The Team

 

Britain

Gaye Amus

Lusi Alderslowe

Rakesh RootsMan Rak

 
Permaculture Association Britain 

The leading organization is Permaculture Association (Britain), which is a charity and company limited by guarantee with over 30 years’ experience in permaculture education and vast experience of coordinating diverse projects with large budgets, such as:

  • The Leonardo da Vinci funded European Permaculture Teacher project involved 12 organizations developing sustainable ways of sharing knowledge and training permaculture teachers;
  • The LAND project reached 30,000 people in the UK, with a budget of £390,000 over 4 years.

 

Czech Republic

Tereza Velehradska

Adéla Hrubá

 
 
Cassiopeia Centre of environmental and multicultural education 
In Czech Republic, Cassiopeia is a nonprofit NGO, founded in 1995. The main field of action is cooperation with schools in environmental education, and partially in multicultural and social education. Cassiopeia offers educational programs based on active learning techniques, and works with kindergartens, primary and secondary schools. Cassiopeia publishes books, methodical materials and teaching aids and provides individual counseling.

 

Italy

Valentina Cifarelli

Roberto Cardinale

Cecilia Furlan

 
Paradiso Ritrovato (Regained Paradise)

Regained Paradise is a nonprofit organization, based in Italy and founded in 2012, working with sustainability in education. They aim to spread knowledge and practical alternatives in the fields of ecological awareness, active citizenship and community building for a sustainable world. Paradiso Ritrovato addresses its activities to children in cooperation with kindergartens and primary schools, young adults aged between 18 and 30 years old and adults especially providing training and vocational courses. All the activities are designed using the methodology of non formal education.

 

 

Romania

Teodora Radulescu

Ionut Badica

 
 
Romania in Tranzitie (Romania in Transition)

Romania in Transition is an NGO, established in 2009, with projects focused on sustainable development in urban and rural communities. Romania in Transition´s relevant projects include: 

  • The awarded ´School Yard Garden Project´ environmental education through permaculture and gardening, for children aged 6 to 15. The project started in 2012 and is running in 2 schools. 
  • SIRCle - Social Innovation for Resilient Communities, an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project for adult education started in 2014, designed to create an open source curriculum for active citizenship, social and holistic entrepreneurship to be launched in 2015 with the name “Evoneers’ Journey”.

Didi Deshaies

 
 
 
Association of Neohumanist Education
Association of Neohumanist Education in Romania focuses on cultivating personal development, ecological awareness and inclusive attitudes towards diversity from early childhood education and throughout life. It organized ecological permaculture activities for 60 primary school children during the “Saptamana Altfel Program” in 2015, and a teacher training session about permaculture in 2013.   The Association provides teacher training and supervises the Neohumanist curriculum applied in the “Gradinita Rasarit” kindergarten and the “Fountain of Hope” Afterschool center.

 

Scotland

Gatehouse of Fleet School 

Gatehouse School in Britain has been doing innovative work in outdoor education through some projects. The school’s focus is understanding different people and cultures, as well as the outdoor work in gardens and woodlands. This school has an exchange with a German school but has never previously been involved in a large European project like this. This school has been selected because of their proven ability to work collaboratively with the CiP Coordinator for the Permaculture Association of Britain.

 

Slovenia

Lara Kastelic

Tomislav Gjerkes

 
 
Permaculture Association Slovenia 

is an NGO founded in 1996. It regularly organizes a broad range of national and international permaculture workshops, and is involved in educational projects. They create outdoor classrooms in nature using permaculture elements. They do hands-on permaculture in natural building techniques, with special focus on the young and the unemployed. The organisation also works with disadvantaged groups like Roma and disabled children.

 

Why did we start the project?

We are a group of people who have seen for years that there is a great need to include children in permaculture and bring the basics of permaculture to people's lives from an early age. We wish to find and offer old and new ways to engage children in permaculture ethics and principles.

We want to work with the nature of the child, which means using a child-centred pedagogy. Our project aims to work with a variety of European organizations to improve the education of children in informal, formal and non-formal learning through the development of curricula, lesson plans, film and other resources which will enable school & kindergarten teachers, leaders, parents and other educators to engage in a holistic, sustainable education with the children  (age 3-6 and 7-12)  they are working with.

 

Vision, Mission, Aims

Our vision for the future is that “Humans are living in harmony with each other and nature, and all children can access an education based upon the ethics of earth care, people care and fair share.”

Our project aims to work with a variety of European organisations to improve the education of children in informal, formal and non-formal learning through the development of curricula, lesson plans, film and other resources which will enable school & kindergarten teachers, leaders, parents and other educators to engage in a holistic, sustainable education with the children they are working with.

To reach this vision, our mission is:

“Creating and giving the tools to empower children, parents, educators and other people who work with children to integrate permaculture into education and their lives through:

- Creating a European Children Permaculture Network

- Organising local, national, and international events

- Compiling, creating and disseminating resources for teaching permaculture to children

- Providing and facilitating training and skill sharing to teach permaculture to children

- Engaging children in opportunities to learn from nature

 

What are the projects Outputs?

We are committed to developing outputs which will be shared freely on this website.

  • A research paper with the objective of giving an overview of the existing resources about teaching permaculture to children will be written. This information will be given to all project partners, members of the network and educators worldwide who work with children in permaculture. The majority of the document will be in English, existing resources will remain in their original language.
  • We want to share case studies of real life examples on how teaching permaculture to children took place for each partner organization.
  • A short film will sample some of the methods we will use in our educational approach. The film will provide an insight on the high quality learning opportunities that the Children in Permaculture project will bring to children, kindergartens and schools, other educators and parents. The film will be available in all 5 languages of the partner countries (subtitles).
  • A manual - "Permaculture Education for Children" - will be created and designed as a thorough guide, and will contain everything needed in order for kindergarten and school teachers, leaders, parents and other educators to share permaculture with children. The manual will include methodological guidelines, and 7 session plans, activities and other resources, posters for classrooms, and dissemination strategy.