Recently, eight participants in the GEM Permaculture Design Certificate Course were awarded certificates by Permaculture Research Institute Executive Director Geoff Lawton. The two-week course was a life-transforming experience that energized the newly certified permaculturalists to help build a sustainable future. A participant from the private sector said:
“Thank you for your recommendation on taking the Permaculture Design course. It was the best spent money on education that I have made in over 20 years and may have been the best educational experience I have had including college! Excellent instructors.”
Permaculture or ‘permanence in culture’ may be characterized as a landscape design approach to sustain integrated, healthy ecosystems and societies. Australian Bill Mollison, founder of the Permaculture Movement and Geoff Lawton’s mentor, simplifies permaculture further in the Golden Rule of Design:
“Keep it simple, keep it varied, and never forget that the problem is the solution.”
GEM will be offering another Permaculture Design Certificate Course over six consecutive weeks in spring 2006. In addition to covering design principles and processes in the Permaculture Design Handbook by Bill Mollison, field-based activities envisioned are composting demonstrations, vermicomposting, small garden system installation, rainwater roof catchment system installation, and field trips to a permaculture-designed organic farm and renewable energy and energy efficient home.
Over the Winterim break between fall and spring semesters, a GEM expedition to Oaxaca, Mexico will provide opportunity to implement permaculture methods and techniques. Working alongside members of the indigenous communities of Capulalpan and Santiago Comaltepec in the Sierra Norte mountainous region, GEM will help install a nursery greenhouse, square-foot gardens with local compost, an ecotourism kiosk with nature interpretative information, trail heads, and initial tree plantings for forest and watershed restoration of a former gold mining operation. These actions represent community needs expressed as priorities by the local citizens.
Concurrently, four GEM Student Ambassadors led by GEM graduate student Rhea Trotman will travel to Kenya to work on the GEM Small Garden Systems project in impoverished communities impacted by HIV/AIDS. The students will work with a Kenyan, GEM in-country coordinator Nicholas Syano, to install square-foot garden plots for training local community participants to grow organic vegetables to augment nutrition for more effective anti-retroviral treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS.
GEM Student Leadership Interns and others will continue to work with Native American partners on reservation lands in Wisconsin in agroforestry, organic farming, watershed management, ecosystem services valuation, and other sustainable development initiatives identified by the local community members.
To showcase success and relevance of sustainable development efforts locally and internationally by universities, governmental agencies, private business and industry, non-governmental organizations, local citizen groups, and others, GEM is planning and hosting the 4th International Conference on Environmental Management for Sustainable Universities (EMSU) in Stevens Point, June 26-30, 2006. The conference theme is:
‘Transforming ideas into action: building sustainable communities beyond university campuses.’
GEM staff, students and partners are making significant progress and practical impacts of success on the ground to help empower local communities move towards sustainable livelihoods and landscapes. You are invited to join us in this quest through your participation in the GEM Permaculture Design Certificate Course, the EMSU conference, or in other ways — you are welcome. Together, we are sowing and nurturing seeds of hope and permanence.
Best regards,
GEM Education Center Blog 