Steve Jones and Gerald Jagwe of Sector39 at the Wales Permaculture Convergence Autumn 2022, with guest from India. We presented on the progress of the Academy and invited participation from the Wales permaculture network.
Voices from the margins 2020-2022
Steve Jones project lead
We have responded to a genuine thirst, enthusiasm and direct need for permaculture education in the East African nations
Summary
The project aims are to advance and develop permaculture practice and training methodology, especially with marginalised groups and those already being impacted by climate change.
This partnership with Arkleton trust, 2020-2022 builds on prior experience and networks established since 2016 and S39 first involvement in international permaculture teaching. This project began on Jan 1st 2020 with the vision of creating four learning and demonstration hubs for permaculture in East Africa.
- Kumi, Eastern Uganda
- Butambala, Central Uganda
- Save, Southern Rwanda
- Homa Bay, NW Kenya
S39 with support from the Wales for Africa program delivered a series of permaculture design courses between 2016-18 in Uganda and as a follow on we seek to find steps forward for mutual partnership by creating an on-going permaculture education and professional career development.
Permaculture design supports food and livelihood security, a regenerative, nature based approach for farming and community development and serves as a tool for mutual aid, planning and team building
The named key people in each regional group are agraduates from those courses and who carried on the momentum of their learning to start a locally based initiative. The project aims were to build experience and competence in the training and develop the skills of key members and to pave the way for a self sustaining training network.
In the three year period covered by this project each of the 4 hubs has run at least one full permaculture design course and carried out follow up with the participants. This has led to the formation of several local groups and networks.
For 2023 we are following up by running a 24-week PDC on-line, supporting participants with data costs so they can access the content, and following up and monitoring the outcomes from the training. This is the first stage of the full launch of our Academy of Permaculture.
Approximation of the numbers of people reached by the project in 3 year period
| Project Hub | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | total | ||
| EUPO | 36 | 60 | 96 | ||||
| TAPA | 20 | 600 | 255 | 36 | 911 | ||
| Butambala | 140 | 25 | 144 | 6 | 315 | ||
| PermoAfrica | 1200 | 1200 | 20 | 1200 | 40 | 3660 | |
| Save, Rwanda | 8 | 40 | 300 | 20 | 2 | 370 | |
| 5327 |
Region one: Eastern Uganda, key partner EUPO
Key people: Joseph Opolot, Hellen Aanju, Godfrey Opolot
The group founders all completed training with S39 in 2017 and went on to found their own regional group. This was embedded within the Happy Home charity members also worked for.
EUPO members have overseen the formation of a network of local groups in the region flowing from the demonstration and training work. This has also served to introduce permaculture methodology into the Happy Home Network. A Korean charity.
At the outset of the project Joseph was recovering from a head injury from a motorbike accident, Hellen and Godfrey were working for a Korean charity called Happy home. We visited them in Feb 2020 and met the parties concerned and from there we planned to run a full PDC at the Happy Home centre. It would meet the training needs of stakeholders of the project and draw in participation from the wider Teso district and with plans to bring in participants from further afield.
In the build up to the PDC the project supported Godfrey and Hellen to lead on remodelling and planting up the gardens at Happy home, as a demonstration and training facility in anticipation of
the PDC. By the time the course came about we had an excellent garden and range of examples ready for the students to learn from and interact with. This food garden proved to be very valuable during the pandemic times and it provided a focus for activity, the Koreans had returned home at that stage.
Plans were disrupted by Covid-19 and shaped by the shifting regulations but were able to deliver our full PDC in September 2020. Approximately 36 people were involved, and the participants were drawn from a more local region due to travel restrictions. We were able to assemble the core S39 training team which included Ali Tebandeke from Kampala, Irene Aturinde and Vicky Akello from Gulu and Clovis Ntafakabiri from Congo. We also accepted an internship from Stella Amuge who was completing her degree in development studies at Makerere University. Stella’s role was to co-ordinate evaluation for the out comes of the training.
Restrictions forced us to restructure the course, with fewer days at the training centre, and instead of working on a group design, participants worked on a personal action plan, of priorities they would enact once they returned home from the training.
Outcomes
The course itself was a little chaotic with all the covid restrictions, being obliged to do remote learning with poor internet connections, storms and more interruptions. The combination of the well-established gardens and the presence of the team did however mean that participants did leave with clear ideas for their own next steps. Evaluation teams co-ordinated by Stella, and with help from EUPO members revealed that the PDC has had an impact way beyond what we could have anticipated. Many of the follow up visits have since revealed significant shifts in behaviour. That we might have anticipated but it was the knock-on effects that we had not factored in.
With many people’s lives reduced by travel restrictions and children home from school there was a real focus on permaculture projects, and these began to have a collective impact across the wider communities. Follow up visits were undertaken at 6, 9 and 12 months after the course and I was able to visit in person in March 2022.
The Happy Home team have been inspired and informed by this process aso and many permaculture ideas and techniques are now informing their work around food and livelihood sustainability
EUPO project feedback video, compiled for SUII, interviews by Stella Amuge
The 2020 Kumi PDC had 36 participants and was hosted within Kumi Happy Home project. This has led to the formation of TAPA and following that a series of 4 more regional groups with approx 255 members and 1,200 households have been engaged with
All 4 groups are involved in the current 2023 on-line PDC, which in part aims to collate the wider impact that the training is having.
Formation of TAPA, Teso Advanced Permaculture Academy
Key Person Deborah Aluka
Students from that PDC have gone to found their own organisation, TAPA. It has been registered as a not for profit and serves to co-ordinate action across those communities. A key figure from this group is Deborah Aluka who has proven herself to be a very effective teacher and co-ordinator.
The project has reinforced this progress by providing money for seeds, tools and work ware as well as follow up visits. Members have reported very positively about the ongoing support and repeat visits, this has had a strong re-enforcing effect.
In March 2022 I visited with Stella, Clovis, Ali and Aramadhan Mutebi where we held two days of training in teacher development at Kumi Hotel, and we also had the opportunity to visit many of the students homes to see the longer impacts from the work.
This is significant, we heard many individual stories of people using and innovating with permaculture techniques, and also how in certain instances whole communities had shifted behaviours, for example in the use of the energy efficient Lorena stoves, raised beds, surface water trapment and making and use of compost. Several people reported how the once dead soils had visibly come alive as a result of these methods and these observations serve to be self-reinforcing.
Wonderful short video of TAPA members welcome to their demonstration and training hub
2023 Update TAPA
TAPA reported that 600 households had converted to using the energy efficient mud block ‘Lorena stove’ that was demonstrated on the PDC.
Depborah is co-ordinating 4 groups who are working with us on the 2023 PDC
TAPA and their network members have been a significant achievement from this initiative, Deborah Aluka has quickly built a team around herself and established herself as an authority in the subject area. She now operates as a full time permaculture teache and reports she has interacted with 255 farmers in the region
Region two: Western Kenya, key partner PermoAfrica
Key People; Paul Ogola
SUII video prepared about PermoAfrica. Interviews by Stella Amuge.
PermoAfrica
"In the project period we have reached 1,200 people each year, 3,600 in total. There are 12 member villages in the project and each year we have aimed to train 100 people. I am immensely grateful to Arkleton for their support of PermoAfrica"
It was Paul who was the inspiration for this project at the outset, he had successfully created a vision and started the PermoAfrica training centre after his first training in 2016.
Following on from that in 2017 and ’18 he had returned with other community members to enable him to establish a much wider network, connecting to a dozen local communities in the Homa bay region through the permaculture ethos.
Paul’s home and training centre were in motion already in 2020 at the start of the project. I invited him to travel to Uganda in March 2020 and we convened in Butare in the Eastern region, visit EUPO together in Kumi and travelled to Butaleja which we had also identified as a potential training hub. We went on to establish a nursery there, with vetiver grasses, bamboo among other things we had purchased at talent agro-forestry centre in Nakaseke, run by Andrew Kalema, also a graduate from the 2016 PDC.
The project supported Paul in several ways, we provided training materials, support feedback and evaluation for him to continue his on-going training programs. Stella and Clovis were able to visit in 2021 to monitor progress and bring key materials for the development of the centre. There were some structural problems with the buildings and Sector39 agreed to invest into the infrastructure so that Paul can continue operating the training hub.
We also explored the possibilities of the training centre, sending groups there from Uganda, Aramadhan Mutebi from Busia took a group there, which they found very inspiring and re-enforcing. I was able to visit him in Busia in 2022 and saw first-hand how permaculture had been taken p across the community. Literally neighbours had began copying and becoming increasing curious. We a schoolgirl who was now paying her own school fees from her garden plot alongside many other heartening examples.
The PermoAfrica long term plan is to build a strong local network drawing in participation from 20 or local communities. Members might be invited to PermoAfrica before Paul would travel into those communities and oversee the creating of a community garden. Again, using the demonstration model to stimulate curiosity and engagement. These demonstration hubs again proved to be immensely valuable during Covid and the follow evaluation undertaken by team members again surpassed our expectations.
Members reported improved health and vigour through improved nutrition, being freed from buying green vegetables for their own consumption as well as having surplus to sell and help pay school fees
In March 2022 I attended PermoAfrica together with Stella Amuge and Deborah Aluka where we ran three days of training followed by site visits, with some of the leading practitioners and participants in the project work. We worked with approximately 20 trainees, packing out the classroom, the sessions collated the experiences of the trainees, talking about the ambitions going forward and strengthening networks.
PermoAfrica has had its challenges, financial pressures are always there, in part driven by the ambition of the project that always wants to achieve more and have a wider impact.
2023 Update
PermoAfrica are currently training 40 people on the 2023 PDC and have established a training network across 12 villages in the region.
Paul is working with a team of teachers with this group and is using the opportunity to develop both the scope and the capacity of the project
Region three: Southern Rwanda, Rwandan Women’s Permaculture
Key person: Rose Nibagwire
Project founder Rose Nibagwire came with two friends from university to the 2018 PDC in Uganda and made a big impression on the teaching team. She was receiving training in part so she could return to Rwanda and assist Gregg Knibbs an Australian permaculture teacher to deliver a PDC in her region following on from this. As we panned the this project she was someone we always had in mind as the kind of person who might benefit from this support.
We visited her in March 2020 and was taken to Save school, the regional high school, government run, which was receptive to hosting the planned local project Rose and her team were working on. We agreed an outline plan, to design and plant a food forest within the school that would harvest rainwater, reduce the erosion problems there and contribute to local food security. There are over 1000 pupils at the school, and it is also a community hub, so these innovations would be highly visible and have the potential to spread.
Throughout the pandemic rose develop and trained a small group of mainly women drawn from the school staff, pupils, and local residents. They established a nursery at the school, propagated trees, shrubs, and plants and set about redesigning the school grounds to improve rainwater catchment and reduce the runoff that was undermining some of the buildings. They managed to maintain a regular schedule through the project period and built an ever-stronger group, despite of strict covid restrictions.
Outcomes
The school gardens are impressive and already producing veg and fruits. A swale system hs been design and constructred channeling surface run off, which was previously undercutting the buildings ito where it can support the school’s forest garden system. Fruit trees and other useful plants have been strategically placed around the campus, offering shade, fruits and modifying the feel of the whole school and grounds.
The school priorities shift around, this has been frustrating for the group but we also learned that of course schools have a different set of pressures and priorities and there are also on-going developments which can sometimes conflict with the gardens and plantings.
RWP began dong more community outreach, and working at the home and farms of their members, the link with the school remains as well as being a focal point, but their work is increasing centred on the RWP members and surrounding community.
PDC. Two years of practical work meant the trainee group had completed the fundamental components of the PDC but need some theory, analysis and chance for feedback and evaluation.
Gerald Jagwe and myself travelled to Gisagara district and planned and delivered 5 days of training within the school for the whole team of about 20 members. We completed the PDC process and certificated the graduates and recruited them into the academy.
RWP has now registered as an NGO in Rwanda and has a bank account, these registration processes were slow and time consuming but have now come about. The group is already being invited to participate in local events, information sharing and demonstrating.
Community garden under construction, 2023 Rwanda, Southern district
Images from the Rwanda permaculture project and PDC. Formation and launch of RWP
Region four: Central Uganda, Butambala Permaculture learning centre.
Key person: Ali Tebandeke
Background to Butambala. Ali trained with S39 in 2017 and went on to start an urban initiative in Nateete, outside of Kampala. Several of the members he had connected with attend the online PDC S39 delivered in May 2020 and again in April 2021. This also created further momentum and Ali’s own ambitions began to develop.
Ali attended the Sept PDC in Kumi as part of the training team, he also helped establish some of the demonstration plots used on the PDC. This experience gave him the drive to return to Butambala the rural area outside of Kampala where he has family connections to begin his own demonstration and learning centre. From the outset he was keen to art of the S39 network and we accepted this development as an alternative to Butaleja, which had lost its momentum during the pandemic.
Ali is about to deliver his second full PDC at the Butambala, and he has been very effective at networking and winning support from outside Uganda as well as locally. We see Ali as another very significant individual who has taken the ideas presented S39 and created his own version of that. I have not been able to visit the site yet, but we are in regular contact with Ali and are closely following progress.
Outcomes
Through work at both Nateete and Butambala permaculture Ali and team have worked with over 200 farmers and trained 40 people in permaculture design through their courses
Planning and mapping at Butambala learning centre in 2022
Conclusions and acknowledgements
We are very grateful to Arkleton Trust for this support for the development of the Academy of Permaculture and congratulate them on thier important work. We hope that we have fulfilled your expecations and that the project has far exceeded targets, especially in the light of the challenge of the pandemic and the many restrictions that it imposed on us.
We also recognise SUII, the Scottish Universities Insight Institute for sponsoring our evaluation videos and helping us spread the outcomes of this project across your global partners.
We are grateful to the Permaculture Association of Britain, who have acted as project partners, allowing S39 to use their charitable status as a conduit for funding.
Finally we thank Paramaethu Cymru for allowing us the opportunity to disseminate our work arcoss the Wales permaculture network.
Meet our team: S39 core team is based in Wales, with Stella in Kampala. Our trainers and tutors are spread out across East Africa and we hope we can continue to build on this network.
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