Permaculture Continues To Take Root In Kenya

Take a PDC in Kenya (PDF) or donate, either way will help to underwrite the course expenses so that local Kenyans can participate without cost….

There are two very unique and exciting opportunities to learn Permaculture Design and obtain your certification in Kenya this coming December of 2010 or in March of 2011. Students from around the world are invited to join local Kenyan students and International permaculture teacher and designer, Warren Brush, of Quail Springs Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm and other teachers from the local culture for this learning journey of a lifetime.

Nyumbani Village

In December of 2010, we will be convening the first course at a village outside of Nairobi called Nyumbani Village. This village stands on one thousand acres of land donated by the Kitui District County Council. The site is within the poorest division in the Kitui District and has a high incidence of HIV and a high number of HIV orphans. When complete, the Village will accommodate approximately 1000 orphans and 100 grandparents living in 100 dwelling units each with a grandparent and 8 – 10 children.

The Village provides a family-like setting for orphaned children under the stewardship of elderly adults and seeks to ensure that the children receive love, sustenance, health-care, holistic education and culture transfer, aiming for their physical, psychosocial and spiritual development, and, at the same time, providing holistic care and support for the grandparents in their later years. Through group homes and community services, the Village seeks to harness the energy of youth and the maturity of elders to create new blended families that foster healing, hope and opportunity. The village also seeks to ensure that the residents in the surrounding communities reach a certain level of self-reliance through the Village sustainability program.

They are ripe and ready for permaculture education to take root in their development process. Local teacher, Joseph Ntunyoi, from the Maasai tribe, will be assisting Warren Brush in the teaching of this course along with an up and coming teacher Ayouba Kamara from Liberia as well as with other special guests.

Badilisha Village

The second course is in March of 2011 at a village development called Badilisha Ecovillage on Rusinga Island on Lake Victoria. Badilisha has been organized by local people to make valuable lasting contributions to the social, economic, emotional, mental, spiritual and physical health of the people and ecology of Rusinga Island in Kenya

The good people at Badilisha Ecovillage are well on their way in establishing a community from which Earth Care and environmental conservation is supported by conscious design and application. They are growing food using permaculture principles, they are working to establish a resource centre for local residents to learn about sustainability through various projects and programs and they are working to improve the economies of the island by developing ecotourism. Their work spans working with school programs, teaching and practicing non-violent communication, assisting people with HIV, and they run a family sponsorship program for the extremely disadvantaged people of their region. This course will be taught by Warren Brush and assisted by local teacher Evans Owuor Odula and international teachers Elin Lindhagen and Loren Luyendyk.

At each of these visionary sites, we will be offering an affordable full two-week permaculture design certification course that will blend both local students with international students in a unique cross-cultural learning environment. These courses will incorporate myriad hands-on learning opportunities with practical permaculture theory and storytelling that is delivered uniquely by Warren Brush and the local teachers.

To keep within our ethics, we are asking that the students who cross the oceans to get to this course also commit to offsetting their carbon emissions for their travel to get to Kenya through designing and applying what they learn in the course. For the local students, we are asking them to commit to taking what they learn in these courses to their communities through applied projects that better the lives and ecologies of their home regions.

May our work in Permaculture around the globe continue to bring healing to place and people as it provides abundance, resilience and stability to our strained world!

Take a PDC in Kenya (PDF) or donate, either way will help to underwrite the course expenses so that local Kenyans can participate without cost….

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Warren Brush is a certified Permaculture designer and teacher as well as a mentor and storyteller. He has worked for over 20 years in inspiring people of all ages to discover, nurture and express their inherent gifts while living in a sustainable manner. He is co-founder of Quail Springs Learning Oasis & Permaculture Farm, Wilderness Youth Project, Mentoring for Peace, and Trees for Children. He works extensively in Permaculture education and sustainable systems design in North America and in Africa through his design firm, True Nature Design. He can be reached through email at w (at) quailsprings.org or by calling his office at 805-886-7239.