Rebecca brought Permaculture to her school

Eight months after our Permahabitat Erasmus+ course, we are looking back on the evolvements since then, we check back with the participants (which is not difficult since we are all still in contact with each other) and we think its time to share our 3rd story on the great Aftereffects of our course. This 3rd story is about the amazing Rebecca from Portugal, whose passion is dancing and nature, caring for the earth and for people.

When we visited Portugal in the beginning of the year, and just roughly a few months after our course, to see from close what our partner organisations is doing there, but also to reconnect with the participants that came from there, follow their projects and support them in their efforts, we visited also the student initiative hortaFCUL on Permaculture at the university of Lisbon where they run the permaculture garden called Permalab. Two of our participants were deeply involved into it, and we were very curious. Actually interestingly quite some more initiatives all over Portugal are traced back to this student initiative, but that's another story. When we met Rebecca again, we were happy to be shown around in the Permagarden of their university, but even more to hear that after our Erasmus+ course, she got hired by a school to do gardening activities with them, and she gets the chance to share so much of her knowledge that she gained with the youngsters, in an even more informal way of course. We believe that we have to include the youngest generations in our efforts, if we want to tackle the cause of the ill effects of our current challenges. We learned a great deal from her experiences she shared with us about her work with schools and it inspired us a lot to work also here in Greece closer with schools. To bring food forests to schools, because, as Ron Finley says it simply in his ted talk: “if kids grow kale, kids eat kale. If kids grow tomatoes, kids eat tomatoes.”

The amount of knowledge kids gain when they engage with the earth and plants is unmeasurable. Its a connection with mother nature they establish, that will follow them all their life long.

We are happy that Rebecca took on this challenging task to work with kids. And so the kids will not only get into gardening, connect with nature and experience the amazing effects of connecting with plants and the soil, but they will also learn the ethics of permaculture in an informal way, earth care people care fair share. Beside that, the principles of permaculture, an essential part of the PDC are a great guide for the kids to develop in a healthy way their interpersonal skills as well as for their own growth.

A PDC is for sure equipping you well for a job like this, besides, the community that evolved during and more so with time passing after the course, spanning over 5 different countries involving more than the 30 participants is further supporting a professional occupation in this sector.

It is time to unite our forces.