This induction will be done through action learning:
The participants themselves will run a Community Sustainability Course for two
local Ethiopian School Communities in the local Konso area of South Ethiopia.
Thus participants will thus be capable of leading community trainings in
Permaculture for themselves by the end of the course. Another outcome of the
course will be development of plans for Permaculture implementation in the two
local communities. Those opting to take the follow-up internship will
participate in the implementation of the plans developed by the school
communities during the training. This course will not only qualify you to lead
Community Sustainability trainings in the future, it will actually result in
the initiation two Permaculture schools in South Ethiopia.

 

Facilitators:
Steve Cran, Tichafa Makovere, Alex McCausland

Dates:
July 1st to July 30th (optional internship to follow up
August 1st to September 30th, 2011)

Location:
Konso, South Ethiopia

Venue:
Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge

Requirements:
A passion to help with food security in the developing world; strength of will
and dedication; a previous PDC or experience practicing PC is not necessary
though may come as an advantage.

 

The Facilitators

Steve Cran is a
sustainable community development specialist or “Permaculture Aid Worker” with
20 years of field project experience Steve enjoys the challenge of assisting
people living on the edge of survival to rebuild their communities. Steve has
set up projects in war zones, post disaster zones, poverty zones and in many
difficult areas on this troubled planet most people would shy away from.

 

Steve worked for 5 years with rural Aboriginal
communities in outback Australia. In 1999 Steve went to East Timor and formed
a
Permaculture training network which he developed over 5 years. This network
continues to grow. He returned home to Maleny, Queensland, Australia in
November 2004 for a well earned rest. A month later the tsunami wiped out over
200,000 people in several countries. Steve’s field experience was called upon
to set up a project in Aceh, Indonesia. In January 2010 Steve was asked to go
to northern Uganda and work with the Karamajong people to restore food
security
and assist in ending violence and conflict in an area plagued by conflict and
poverty for 40 years. Aid dependency had robbed the people of the ability to
grow their own food and the youth were sucked into a cycle of violence in
cattle raiding with the abundant supply of automatic weapons available in East
Africa. These youth were known as “the Warriors”. Working with an
international
organization, Steve trained many of the Warriors to become “Green Warriors”
and
return to their communities and introduce self-sufficiency through
Permaculture.
Steve was able to prove that the Karamajong people were more than capable of
growing their own food and the “food-aid” was having a negative impact on
their
culture and health. Many communities that were written off by the government
and the UN produced crops and converted barren land into farmland using basic
hand tools and non-hybrid seed. The “Green Warriors” of Karamoja provided
previously unheard of new role models for the people of Karamoja. The project
continues today.

 

Tichafa Makovere

Tichafa grew up in
a marginalised farming community in Shurugwe, Zimbabwe. He developed a career
in education over 30 years; 20 years as a successful headmaster in Zimbabwe,
Malawi and Botswana. In June 1994 he participated in a PDC at the Fambidzanai
Permaculture Centre in Zimbabwe sponsored by the SCOPE (Permaculture in
Schools
and Colleges Outreach) Program. He went on to take first prize for best
implementing school nationally in 1995. He sat as secretary of the
Permaculture
Association of Zimbabwe (PAZ) for 2 years from 1994 – 1996 and subsequently as
chair person from 1996 – 1998. He has produced handouts for SCOPE trainings
which are still used by the SCOPE program in Zimbabwe today.

His activities as a SCOPE, and more latterly ReSCOPE, lead
facilitator have included: Drawing up 1-week and 2-week programs for SCOPE
have included facilitating
at both 1-week and 2-week workshops; producing training materials and
handouts,
making follow-up visits to schools after inclusion in the SCOPE Program;
participation on the curriculum, training and fundraising committees for the
advancement of Permaculture in Zimbabwean schools; reviewing and monitoring
workshops for expansion of Permaculture in schools in 66 districts of
Zimbabwe,
representing SCOPE at international and reviewing books on Permaculture before
they were published.

In November 2008 Tichafa travelled to Ethiopia and took up
the role of Resident PC Facilitator and Farm Manager for Strawberry Fields Eco
Lodge in Konso, where he has to date facilitated a total of 16 PDCs. He
subsequently went on to spear-head the formation of the Permaculture in Konso
Schools Project working in partnership with various NGOs as well as SFEL
itself. In June 2010 Tichafa formed his own independent consultancy, Shumba
Integrated Eco Designs (SIED) which is now active around Ethiopia.

Alex McCausland

Alex is developing as a Permaculture practitioner and
trainer. His lifelong passion for ecology and the allowed him to excel in
school and at university in that area. But, having graduated with a BSc in
Biological Scineces in 2003, he became disillusioned the reductionist science
and turned his back on academia. He dedicated two years to travelling the
world, WOOFing, working on farms and learning about cultures and languages,
during which time he became interested in development and food security
issues.
In 2005 he heard about Permaculture and realised it combined the holistic
aspects of ecology which he had been so fascinated with the practical
orientation and community empowerment that the academic approach completely
lacked.
He dreamed up a plan to establish a project which would promote Permaculture
as
a means to achieve sustainable development in the third world. The next year
he
came across Ethiopia, seeing a a land of great ecological wealth and yet very
economic poverty and food insecurity, he resolved that this would be the
location for the project. He took his first PDC later that year in Catalunya,
Spain. In 2007 he returned to Ethiopia, began working on establishing a viable
Permaculture –based business which would facilitate the local community to
learn about and practice PC. He ended up establishing an Eco Lodge in the
South
of the country, which went on to become the site for Ethiopia's first model PC
farm. Unable to think of a better name for it at the critical time, it ended
up
being called Strawberry Fields. The model farm has developed with input from a
number of volunteers, interns and PC practitioners, such as Guy Rees, Dan
Palmer and Tichafa. Working alngside these people Alex has developed and honed
his skills as a PC designer and practitioner over the last 3 years. During
this
time the project has hosted a total of 18 PDCs to date, 2 lead by Rosemary
Morrow and 16 by Tichafa. Alex took over the running of the demonstration farm
in June and has designed and developed systems such as drip irrigation and
terraced vegetable beds, black water, composting and compost powered water
heating. Alex will explain and demonstrate some of these systems as part of
his
contribution to the PDC.

 

The Course
Curriculum

The Ethics and Principles of Sustainability; Mapping; The
Village Zone System; Zone 1 Home and Family Garden; Zone 2 The Village; Zone 3
Small Farms around the Village; Water; Soil Improvement; Integrated Pest
Management; Animals; Zone 4 Community Forest; Zone 5 Conservation Forest;
Appropriate
Technology; Enterprise Development; Final Assessment

 

The Venue: Strawberry Fields
Eco Lodge (SFEL)

Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge hosts the first working PC
demonstration site in Ethiopia; a model design established over 4 years on
degraded land, incorporating drip irrigation, grey and black water re-use,
composting toilets, hot composting and compost water heating, tree nursery and
solar fridge, solar shower and much more. SFEL integrates an Eco-Lodge and
organic restaurant with the model PC site as well as running a program of
trekking and community based cultural activities in Konso. SFEL’s project
objectives
are to promote alternative livelihoods for the Konso community through
facilitating community inclusion in tourism activities as well as promoting
food security locally and more widely in Ethiopia, through promoting
Permaculture.

Location: Konso, SNNPRS,
Ethiopia

Konso Woreda is in the Southern Region (SNNPRS) of Ethiopia
(5'15' N, 37'30' E) covers an area of 500 square kilometres, ranges in from
500
to 2500m altitude with its main agricultural zone between 1400 to 2000m asl.
Konso’s
capital, Karat-Konso, is at 1600m altitude, 85km south of Arba Minch, and
around 590km south of Addis Ababa. The land form of the area is a basalt
massive, running east to west across the bowl of the Great Rift Valley.

The Konso people have a unique culture, based on sedentary
mixed agriculture, which distinguishes them from their neighbours in the
lowlands to the east and west who are pastoralists. The Konso are
characterised
by their unique culture, intensely social life-style and a penchant for hard
physical labour. The Konso village is remarkable for the beauty and simplicity
of its workmanship, constructed entirely of natural materials, cultivated or
gathered from the surroundings. The entire village is ringed by massive
dry-stone walls, at least a meter thick and two meters high. Stone-lined
pavements run between the housing compounds and the stones have often become
polished to a shine by long years of service in the village’s transport
system.


The most notable feature of Konso’s famous agricultural
system is its terracing, which reduces soil erosion, increasing infiltration
while
allowing drainage in times of deluge. Terraces are planted with sorghum,
intercropped with a range of other species; including trees, Moringa
stenopetala (also called the
cabbage tree -  a vegetable tree-crop) Terminalia birowni, and Cordia africana
which are grown for timber; shrubs such as pigeon pea, coffee and chat (Catha
edulis) (a cash crop) and annuals
including sunflowers, maize, millet, chick peas, various bean species, cotton
and cassava. The terraces are fertilised with wastes from the villages
including partially burned plant residues mixed with animal dung, which acts
to
keep the soil fertile.

Within the villages, Moringa
is planted all around the family compounds and harvested regularly to form one
of the staples of the Konso diet. Its leaves, which are reported to be
extra-ordinarily nutritious, are cooked and mixed with dumplings made from
Sorghum flower to make a dish called dama
in Konso’s language (or korkoffa in
Amharic). The other main food item in Konso is chagga which is a beery broth
brewed from sorghum. It is drunk
mixed with hot water, in the mornings and at lunch-time when the people are
preparing for work. It is extremely rich in carbohydrate and provides plenty
of
energy for the farmers, but it also insures that people are generally drunk.

The Permaculture in
Konso Schools Project (PKSP)

Today Konso suffers increasingly from food insecurity due
to climate change. The UNDP’s Rapid Assessment Report: Konso Special
Wereda, SNNPR (1999) states that; “since the 1950s, drought induced
famines have hit Konso and the immediate area almost once every ten years.”
“Konso was devastated by the droughts in 1973/74 and 1983/84”. In 2008/9 Konso
was again suffering food shortage due to drought.

The PKSP seeks to preserve aspects of
indigenous (agri)culture which benefit the local ecology, but fill gaps in
traditional systems by incorporating new practises, ideas and resources;
incorporating rain-water harvesting, soil and water conservation, small scale
irrigation, nutrition gardens, tree nurseries, small livestock, appropriate
labour-saving design-technology, alternative energy and nutrients based on
locally available resources.

 

To date teachers from 8 schools have been trained in
Permaculture and produced PC designs for their school compounds. From those,
three schools have produced impressive model PC sites under the pilot phase of
the project. The PKSP is eventually looking to expand to all 70 schools in
Konso over the next 3 years, with support from the UK-based Ethiopia
Permaculture Foundation. During this PDC we intend to incorporate 2 new
schools
into the program, this time putting the Green-Warrior touch on a new format
for
the project, with Steve’s input.

 
>From cory8570@yahoo.com Fri Mar 25 09:32:02 2011
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From: Cory Brennan <cory8570@yahoo.com>
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] Next Permaculture Design Course at SFEL, Konso,
Ethiopia
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Alex, 
Can you tell me if it would be possible to come to the Internship section
only? I am booked for July but am very interested in experiencing your
project. I'm a permaculture teacher and have a project at Pine Ridge
reservation which is in the beginning stages of what is being done in
Ethiopia.  Would love to contribute to that and learn your successful
actions. I also have possible projects in Haiti and Ecuador and I need all
the knowledge I can muster. 
Best, Cory Brennan

--- On Fri, 3/25/11, Alex McCausland <alex1mcc@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Alex McCausland <alex1mcc@yahoo.com>
Subject: [permaculture] Next Permaculture Design Course at SFEL, Konso,
Ethiopia
To: "Lisa Schuster" <l.schuster.m@gmail.com>, "Alison Barfoot"
<alison.barfoot@gmail.com>, "Alison Whitney McLallen"
<whitney.alison@gmail.com>, "Permaculture Cooperative"
<permaculturecoop@gmail.com>, "p" <permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org>,
permaculture-request@openpermaculture.org, permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Friday, March 25, 2011, 5:38 AM

Friends,

We are happy to announce that the next Permaculture Design Course will be
held at Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge in Konso, Ethiopia, from July 1st to 30th
2011. Please find the full details below or follow this link:
http://www.permaculture.org.uk/education/course/permaculture-design-course-interactive-training-permaculture-aid-work-developing-wo


regards,

Kenelm Piers Alexander (Abdurahman) McCausland
Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge: Director
www.permalodge.org info@permalodge.org  Mobile: +251 912 21 46 87Konso:  +251
46 884 07 55Addis:  +251 11 81 01 149London:+44 7733 770 449 Post (Eth): PO
Box 14, Karat Konso, SNNPRS, Ethiopia


Permaculture Design Course: Interactive
Training in Permaculture for Aid Work in the Developing World (30 Day Program
$2000 – optional 8-week follow-up internship program $1000)

 

Steve Cran brings his infamous Green Warriors (Permaculture-Aid
Workers’) Program to Ethiopia. This course is a full-on intensive, interactive
action learning program which will integrate a standard PDC program with a
more
advanced Training of Trainers Course, inducting the participants on the
practicalities of applying PC to the development of food security in rural
third world communities. This induction will be done through action learning:
The participants themselves will run a Community Sustainability Course for two
local Ethiopian School Communities in the local Konso area of South Ethiopia.
Thus participants will thus be capable of leading community trainings in
Permaculture for themselves by the end of the course. Another outcome of the
course will be development of plans for Permaculture implementation in the two
local communities. Those opting to take the follow-up internship will
participate in the implementation of the plans developed by the school
communities during the training. This course will not only qualify you to lead
Community Sustainability trainings in the future, it will actually result in
the initiation two Permaculture schools in South Ethiopia.

 

Facilitators:
Steve Cran, Tichafa Makovere, Alex McCausland

Dates:
July 1st to July 30th (optional internship to follow up
August 1st to September 30th, 2011)

Location:
Konso, South Ethiopia

Venue:
Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge

Requirements:
A passion to help with food security in the developing world; strength of will
and dedication; a previous PDC or experience practicing PC is not necessary
though may come as an advantage.

 

The Facilitators

Steve Cran is a
sustainable community development specialist or “Permaculture Aid Worker” with
20 years of field project experience Steve enjoys the challenge of assisting
people living on the edge of survival to rebuild their communities. Steve has
set up projects in war zones, post disaster zones, poverty zones and in many
difficult areas on this troubled planet most people would shy away from.

 

Steve worked for 5 years with rural Aboriginal
communities in outback Australia. In 1999 Steve went to East Timor and formed
a
Permaculture training network which he developed over 5 years. This network
continues to grow. He returned home to Maleny, Queensland, Australia in
November 2004 for a well earned rest. A month later the tsunami wiped out over
200,000 people in several countries. Steve’s field experience was called upon
to set up a project in Aceh, Indonesia. In January 2010 Steve was asked to go
to northern Uganda and work with the Karamajong people to restore food
security
and assist in ending violence and conflict in an area plagued by conflict and
poverty for 40 years. Aid dependency had robbed the people of the ability to
grow their own food and the youth were sucked into a cycle of violence in
cattle raiding with the abundant supply of automatic weapons available in East
Africa. These youth were known as “the Warriors”. Working with an
international
organization, Steve trained many of the Warriors to become “Green Warriors”
and
return to their communities and introduce self-sufficiency through
Permaculture.
Steve was able to prove that the Karamajong people were more than capable of
growing their own food and the “food-aid” was having a negative impact on
their
culture and health. Many communities that were written off by the government
and the UN produced crops and converted barren land into farmland using basic
hand tools and non-hybrid seed. The “Green Warriors” of Karamoja provided
previously unheard of new role models for the people of Karamoja. The project
continues today.

 

Tichafa Makovere

Tichafa grew up in
a marginalised farming community in Shurugwe, Zimbabwe. He developed a career
in education over 30 years; 20 years as a successful headmaster in Zimbabwe,
Malawi and Botswana. In June 1994 he participated in a PDC at the Fambidzanai
Permaculture Centre in Zimbabwe sponsored by the SCOPE (Permaculture in
Schools
and Colleges Outreach) Program. He went on to take first prize for best
implementing school nationally in 1995. He sat as secretary of the
Permaculture
Association of Zimbabwe (PAZ) for 2 years from 1994 – 1996 and subsequently as
chair person from 1996 – 1998. He has produced handouts for SCOPE trainings
which are still used by the SCOPE program in Zimbabwe today.

His activities as a SCOPE, and more latterly ReSCOPE, lead
facilitator have included: Drawing up 1-week and 2-week programs for SCOPE
have included facilitating
at both 1-week and 2-week workshops; producing training materials and
handouts,
making follow-up visits to schools after inclusion in the SCOPE Program;
participation on the curriculum, training and fundraising committees for the
advancement of Permaculture in Zimbabwean schools; reviewing and monitoring
workshops for expansion of Permaculture in schools in 66 districts of
Zimbabwe,
representing SCOPE at international and reviewing books on Permaculture before
they were published.

In November 2008 Tichafa travelled to Ethiopia and took up
the role of Resident PC Facilitator and Farm Manager for Strawberry Fields Eco
Lodge in Konso, where he has to date facilitated a total of 16 PDCs. He
subsequently went on to spear-head the formation of the Permaculture in Konso
Schools Project working in partnership with various NGOs as well as SFEL
itself. In June 2010 Tichafa formed his own independent consultancy, Shumba
Integrated Eco Designs (SIED) which is now active around Ethiopia.

Alex McCausland

Alex is developing as a Permaculture practitioner and
trainer. His lifelong passion for ecology and the allowed him to excel in
school and at university in that area. But, having graduated with a BSc in
Biological Scineces in 2003, he became disillusioned the reductionist science
and turned his back on academia. He dedicated two years to travelling the
world, WOOFing, working on farms and learning about cultures and languages,
during which time he became interested in development and food security
issues.
In 2005 he heard about Permaculture and realised it combined the holistic
aspects of ecology which he had been so fascinated with the practical
orientation and community empowerment that the academic approach completely
lacked.
He dreamed up a plan to establish a project which would promote Permaculture
as
a means to achieve sustainable development in the third world. The next year
he
came across Ethiopia, seeing a a land of great ecological wealth and yet very
economic poverty and food insecurity, he resolved that this would be the
location for the project. He took his first PDC later that year in Catalunya,
Spain. In 2007 he returned to Ethiopia, began working on establishing a viable
Permaculture –based business which would facilitate the local community to
learn about and practice PC. He ended up establishing an Eco Lodge in the
South
of the country, which went on to become the site for Ethiopia's first model PC
farm. Unable to think of a better name for it at the critical time, it ended
up
being called Strawberry Fields. The model farm has developed with input from a
number of volunteers, interns and PC practitioners, such as Guy Rees, Dan
Palmer and Tichafa. Working alngside these people Alex has developed and honed
his skills as a PC designer and practitioner over the last 3 years. During
this
time the project has hosted a total of 18 PDCs to date, 2 lead by Rosemary
Morrow and 16 by Tichafa. Alex took over the running of the demonstration farm
in June and has designed and developed systems such as drip irrigation and
terraced vegetable beds, black water, composting and compost powered water
heating. Alex will explain and demonstrate some of these systems as part of
his
contribution to the PDC.

 

The Course
Curriculum

The Ethics and Principles of Sustainability; Mapping; The
Village Zone System; Zone 1 Home and Family Garden; Zone 2 The Village; Zone 3
Small Farms around the Village; Water; Soil Improvement; Integrated Pest
Management; Animals; Zone 4 Community Forest; Zone 5 Conservation Forest;
Appropriate
Technology; Enterprise Development; Final Assessment

 

The Venue: Strawberry Fields
Eco Lodge (SFEL)

Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge hosts the first working PC
demonstration site in Ethiopia; a model design established over 4 years on
degraded land, incorporating drip irrigation, grey and black water re-use,
composting toilets, hot composting and compost water heating, tree nursery and
solar fridge, solar shower and much more. SFEL integrates an Eco-Lodge and
organic restaurant with the model PC site as well as running a program of
trekking and community based cultural activities in Konso. SFEL’s project
objectives
are to promote alternative livelihoods for the Konso community through
facilitating community inclusion in tourism activities as well as promoting
food security locally and more widely in Ethiopia, through promoting
Permaculture.

Location: Konso, SNNPRS,
Ethiopia

Konso Woreda is in the Southern Region (SNNPRS) of Ethiopia
(5'15' N, 37'30' E) covers an area of 500 square kilometres, ranges in from
500
to 2500m altitude with its main agricultural zone between 1400 to 2000m asl.
Konso’s
capital, Karat-Konso, is at 1600m altitude, 85km south of Arba Minch, and
around 590km south of Addis Ababa. The land form of the area is a basalt
massive, running east to west across the bowl of the Great Rift Valley.

The Konso people have a unique culture, based on sedentary
mixed agriculture, which distinguishes them from their neighbours in the
lowlands to the east and west who are pastoralists. The Konso are
characterised
by their unique culture, intensely social life-style and a penchant for hard
physical labour. The Konso village is remarkable for the beauty and simplicity
of its workmanship, constructed entirely of natural materials, cultivated or
gathered from the surroundings. The entire village is ringed by massive
dry-stone walls, at least a meter thick and two meters high. Stone-lined
pavements run between the housing compounds and the stones have often become
polished to a shine by long years of service in the village’s transport
system.


The most notable feature of Konso’s famous agricultural
system is its terracing, which reduces soil erosion, increasing infiltration
while
allowing drainage in times of deluge. Terraces are planted with sorghum,
intercropped with a range of other species; including trees, Moringa
stenopetala (also called the
cabbage tree -  a vegetable tree-crop) Terminalia birowni, and Cordia africana
which are grown for timber; shrubs such as pigeon pea, coffee and chat (Catha
edulis) (a cash crop) and annuals
including sunflowers, maize, millet, chick peas, various bean species, cotton
and cassava. The terraces are fertilised with wastes from the villages
including partially burned plant residues mixed with animal dung, which acts
to
keep the soil fertile.

Within the villages, Moringa
is planted all around the family compounds and harvested regularly to form one
of the staples of the Konso diet. Its leaves, which are reported to be
extra-ordinarily nutritious, are cooked and mixed with dumplings made from
Sorghum flower to make a dish called dama
in Konso’s language (or korkoffa in
Amharic). The other main food item in Konso is chagga which is a beery broth
brewed from sorghum. It is drunk
mixed with hot water, in the mornings and at lunch-time when the people are
preparing for work. It is extremely rich in carbohydrate and provides plenty
of
energy for the farmers, but it also insures that people are generally drunk.

The Permaculture in
Konso Schools Project (PKSP)

Today Konso suffers increasingly from food insecurity due
to climate change. The UNDP’s Rapid Assessment Report: Konso Special
Wereda, SNNPR (1999) states that; “since the 1950s, drought induced
famines have hit Konso and the immediate area almost once every ten years.”
“Konso was devastated by the droughts in 1973/74 and 1983/84”. In 2008/9 Konso
was again suffering food shortage due to drought.

The PKSP seeks to preserve aspects of
indigenous (agri)culture which benefit the local ecology, but fill gaps in
traditional systems by incorporating new practises, ideas and resources;
incorporating rain-water harvesting, soil and water conservation, small scale
irrigation, nutrition gardens, tree nurseries, small livestock, appropriate
labour-saving design-technology, alternative energy and nutrients based on
locally available resources.

 

To date teachers from 8 schools have been trained in
Permaculture and produced PC designs for their school compounds. From those,
three schools have produced impressive model PC sites under the pilot phase of
the project. The PKSP is eventually looking to expand to all 70 schools in
Konso over the next 3 years, with support from the UK-based Ethiopia
Permaculture Foundation. During this PDC we intend to incorporate 2 new
schools
into the program, this time putting the Green-Warrior touch on a new format
for
the project, with Steve’s input.

 
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>From toby@patternliteracy.com Fri Mar 25 10:51:46 2011
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On Mar 24, 2011, at 8:36 PM, Lawrence London wrote:

> A-Flowchart-to-Help-You-Determine-if-You're-Having-a-Rational-Discussion.jpg

I loved this. The piece I thought was missing, though, was "have you devolved
into personal attacks, nit-picking over unimportant details, and generally
sneering instead of responding to the points made. If so, we are not having a
discussion." This seems to happen in listservs often. (Oh, of course, never
this one!)


Toby
http://patternliteracy.com



> http://thoughtcatalog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/A-Flowchart-to-Help-You-Determine-if-Yoursquore-Having-a-Rational-Discussion.jpg




  • [permaculture] Next Permaculture Design Course at SFEL, Konso, Ethiopia, Alex McCausland, 03/25/2011

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