Midwest Permaculture Training Applicable in Africa

Paige
March 23, 2012

Africa, Paige & Grant Shadden, PDC, Uganda

Permaculture Training Applicable Around the Globe

The brilliance of Bill Mollison’s PDC course is the universality of it. Students of a Midwest Permaculture PDC Course can take this educational experience and apply it to any location or climate on the planet. The PDC is about learning how to design; learning how to see different situations and the landscape through a permaculture way of seeing the world.

We have had students from just about every part of the globe take our trainings and all of them leave with the knowledge of how to apply permaculture thinking and design to their own environment and circumstance.

Even though Grant Shadden took his PDC with us in Illinois, his education has allowed him to be of service in Africa. We are now delighted to have Paige Shadden joining us in an upcoming PDC course.

Bill Wilson – Midwest Permaculture

My husband, Grant, and I are gardening nerds. We both have childhood memories of gardening with our families (his more fond than mine!). Even more now we enjoy it as adults as we discover the realities of pesticides, the high prices of organic produce and how destructive our industrial agriculture system is.

Grant & Page in Africa — Grant and Paige Shadden – Volunteer Permaculture Work in Africa

“Permaculture” has been a buzzword in our household for the past few years. Grant started researching sustainable agriculture and became immediately passionate about it. Last year Grant went through a PDC course. Then he started to implement it into our Organic Gardening and Eco Lawn Care business (called Urban Eden) in Kansas City.

This winter we were blessed to be in Uganda and Kenya with our dear friends, who have lived there for many years. They have 20 acres and invited us over to ‘play in the dirt.’ We lived in West Africa 5 years ago, and have been aching to get back on that continent. The hospitable people, culture and land are irresistible to us!

Grant in Africa — Grant Explaining Different Forms of Earthworks for Rain-water Harvesting

Our time there was very meaningful. Among digging swales, building an herb spiral and keyhole garden, (see the Permaculture Design that Grant and his classmates created for this site during his PDC Course) Grant was also given the opportunity to teach 2 different hands-on Permaculture workshops. Several native community leaders were able to participate. They kept communicating how thrilled they were to learn Permaculture! One lady, who was very educated and a key leader in her village, said that what they had learned in 2 days with us, they couldn’t have learned in 5 years within their education system.

Building an A Frame in Africa — Teaching Community Members How to Build an A-frame

Unfortunately, because of their overworked and unfruitful land (as of yet), there have been many people dying. There were a lot of tears to say the least. They begged us to come back next winter and let them take a full design course. Grant was already hoping to get his teachers certification for Permaculture this summer, and plans to then teach a PDC course in Uganda next winter! I am also excited because I will be getting my PDC in less than a week!

Midwest Permaculture Training Applicable in Africa

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