Support well-regarded international permaculture projects. Funds are forwarded to the projects every three months.
Projects supported by the Permaculture Association:
- permEzone Pilot Programme
- Himalayan Permaculture Centre
- Marda Permaculture Farm
permEzone is a project of California-based non-profit Empowerment WORKS, and an approved international project of the Permaculture Association (Britain).
Mission: to inspire, empower and support farming communities in the developing world to build regenerative food systems that will meet the needs of current and future generations, creating self-sufficiency, eco-social resilience, and thriving rural economies.
Vision: an online ecosystem; a network that connects communities in building and preserving unique local intelligence derived from real-life experience on the land. In combination with appropriate training and information resources, the power of shared experience can empower the development of sustainable productivity designed to work in harmony with nature.
Mobile phones are an effective tool for sharing information with farmers in the developing world. Farmers trained to design self-sustaining food systems, with access to the knowledge and skills of qualified teachers and practitioners, can use cell phones to engage with their wider community in co-creating the resources needed to build food-secure and resilient communities.
With more mobile phones on the planet than people, this technology is being used to reach the poorest, most remote, and least well-served. This is the technology that can be used to push back against the industrialization of farming, which ultimately impoverishes the land and the people who live on it.
www.permezone.org
The Himalayan Permaculture Centre (HPC) is a grass roots non-government organisation (NGO) set up in 2010 by trained and motivated farmers from Surkhet district (Mid-Western Nepal) to implement sustainable rural development programs in Nepal.
In Nepal, over 90% of the working population are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Subsistence agricultural practices have developed to be finely in tune with local climate, landscape and people's needs. Such practices are intimately interwoven with the forest and other natural resources to provide basic needs of food, fuel, fodder, timber, medicines, etc. Nationalisation of the forests, rising population and inappropriate aid programmes, which often try to replace traditional practices with "something better" have combined to undermine the sustainability of traditional agriculture. The result is a disempowered people with unequal access to basic needs, struggling to make ends meet despite working all hours and yet not even able to grow enough food to last the year.
HPC carries out demonstration, training, resource production and research on its own resource centres (working farms) in Kathmandu, Surkhet and Humla districts. It also carries out these activities on farmers own land, though the research needs to be risk-free otherwise they may lose valuable food crops/land if experiments don't work !
www.himalayanpermaculture.com
Initiated in 2006 by permaculturist Murad Alkhufash, the Marda Permaculture Farm is a working farm and demonstration site for permaculture principles, techniques and strategies. Based in the community of Marda, the project promotes food security, health, self-reliance and Palestinian empowerment.
Through modeling the practicalities of water harvesting and conservation, energy conservation, and home-scale garden production, with readily available and locally-appropriate materials, Marda Permaculture Farm is one of the few innovative production farms of its kind in the West Bank and the Middle East.
The Marda Permaculture Farm has developed into a thriving model of permaculture design principles. It models core permaculture techniques and principles including all organic methods, use of plant guilds and food forests, composting, greenhouse, swales to retain water and build soil, integration of orchards with fruit and nut trees, vineyards, chickens, pigeons, bees, and composting.
mardafarm.com