The PRI's Rhamis Kent talks about the situation in Somalia -- including the so-called 'aid' work presently underway, with its short-term business oriented methods and the social blackmailing it encourages, and constrasts it with the more holistic Permaculture aid methods we are now seeking to bring to the beleaguered nation. The latest good news I've had from Rhamis is that Somalia's Environment Minister has given a big thumbs up to Permaculture and has offered assistance for us to start to wedge Permaculture concepts into the country.
I can't help but get excited about the potential for Permaculture goodness bringing peace, health and happiness to Somalia. Imagine one day our being able to bring you reports of smiling faces and peaceful and purposeful collaborative success from Somalia as we did recently with Tanzania?
Watch the video below to see Rhamis' excellent presentation. If you want to follow along with more visible slides from Rhamis' Powerpoint presentation, you can download that here (14mb Powerpoint) or here (5mb PDF).
After an unintentionally extended lunch break during the IPC10 conference day (dragging 130 hungry people away from their stimulating lunchtime conversations is not an easy task!), Geoff kindly cut his post-lunch talk short so as to put subsequent speakers back on schedule. In the short time left for him, Geoff talked about the great need for training an army of permaculture warriors who can help set up self-replicating permaculture demonstration and education sites worldwide, and shared some of our efforts to help facilitate this. Included in the talk was mention of www.permacultureglobal.com (the Worldwide Permaculture Network), which enables permaculturists to literally put themselves on the map, and network and support each other in many ways -- including attracting students and consultancies, donations (for aid projects) and which facilitates and encourages knowledge (and even seed!) transfers between people and sites worldwide. It's a system that effectively levels the playing field, empowering a new generation of permaculture teachers and consultants to come up through the older growth, break through the canopy, and help us drive permaculture concepts deep into the minds of mainstream citizenry.
Tony Rinaudo's IPC10 conference presentation was one of the highlights of the event for three good reasons -- 1) because of the scale of impact his Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) work has achieved (more than 30,000 km² of re-greened, regenerated land to date); 2) the utter simplicity -- and thus doability -- of this work (it requires no financial investment or out-of-reach technologies -- just a little educational guidance and community collaboration), and 3) the speed at which this regeneration can occur and lives can improve.
We've brought people's attention to FMNR before...
... and now I have the great pleasure of being able to share Tony's IPC10 conference talk in high definition video (at top). Note: If you want to see the slides in higher quality, you can download Tony's presentation (9mb Powerpoint) and click through it in a different window as Tony talks if you like.
Brad of harvestingrainwater.com has well-honed presentation skills -- urban water harvesting has never been more interesting and compelling than after Brad has laid it all before you, and injected no small measure of fun and humour into it as well. I applaud Brad's valuable contribution to the permaculture toolkit, as I'm sure will you after watching the video below!
Roberto Perez Rivero gave an excellent presentation at the Tenth International Permaculture Conference (IPC10). Watch it below. As the projector wasn't the best, you may also want to make use of the links below to download the slideshow from this talk so you can click through those in a different window as Roberto speaks:
P.S. The video starts in mediocre quality, but after a few minutes jumps into higher resolution.
