PRI Accredited 72h Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Plus 4-Week Internship Courses: Konso, Ethiopia (September, 2013)
Courses/Workshops — by Alex McCausland May 6, 2013
This 13-day practical and demonstrative PDC will take place in Konso, south Ethiopia, from September 2nd to 14th, 2013, at Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge. It has a focus on application of Permaculture to communities in the developing world; however as a PRI accredited PDC the syllabus covers all the major topics in Mollison’s Designer’s Manual and will equip participants with the conceptual tools to design for any bioregion. The PDC will also be followed by a 4 week group internship which will give participants the chance to gain practical experience of application of the knowledge and skills gained during the PDC.
Lead Facilitator: Alex McCausland
Co-facilitator: Abel Teshome
PDC Dates: September 2 – 14, 2013
Internship Dates: September 16 – October 12, 2013
Location: Konso, South Ethiopia
Venue: Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge
PDC Cost: See bottom of this page.
Internship Cost: See bottom of this page.
Cost Includes: Course fees, food and camping for the period of the course (accommodation upgrades are available, see pricing below)
Excludes: Transport, accommodation en-route, travel insurance, etc.
PDC Documents:
- Application Form for Registering (130kb PDF)
- Welcome and Orientation (60kb PDF)
Internship Documents:
- Internship: Application Form for Registering (130kb PDF)
- Internship: Welcome and Orientation (60kb PDF)
Pioneering Permaculture in Ethiopia
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Financial Management, Village Development — by Alex McCausland March 30, 2013
Pioneering is an essential function in the establishment of eco-systems. It refers to the initial colonisation of previously uninhabited habitat by a class of species (‘pioneers’) which are specially adapted to living in the harsh conditions of an otherwise uninhabited environment. Pioneers are generally short lived with small and abundant seed and have long range dispersal mechanisms suited to their ecology. Often the seeds are wind pollinated. In habitats which are maintained in a perpetual state of degradation by over-stocking and unregulated grazing, the pioneers tend to have seed which is dispersed by animals — it may be sticky, spiky or with velcro-like micro-hooks on it — so the animals spread them around. In this kind of environment the plants themselves also support defence mechanisms — e.g. spiky, obnoxious, bitter etc., and this is why referring to someone as “a pioneer” in permaculture terminology is a veiled way of saying they may seem ‘difficult’ (as in imbued with the kind of defence mechanisms that pioneer species utilise) but nevertheless they serve an important function – that of “getting the ball rolling” so that other more sociable, lusher, greener, more palatable and cooperative species can move into the system.
Old Bill himself has sometimes been referred to as a pioneer. Most of us are well acquainted with his charm and wit! So, on that basis, I will take having being referred to as a pioneer myself as a compliment! So the point is that pioneers may not be very fluffy, kind and sociable, but without these spiny, stubborn, bitter little plants there would be nothing at all, but with pioneers, we have a chance to get succession going.
Comments (2)Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge: Kitchen Grey-Water System Report of Implementation and Design Update (Ethiopia)
Aid Projects, Biological Cleaning, Community Projects, Conservation, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Irrigation, Land, Plant Systems, Waste Systems & Recycling, Waste Water, Water Harvesting — by Alex McCausland
As most of us know, grey water is a term used to refer to “waste” water that has been used once in any domestic system except for toilets (which is referred to as black water). However grey water from the kitchen may be considered as “dark grey” water on account of the fact that it tends to contain a lot more fats and protein from the grease and grime that comes off pots and pans than say shower outflow water which is quite dilute. If you let kitchen grey water sit around it quickly goes rancid and doesn’t smell a lot different from sewage. The grey water coming out of our kitchen also has some pretty nasty detergents in it (Ajax) and we can’t really get hold of anything more eco out here in Ethiopia. Initially we tried putting this grey water directly into an infiltration pit, but that didn’t work very well as it tended to fill up and start to reek and kill the surrounding plants, especially in the rainy season.
Comments (3)Seeking Support for Worthy African Participants to Attend PDC and Internship in Konso, Ethiopia in April-May 2013
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Village Development — by Alex McCausland March 11, 2013
Editor’s Note: As many of you know, we (the PRI) seek to spread permaculture take-up to all people everywhere, but a main focus, as we are able to finance it, is to help establish and support self-replicating permaculture demonstration/education sites in some of the world’s neediest regions. Many of you will have followed Alex’s noble and determined/persistent efforts in Ethiopia (see Alex’s author profile), and I trust you’ll see that he, his team, and the valuable work they are undertaking is more than deserving of our support and encouragement. I have personally worked hard to build traffic on this site over the last several year for the very purpose of being able to focus more eyeballs on worthy projects such as this. I sincerely hope you’ll take the time to read this post, and assist if you can. And, if you’re not in a position to help financially right now, then please at least take the time to share this page with your contacts via email, Facebook, etc. Thanks in advance to you all for your continued support!
Greetings to all of you Permaculturists out there. This is coming from Konso, south Ethiopia where we were able to establish our Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge (SFEL) permaculture demonstration site as a PRI Master Plan satellite site in January. As a PRI site we run trainings for international students, whose fees help us fund local students (i.e. students from Konso to get onto the courses we run — we mostly work with school teachers and students to start and mobilise our schools project sites) to take the training alongside the internationals themselves. We are running a PDC-Internship Combo this spring and have been promoting it here and elsewhere with updates on our work in Konso. However, much of the interest in taking these courses at the moment is coming from students elsewhere in Africa (e.g. Sudan, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Tanzania, etc.) where people are not exactly swimming in spare cash either. Hence we are looking for support to offer scholarships to help these African students attend our program. For each international (African) student that attends, another local Ethiopian student will be able to take the training, working towards the development of our local community outreach program — the Permaculture In Konso Schools Project — so you would be helping two people that need funding to get PDC certified. If anybody out there has the resources and the big heart to help us in this endeavour then their reward is in the good thing that they do. Please see more info on the PDC and internship programs here and here, respectively.
Applicants seeking Support to attend the April/May PDC-Internship are:
Comments (2)Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge: Report on Piped-Water System, Current Status and Design Update (Ethiopia)
Aid Projects, Commercial Farm Projects, Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres — by Alex McCausland March 8, 2013
We are an eco-lodge and Permaculture training centre based in Konso, south Ethiopia.
Water Source
Our only current water source for potable water and garden irrigation is the Konso Town municipal supply, which is drawn from a bore-hole situated just across the road from our site entrance. The supply facility is a manned pumping station with an electric water pump, backed up by a diesel pump for times of power outage, which are frequent. Even this back-up pump may fail on occasion due to lack of fuel or mechanical fault. There are also times when there is a problem in the water line, meaning that the municipal water supply is far from reliable. There are occasional water supply failures of up to a week, perhaps once a year, and more frequent shorter failures of 1 to 3 days every few months. These failures seem to be more frequent during the dry season when there is additional pressure on the system to supply greater community needs. When there is water, the supply is usually on for a couple of hours in the morning 5am – 7am and evening 4pm – 6pm.
The main supply line enters our site directly from the water pump station under the road via the storm drains situated just to the north of the old foot entrance, delivered by a ¾” poly-pipe.
Comments (3)Strawberry Fields Update: Flood Protection and Water Control in Ethiopia, Part II
Aid Projects, Commercial Farm Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Gabions, Land, Material, Roads, Soil Conservation, Storm Water, Water Harvesting — by Alex McCausland March 1, 2013
We previously published a report on the development of our site’s flood control and defense infrastructure in October 2010. This is an update on that which goes on to describe some of our plans for developing that infrastructure more in the future.
Just to recap on the basics of our situation: in times of rain, the run-off from the western part of Karat Konso Town (South Ethiopia) runs down the side of the road which heads uphill to the south of our site. This flash flood creates a temporary stream which impacts the south eastern corner of the site. The flash floods can be pretty intense.
Western town watershed, running past SE corner of SFEL site
Working With Principles for Creating More Efficient Cooking Stoves (Ethiopia)
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Deforestation, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Energy Systems — by Alex McCausland February 14, 2013
In rural Africa it’s pretty hard to come by fuel sources which are a good alternative to wood. Gas is too expensive. Kerosene is also pretty expensive and quite a dirty fuel anyway. Wood also has the advantage that it burns quite slowly so that you can slow cook over a fire for several hours just feeding it occasionally. If you did this with gas it would cost a fortune. In a place like Ethiopia you can also have a local worker leave a valve open overnight and come down to find an empty canister in the morning. So like most people around here, we still cook with wood. One day we may get a biogas set up going and be able to produce our own methane gas on a continual basis (see ‘Biogas’ section at bottom of this article for an example). That would really be true sustainability but we have not yet reached a capacity to be able to develop that scale of infrastructure at this stage.
The problem we are faced with is that this area is getting badly deforested. Women trudge past our site on the road day in, day out, carrying piles of firewood back to their villages or to peddle at the market — literally carrying away the forest on their backs. It’s not healthy and it’s not sustainable. So as a permaculture demonstration site in this area, what have we got to showcase as an alternative? Well, there are two strategies we employ: 1) get as much utility as possible out of any unit of wood fuel – so reducing the overall consumption, 2) use the parts of the plant/tree which can re-grow quickly (coppice) and hence can be harvested at a sustainable rate.
Comments (7)Hybrid Solar-Compost Powered Water Heating System (Ethiopia)
Energy Systems — by Alex McCausland February 4, 2013
As an Eco-Lodge, showers are obviously an important facility which guests have certain expectations about. Our lodging facilities are comprised of local thatched circular huts which are wooden framed with mud rendered walls. We had originally planned to put showers inside the rooms. However, we changed our minds about this due to the potential problems of having a regular water source inside a grass, wood and mud house in our environment, relating to dampness, smells and decay, the latter being greatly accelerated by the presence of termites, where moisture is available in moderate amounts.
Comments (5)Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge 4-Week Group Internship at PRI Master Plan Site, Konso, Ethiopia
Aid Projects, Commercial Farm Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres — by Alex McCausland January 31, 2013
There are those points in life where it’s all up-hill struggle, when you know there’s so much to be done that it’s not even worth contemplating it all, you just have to keep your eyes on the ground in front of you and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Then there are those times when you seem to be drifting, there’s no challenge and no real satisfaction, you just roll along the path in front of you passing what goes by. Then, very occasionally, are those fantastic moments when you reach the top, the peak of a mountain, or, perhaps the foot-hill of a mountain, when you are able to stop, take a breath and admire the views of this fantastic spectacle we call life and feel a bit of satisfaction that you have achieved something, got to the peak of the challenge you were set. And that is really what makes it all worth-while. It’s those moments which we strive for, and its knowing that such moments lie ahead which keep us going, through the challenges, toil and even drudgery of every-day life.
Comments (0)PRI Accredited 72h Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course: Konso, Ethiopia
Courses/Workshops — by Alex McCausland January 8, 2013
This 13-day practical and demonstrative PDC will take place in Konso, south Ethiopia, from April 1st to 13th 2013, at Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge. It has a focus on application of Permaculture to communities in the developing world; however as a PRI accredited PDC the syllabus covers all the major topics in Mollison’s Designer’s Manual and will equip participants with the conceptual tools to design for any bioregion. The PDC will also be followed by a 4 week group internship which will give participants the chance to gain practical experience of application of the knowledge and skills gained during the PDC.
Lead Facilitator: Alex McCausland
Co-facilitator: Abel Teshome
Dates: April 1st to 13th, 2013
Location: Konso, South Ethiopia
Venue: Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge
Cost: US$850 ($600 discounted rate for Ethiopians or Interns staying 12 weeks or more). 10% early-bird discount available if fees paid in full before 15th Feb 2012.
Includes: Course fees, food and camping for the period of the course (accommodation upgrades are available, see pricing below)
Excludes: Transport, accommodation en-route, travel insurance, etc.
Documents:
- Application Form for Registering (130kb PDF)
- Welcome and Orientation (60kb PDF)
Permaculture in Konso Schools Project Update, May-Oct 2012 (Ethiopia)
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Education Centres — by Alex McCausland November 15, 2012
Editor’s Note: Regular readers will have appreciated Alex McCausland’s regular and comprehensive reports from precariously positioned Ethiopia, and the great work he and his team have been doing on the ground. If you want to learn practical permaculture and gain real-world permaculture aid work experience in a location rich in agricultural history, then please consider taking Alex’s next PDC, to be held in southern Ethiopia between December 10 — 22, 2012. Your tuition fees directly support this important educational aid work.
This month we’ve been very busy in south Ethiopia. Konso, where we are based, lies just south of a dividing line between two great weather systems, one which affects the Ethiopian highlands to the north and has a unimodal annual rainfall pattern with rains falling July-September, and the other with a bimodal rainfall affecting the southern lowlands down into Kenya. The “long rains” in Konso are usually March-May and the “short rains”, known locally as hagaya (or belg in Amharic) are usually September-October. Basically, this means that it has just now been the planting season in Konso. We have had a mad planting bonanza to get about 2500 trees into the ground on our own demonstration site at Strawberry Fields Eco-Lodge. We’ve been ably assisted with this undertaking by our current intern, Sabrina Faubert, a recent graduate from the US who’s staying with us for five months and helping with the various different projects we have going on. Sabrina is going to write up a report of her own on her activities and experiences with Strawberry Fields, which will hopefully be posted on this blog shortly.
Comments (1)Update on Permaculture Implementation and Design Development at Hafto Site, Hadiya Zone, Ethiopia
Aid Projects, Biological Cleaning, Community Projects, Compost, Conservation, Fencing, Irrigation, Land, Material, Nurseries & Propogation, Plant Systems, Potable Water, Rehabilitation, Seeds, Soil Composition, Soil Conservation, Structure, Swales, Trees, Village Development, Waste Systems & Recycling, Waste Water — by Alex McCausland October 25, 2012
Editor’s Note: Regular readers will have appreciated Alex McCausland’s regular and comprehensive reports from precariously positioned Ethiopia, and the great work he and his team have been doing on the ground. If you want to learn practical permaculture and gain real-world permaculture aid work experience in a location rich in agricultural history, then please consider taking Alex’s next PDC, to be held in southern Ethiopia between December 10 — 22, 2012. Your tuition fees directly support this important educational aid work.
The Hafto Solar Community Water Project site project is a solar powered water supply facility for the surrounding community of Hafto in the Hadiya Zone, South Ethiopia. The project was planned and implemented by a German NGO called DWC and is owned and run by a local NGO called SMART. The facility supplies water to about 1500 surrounding community members within an approximate 1km radius. There is a small charge for the water of about 0.01 Ethiopian Birr per liter (1$=18Birr) which covers the running costs of the project. The community members currently come to the site with donkeys to collect the water in jerry-cans which they take home for use.
Comments (3)Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course: Permaculture for the Rural African Environment (December 2012, Konso, Ethiopia)
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres — by Alex McCausland September 17, 2012
This 13-day practical and demonstrative PDC will take place in Konso, south Ethiopia, from December 10th – 22nd, 2012, at Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge. It will have a special focus on the application of permaculture to communities in the developing world. It will involve practical demonstrations both form Strawberry Fields’ own model permaculture site and from school sites in the area which are participating in the Permaculture in Konso Schools Project. There will also be the chance to do field trips into other climate zones in the Ethiopian highlands.
Lead Facilitator: Alex McCausland
Co-facilitators: Abel Teshome and Asmelash Dagne
Dates: December 10th – 22nd, 2012
Location: Konso, South Ethiopia
Venue: Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge
Cost: US$850 ($600 for Ethiopians) [10% early-bird discount available before 15th October, 2012]
Includes: Course fees, food and accommodation for the period of the course
Excludes: Transport, accommodation en-route, travel insurance, etc.
Documents:
Comments (2)Report on Implementation Activities in Konso Secondary and Jarso Primary Schools in July 2012 (Ethiopia)
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Compost, Conservation, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Energy Systems, Food Forests, Irrigation, Land, Nurseries & Propogation, Rehabilitation, Retrofitting, Seeds, Swales, Trees, Village Development, Waste Systems & Recycling, Waste Water, Water Harvesting — by Alex McCausland August 17, 2012
In May 2012 we ran a PDC at Strawberry Fields Eco-Lodge on which we trained four local teachers, along with other participants, two from each of two local schools in Konso, South Ethiopia, where we are based. The selected teachers from the two schools, Konso Secondary and Jarso Primary, are science teachers responsible for the schools’ environmental clubs. During the training they produced permaculture designs for their school compounds, which they have gone on to begin implementing with their school communities.
72-Hour Permaculture Design Certificate Course: Permaculture for the Rural African Environment, Konso, Ethiopia
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres — by Alex McCausland July 17, 2012
This 13-day practical and demonstrative PDC will take place in Konso, south Ethiopia, from September 10th – 22nd 2012, at Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge. It will have a special focus on the application of permaculture to communities in the developing world. It will involve practical demonstrations both from Strawberry Fields’ own model permaculture site and from schools sites in the area which are participating in the Permaculture in Konso Schools Project. There will also be the chance to do field trips into other climate zones in the Ethiopian highlands.
Comments (0)
