We are creating a digital platform called Teaching Permaculture Teachers (TPT) to share the knowledge and experience that Rosemary (Rowe) Morrow has gained in her four decades of teaching.

• The TPT course has the potential and objective to speed up and increase the transmission of permaculture worldwide through building teacher competence 

• The platform will collect course material, videos, books and recordings, process them, license them under Creative Commons and post them on the platform hosted by the Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute (BMPI) of Australia

Several years ago, Rosemary decided to focus on teacher training courses in order to have a “multiplier effect” believing that the bottleneck keeping permaculture from growing more rapidly is not a shortage of curriculum and experience, but rather a shortage of competent permaculture teachers. So she created this TPT course to give people the skills and confidence needed to take the big step from being a practitioner to becoming a teacher.

Her wish is that permaculturists, many without funds or access to a face-to-face TPT course, will be able freely to access the course and so teach permaculture well; that other experienced teachers can learn new ideas; and that they can make the course their own.

These are the materials: Videos, Books, Online Resources, and an Interactive Forum

The platform host videos of the classes recorded from Rosemary’s six day TPT course, as well as supplemental materials, links, energisers, and tools for teaching in general and permaculture in particular. People will be able to ask her questions and share information with other teachers in a forum.

There will be three sets of videos:

• The full course

• The course with a selection of the most important parts for those who are not going to need the full course

• The course edited to apply to anyone who wants to teach any subject, not just permaculture

There will also be a redesign for a free downloadable PDF of the book A Good Home Forever, as well as the editing and design of a handbook for teachers who want to teach Rowe’s TPT course made available to campaign donors and to past and future TPT course participants. The TPT course can be taught by any graduate who feels capable of teaching it, for which the handbook will be indispensable.

Who is it Valuable For?

• All course material, videos and recordings, will be very useful to those who want to teach permaculture teachers-to-be. The TPT course can be taught by any graduate who feels capable of teaching it, for which the handbook will be indispensable.

• The content of the TPT platform is valuable for permaculture teachers and its content and principles are completely relevant to all other educators

What is the Content? 

• Learners: their needs, motivation, learning styles and more

• Teachers: what works in language and behaviour – and what does not, e.g. non-verbal communication

• Class organisation: effective learning spaces

• The course is experiential and particularly useful in focusing potential teachers on lesson design and learning objectives

• PDC curriculum: course participants study the curriculum in depth and daily

• Practice teaching every day in a safe environment 

Who is 'Rowe' Morrow? 

Rosemary is known and loved worldwide as a permaculture teacher, practitioner, and activist. She has travelled the globe for four decades, often in countries shattered by war and disasters, sharing her passion for permaculture and social justice. Her belief is that access to useful knowledge is a basic human right.

Rowe has qualifications in agriculture science, overseas development, horticulture, rural sociology and adult education but is best known as a permaculture teacher and now a trainer of teachers.

Her pragmatic and effective approach working with and being lead by local people has created community-scale permaculture projects and outcomes across a broad range of environments from drylands in Ethiopia, to the wet tropics of Vietnam. The knowledge and experience she brings to creating abundance, food security and successful sustainable farming models is perhaps unparalleled in permaculture education today.

Rowe's work in an orphanage in Afghanistan was featured in the documentary A Garden at the End of the World: 

“In the course of her many travels through the rubble of human conflict, Rosemary has become a seasoned observer of fractured communities and understands more than most the essential elements they need in order to rebuild and function. She invariably arrives at ground zero knowing that the degree of community fragmentation is such that before she can even begin to introduce permaculture, she has to attend to its broken social structure. Tending and cultivating the re-growth of a community is vital for any chance of developing a peaceful, sustainable way of life. Rosemary calls this preliminary work Social Permaculture.”

She is the author of the Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture, The Earth User’s Guide to Teaching Permaculture, The Family Seedsaving Book, and A Good Home Forever. With Lis Bastian, she is the co-founder of the BMPI.

Any funds received over the amount requested will be donated to Rosemary’s work in the Solomon Islands and helping communities affected by rising seas and climate disasters. See photos here.  

Please contribute to the creation of a platform to share Rosemary's lifetime experience with a world that desperately needs the skills and solutions that permaculture has to offer.

Money Flow

Timeline

Campaign finishes end of February. Early downloads of videos and books for donors and previous TPT course participants available in June. Platform goes online in August.

The TPT Platform Team 

* Alfred Decker's passion in life has been environmental and social justice activism, of which permaculture has played a central part.  Since his first PDC in 1998 in California, Alfred has been involved with social movements and projects throughout Europe and the Americas. He is the founder of Permacultura Barcelona and the Forest Gardens project at Can Masdeu, and is a member of the Permaculture Council of Europe and the European Permaculture Teachers Partnership. After taking a TPT with Rosemary in 2011, he undertook a two year mentorship and later co-taught five courses with her, ultimately earning a diploma in Permaculture Education & Community Development in 2013 through her organisation BMPI. He has taught widely throughout southern Europe, and currently lives in Mallorca and is active with the group Permacultura Mediterránea, or PermaMed, who will co-coordinate the TPT platform.

* Daniella Querol, a two-time PDC holder, studied fine arts in Mexico and Germany and earned three masters degrees in experimental film, documentary film, and photography. She has studied “educación viva” in Catalunya and worked for many years with children in arts. Daniella makes her home in Mallorca and collaborates with PermaMed. Her video channel and painting portfolio express her passionate belief that the keys to transforming society and taking care of the planet are to be found in permaculture, educación viva, and personal empowerment through creativity. 

* BMPI co-founder Lis Bastian started teaching permaculture with Rosemary Morrow in 2008 and has continued teaching both with Rowe and independently. She has a long history in Education, Community Development Work, the Arts and Environment. Lis is an Al Gore-trained Climate Ambassador for the Australian Conservation Foundation, currently lecturing for Laureate International Universities. She will help coordinate the TPT platform through the BMPI website.

* Alba Teixidor is an illustrator with a careful, sober and thoughtful style, always with a deep interest in human stories and seeking to understand of the world around her. Her work is influenced by the beauty of unequal repetition, the contrast between expressive manual techniques and printing techniques, and the articulation between realistic and symbolic levels. Since 2007 she has worked as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer for cultural, social, and educational entities such as the Barcelona Library Consortium, the Education Consortium of Barcelona, the Agbar Water Museum, ABD, the Ferrer i Guardia Foundation, ICEERS, and the Department of Health of the Generalitat of Catalonia, among others.

* The team of Summer76music Studio is keen to participate in the project and will cooperate within their means by composing original music and making all the audio post production and mastering at half their rate. We look forward to have the opportunity to participate in this project with a real impact in society. Summer76music makes original and outstanding music for TV and advertising. The creative team is made up of composers Luc Suarez, Javier Gimeno, Joseph Vilagut, Leon Willett and Iván Cester, each acclaimed composers with divergently different musical styles. The team’s collaborative dialogue and versatility of range and experience creates a unique dynamic that has already produced brilliant results while working with a range of major national and international clients.