Another venture we were keen to take on after completing our Permaculture Design Certificates, which would also help keep us “sane” until moving to Tassie, was to spread the word by running our own Introduction to Permaculture Course. The Hawkesbury EarthCare Centre provided the perfect venue (an earth building surrounded by organic gardens), and we offered to donate all proceeds for the opportunity to nurture our teaching and course facilitiation skills.
We spent many hours after work and on weekends developing a two day agenda with course handouts and practical exercises, which was the perfect way to embed so much of the knowledge we had gained through the PDC. Kat Szuminska, who completed her PDC at Trinity with me the year before, offered to cover energy cycling, edge effects, and soils, so between the three of us we had all the Permaculture principles covered.
The course was marketed to the EarthCare members, by hanging posters at every library within a 50km radius, sending emails to organic seed suppliers and all the local schools, and writing a press release to local newspapers. The amount of interest received was extremely motivating and a fantastic indication of the future strength of Permaculture within our communities. In the end the course was fully booked out with 24 participants, and over $1,500 was raised for the EarthCare Centre.
It was a truly rewarding experience spending the weekend with like minded people who were keen to learn how they could apply Permaculture to their lives. It also reinforced that Permaculture was going to be a very important and exciting part of our lives. Of course the highlight of the weekend… building a compost pile!
We spent many hours after work and on weekends developing a two day agenda with course handouts and practical exercises, which was the perfect way to embed so much of the knowledge we had gained through the PDC. Kat Szuminska, who completed her PDC at Trinity with me the year before, offered to cover energy cycling, edge effects, and soils, so between the three of us we had all the Permaculture principles covered.
The course was marketed to the EarthCare members, by hanging posters at every library within a 50km radius, sending emails to organic seed suppliers and all the local schools, and writing a press release to local newspapers. The amount of interest received was extremely motivating and a fantastic indication of the future strength of Permaculture within our communities. In the end the course was fully booked out with 24 participants, and over $1,500 was raised for the EarthCare Centre.
It was a truly rewarding experience spending the weekend with like minded people who were keen to learn how they could apply Permaculture to their lives. It also reinforced that Permaculture was going to be a very important and exciting part of our lives. Of course the highlight of the weekend… building a compost pile!
