Upcoming courses and events
“Training Permaculture Teachers” Course with Focus on Refugees and Migrants @ Vidàlia, Spain, May 26 – June 4 (2023)
Tools For Empowerment & Positive Change
A Second Permaculture Teacher Training with a Focus on Refugees “Training Permaculture Teachers” Course with Focus on Refugees @ Catalunya, Spain, May 26 – June 4 (2023).
Last November a very special experience took place at an ecovillage in Catalunya, Spainat: the “Training Permaculture Teachers with Focus on Refugees” course. It was the most rewarding experience Alfred Decker has had in permaculture education. At the end of May, 2023 Alfred and a group of experienced permaculture teachers will repeat the same training at the same place… but with a new group of participants from around the world.
“Training Permaculture Teachers” Course with Focus on Refugees and Migrants @ Vidàlia, Spain, November 21-29 (2022)
Register here: https://forms.gle/4Ey6Uz8PNYw1hCuB6
Training Permaculture Teachers (TPT) is an international teachers training course offered in English and organised by 12P Permaculture Design. The course will be available to Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) holders from any country.
The invasion of the Ukraine and the hundreds of thousands of refugees seeking asylum in the European Union has focused attention on the issue of mass migration. There is now a much greater opportunity to support displaced people by teaching and training refugees to teach and train each other. As the Permaculture for Refugees international work group states, “Our aim is to support refugees in transforming the places where they live —be these refugee camps or communities in receiving countries — into productive permaculture-designed communities, and ultimately to equip them for integration into society for the collective benefit of all.”
“Training Permaculture Teachers” Course @ Mértola, Portugal, October 10 -23 (2022)
Register here: terradeabrigo@gmail.com
Join us for an intensive training that will provide you with an invaluable toolkit to use in the classroom, as well as life in general. The internationally-renowned teacher Rosemary (Rowe) Morrow’s TPT course draws on her decades of permaculture teaching experience. Whether you are already a teacher, or thinking of becoming one, the TPT training makes teaching a transformative and fun exchange. Classrooms (indoor and outdoor) will never be the same again!
With great enthusiasm, we announce that the Australian permaculture teacher and designer, Rosemary Morrow, is coming to Mértola!
Rosemary is one of the most renowned permaculture pioneers in the world and the author of several publications fundamental to the dissemination of the movement internationally. For over 40 years, she has dedicated her life to teaching permaculture design in various geographies (Australia, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Afghanistan, Uganda, Greece, Portugal… among others), focusing on challenging situations, namely places highly affected by climate change, war conflicts, extreme poverty and forced migration. Rosemary is also one of the founders of the international organization #PermacultureforRefugees and one of the mentors of Terra de Abrigo.
‘Terra de Abrigo‘ is a resettlement project for Afghan refugees in Mértola that offers a multidimensional model, integrating eco-social, cultural, legal, financial, personal and professional support, with the aim to developing and consolidating personal and social skills for full autonomy and integration of young Afghans in Portuguese society. Resulting from a partnership between Associação Terra Sintrópica, Mértola City Council, Mértola Parish Council and the international organization Permaculture for Refugees, ‘Terra de Abrigo’ is integrated within Associação Terra Sintrópica’s mission of promoting resilient territories in a semi-arid context, assuming the agroecological transition and the sustainability of the agri-food system as a possibility for biophysical and socio-economic regeneration.
This will be a PDC focused on challenging situations
Climate change . Desertification . Forced migration . Depopulation
Most of Rosemary’s professional life has been dedicated to taking permaculture design to people facing extreme challenges. She has taught PDCs to communities affected by climate change, war, under occupation, extreme poverty and forced migration, aiming to equip people with the skills and knowledge to design restorative and sustainable solutions for their situation. This PDC will have similar goals.
As a mentor of Terra de Abrigo project, Rosemary is coming to Portugal to teach permaculture to our Afghan friends (some of whom were her students in Afghanistan) and co-create with them permaculture materials for those who are still in Afghanistan. As a partner of Terra Sintrópica Association, and recognizing the challenges in Mértola bioregion (drought, desertification, depopulation…), Rosemary is eager to apply her life-time knowledge of permaculture to assist local people to design integrated solutions for local challenges. Design exercises during the PDC will feature real scenarios and local sites.
Teacher training courses are currently being organised for permaculture practitioners in Bangladesh and the Philippines, by the end of 2022.
More details to come soon.
Watch this space for further upcoming courses and workshops from our network!
For those people wanting to hold courses in camps using remote teaching materials, please contact us.
Our past courses
From January to April 2019 P4R held five 3-week PDC courses for refugees in Bangladesh, Turkey and Greece.
Bangladesh: 2 courses, January to March with Rosemary Morrow, Ruth Harvey and Jed Walker
- For rural Bengali villagers and BASD staff in Bengal language.
- For refugees in Rohingya language (with ongoing funding for 9 months whereby refugees taught refugees and remained responsible for establishment of gardens, water management systems, etc.)
Turkey: 1 course in March – Rosemary Morrow, Marguerite Kahl and Francesca Simonetti
1. For unaccompanied Syrian refugee women’s course, Ceve.
Greece: 2 courses, end April to May
- Lesbos – with Rosemary Morrow and Francesca Simonetti. For long term refugees on camps on Lesbos.
- The Lavrio Refugee Camp – with Rosemary Morrow and Antonio Scotti. Beneficiaries are long term refugees living in the region.
In May, 2019 P4R held a five-day evaluation of these five PDC courses at the Mediterranean Permaschool in Nea Makri in Greece. This meeting enabled P4R to collate evidence for future funding and plan how to improve upon and scale up the project.
We also conducted courses in Malaysia and the Philippines, later in 2019.