16 day (100 hour), Vegan, Permaculture Design Course + Sociocracy in practice
Full certified 14 day permaculture design course (100 hours, 14 days teaching, 2 days free)
Sat 1st to Sun 16th June 2024 9am to 6:30pm CET*
*These are the correct times. Do not trust Facebook, as it keeps changing times randomly.
ONE DAY SESSIONS
For those who cannot make the full course, some of the days will be open to the public as stand alone one day courses
1 day intro to Social permaculture and Sociocracy (1 Jun)
1 day intro to Permaculture design (2 Jun)
1 day intro to Water management (3 Jun)
1 day intro to Creating healthy soil (4 Jun)
1 day intro to Growing food the permaculture way (5 Jun)
1 day intro to Forest gardening (8 Jun)
1 day intro to Urban permaculture (9 Jun)
1 day intro to Designing buildings and structures (10 Jun)
1 day intro to Off grid living (esp. energy) (11 Jun)
NB For full time students the additional days are for design work
==== THE PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE ====
This fully certified course (certified by the Permaculture Association Britain and Roots n Permaculture) will delve deep into how we can use permaculture to create rich beneficial relationships between people, communities and their surroundings, including how to grow food, build houses and create economies, while also enriching and taking care of nature.
Special emphasis will be put in creating a temporary community for the duration of the course, where we use social permaculture tools, especially sociocracy to make sure everyone's needs are met, so we can all enjoy living together in a joyful, supportive learning environment.
=== WHAT IS SOCIAL AND VEGAN PERMACULTURE? ===
Permaculture is a design system for creating abundance in all aspects of our lives. Permaculture teaches us how build natural homes, grow our own food, restore diminished landscapes and ecosystems, catch rainwater, build communities, take care of waste and much more.
The word 'permaculture' historically comes from 'permanent agriculture' and has evolved into 'permanent culture' - it is about living lightly on the planet, and making sure that we can live in harmony with nature while sustaining human activities for many generations to come.
Permaculture is a rigorous and systematic set of tools, ecological principles and methodologies, underpinned by ethics, which help us to design and create this culture of permanence. A culture that allows us to design how we cater for all our needs and the needs of the planet and all its creatures, without exploiting or depriving other humans or creatures of their needs.
The ultimate goal is to create systems that create abundance for all humans, creatures and mother earth, without exploitation of humans, animals or earth's non renewable resources.
With permaculture insight we can design our inner tranquillity, it can be applied to creating integrated and supportive communities, building or retrofitting houses to be more energy efficient, creating ethical businesses and livelihoods, as well as creating rich abundant low maintenance food growing spaces.
=== WHAT IS SOCIOCRACY? ===
Sociocracy is a whole system governance and decision making method which is based on and encourages equivalence, transparency, and effectiveness in an organization. It encourages collaborative innovation, minimises lengthy governance meetings, and helps everyone participate in shaping the decisions that affect them.
During the PDC we will put sociocracy into practice on a daily basis. The first day of the course we establish what every person wants form the course, form which we derive a common vision. We then create a mission and aims on how to achieve our vision. We then embed a feedback mechanism to check if we are meeting these aims, so we can keep adjusting our collaboration every day.
Sociocracy ensures everyone's voice is heard and all our individual and collective needs are met.
=== PDC Course Syllabus ===
The course will from day one put into practice social permaculture. We will larn sociocracy to create a community and practically explore how we ensure everyone's needs are met, and how everyone can safely express themselves, without conflict. Having found our inner balance and balance within our newly forged community, we then move into exploring the traditional permaculture syllabus, including environmentally friendly food growing; soil generation; water management; house building; alternate economics and livelihood, etc.
Having explored the theory of permaculture ethics, principles and approach to challenges, we will then move on to in depth design work and practicals (hands-on work), which solidifies the theory.
The emphasis remains on learning the patterns and concepts that are applied in permaculture, so you can apply this to all aspects of your life after the course has finished. Hence the practicals will be a way to reinforce the theory and design work that we cover.
Where and when appropriate we will visit nearby intentional communities and projects that integrate permaculture in their design (subject to consent by the students).
The syllabus will cover the following areas
- Principles of Natural Systems
- Sustainable Design Methodologies
- Patterns in Nature
- Reading the Land & Understanding Natural Processes
- Water Harvesting Techniques
- Design Principles of Sustainable Human Settlements
- Grey Water Recycling
- Natural Building Design Strategies
- Food Forests, Plant Guilds, Gardens for Self-Sufficiency
- Energy Conservation Technologies
- Urban Environment Permaculture
- Wildlife Management and Biological Pest Control
- Community Activism
- Invisible Structures: People, Community, Economics, EcoVillages
- Sociocracy; Dragon dreaming; Six thinking hats
- Community Supported Agriculture
- At the end of the class, students engage in a group design project.
=== TEACHERS ===
Lead Instructor
Rakesh Rootsman Rak - An experienced Permacultre designer teacher, forest garden specialist, yoga teacher, homeopath and reggae DJ. Rakesh has been designing and teaching permaculture to individuals and communities since 2009, and has taught over 120 permaculture, forest gardening, eco village design and related courses. His design portfolio ranges from a forest garden on part of a 30-hectare ecovillage in Croatia that he co-owned through to many urban community food growing gardens, private farms and back gardens as well as designing collaborative businesses, urban water retention systems and even computer software and documentation systems. Rakesh is also passionate about sharing his journey of self empowerment (learning how to make all the things you need for yourself rather than relying on the system to provide for you), this includes eco architecture (low impact housing); capturing and storing energy (electricity, heat, lighting, etc); fuel efficient heating systems (rocket heaters and stoves); water capture, purification and recycling systems, natural bee keeping and so on. He is one of the founders of the Children in Permaculture project which was launched at the international permaculture convergence in this year. So be prepared to go off on inspirational tangents occasionally.
http://rootsnpermaculture.com/
=== THE VENUE ===
=== ACCOMMODATION ===
=== FOOD ORGANISATION AND COST ===
To create a deeper sense of community, throughout the course we will create teams who will help cook every day. We will create a system which allows us to express what our dietary needs are, so that we ensure every meal is ideal for everyone.
To ensure we keep the food costs and quality at a level the students require, we are adopting the tried and tested self organising method. This means we will ask you to either bring enough food ingredients to cover your food needs for the duration of the course or bring a mix of food and cash. The food could include home grown veg, grains, preserves, etc. The cash will go into a pot which will be used to buy food as and when required, which will be managed by a sociocratically elected group of participants. We kindly request everyone to only bring vegan, vegetarian food, which we will pool together and collaboratively cook in teams. If appropriate fresh organic veg will be contributed from the venue.
This method has proven to be very successful, as it promotes collaborative decision making and collaborative working. It also allows people to contribute in a way that suits their budget. Participants from previous courses have taken well to this method and noted how the food budget was significantly less that what they would have expected on any other course.
Given this is a vegan course and how the dairy industry is interlinked with the meat industry, which between them are the largest contributors of greenhouse gasses, I would like to suggest we conduct this course in a way that is coherent with a way of life that does not contribute to climate change, meaning lets not eat dairy for 2 weeks (this is a request and suggestion, not a condition). Dont worry, there are many of us (including Rakesh) who are very skilled at making incredibly delicious and nutritious food in this way. You wont notice the difference.
=== 14 DAY ACREDITED* PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE TRAINING COSTS ===
Payment options for the 14 day PDC
The cost for the training is based on gift economy, where participants are invited to contribute what they can afford and are willing to pay. The cost of putting on the course means we need to raise on average €450 per person. However we invite you to propose how much you would like to contribute somewhere in the range of the following
Ideal contribution €600
Average contribution €450
Minimum contribution €300
We encourage those of you who can contribute more to do so, which should allow us to cover our costs, however if the minimum is outside of your ability to contribute then please let us know of your circumstances so we can see if we can find a way to get you on the course.
If there is a shortfall in the final sum (which by experience is unlikely), we will request the shortfall to be covered anonymously via a magic hat process. This process is part of the permaculture ethos, which allows people to pay according to their capacity, while meeting the needs of the hosts, teachers, etc.
==== PAYMENT FOR ONE DAY COURSES ====
These courses are by donation. Please let us know in advance how much you wish to donate via the sign up form. Suggested donation between €30 and €70 per day (average €50).
*Please note, these one day courses are part of the full permaculture design course and are included in the course fee (i.e. you do not need to pay extra for these if you have already paid for the PDC). However they are also being offered as a separate distinct course to people who cannot make the full course and can only attend during the weekend.
=== ACCOMMODATION COSTS ===
Cost to be confirmed
=== PAYMENT METHODS ===
Bank transfer to a Euro bank account
Bank transfer to a UK bank account in Pounds
Cash by arrangement
=== LANGUAGE ===
All classes will be in English however If there are a number of people who require a translator please let us know and we will work to accommodate this.
As part of our community culture we will create a process which ensures if there are words or sentences you do not understand we will address it immediately. Also at the end of each day you wok in a small group to review the day which can be in local language, so if there is something you misunderstood this is your chance to catch up.
To help prepare for the workshop, you are encouraged to use this list of permaculture, forest gardening, sociocracy and plant names that have been translated into many languages
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZW94W2OcK3e_9NIQdwqwMTKWDHQR4P-…
=== *ACCREDITATION ===
This course adheres to the Permaculture Association Britian's accreditation criteria for Permaculture Design Courses (PDC's). However due to the rising cost of the certification and in order to make the course affordable we consulted with the Permaculture Association Britain (PAB) and concluded to give the participant the choice of being accredited via the Permaculture association Britain (€20 for the certificate and additional administration) or by the Roots n Permaculture Collective School (for free). The Roots n Permaculture Collective School certificate affords you the same privilege as the certificate from PAB, meaning with this certificate you can still teach intro courses (after at least 1 year or putting permaculture into action) and can also apply to do your diploma (with any association anywhere in the world). The only difference between the two is that the PAB certificate helps to pay the learning coordinator of PAB to develop and maintain their high standard curriculum.
=== REGISTRATION ===
To register for this course, please fill in the following form. If you have any difficulty or have any questions please feel free to contact Rakesh
https://PDCSw2024
=== CONTACT ===
Course and Content, please contact Rakesh:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rootsmanrak
Email: rakeshaji@gmail.com
