J: Who came up with the idea for the project and how??

L: Thanks to your European Permaculture Teachers (EPT) project which delivered excellent resources and connected people from different countries in inspirational ways… But, participants recognised that the EPT did not have any focus on working with children under 12 years. Thus Gaye from Turkey (living in Finland) worked with Rakesh (from London) to initiate a network of people in Europe who were dedicated to the vision of creating resources (like curricula, activities, session plans, handouts, posters etc) for sharing permaculture with children. Martina (Czech) and Tomi (Slovenia) were instrumental from when Gaye met them in Slovenia in 2012. I joined the core group in March 2014.

J: How did the partnership come together, and who else is involved?

L: When Rakesh and Gaye put the shout-out, 14 organisations applied, from which we shortlisted and selected a variety which met our criteria and Erasmus’ priorities. In the end we applied to Erasmus with a partnership of 7 organisations, 5 NGOs from UK (PA), Slovenia, Italy, Czech Republic, Romania; and a local state school in Scotland (Gatehouse Primary and Nursery) and an NGO who runs a kindergarten in Romania. Gaye is strongly involved but doesn’t currently have an organisation.

In November 2014, 1-2 representatives from each organisation met in London in Rakesh’s house (and LAND Centre) for a 2 day sociocracy training course, and to set a good foundation for how we will work together for the coming months, and hopefully years. This was followed by a 3 day meeting in which we established the group’s vision, mission and aims, and discussed the activities which we would like funding for. We also laughed and hugged a lot, making sure that we had the friendships and trust we needed to create a high quality application for European funding.

J: What challenges did you face while writing the application, and how did you overcome them?

L: At our meeting in November, we set ourselves the target of completing the first draft of the application by the end of January, ready to send to people who could advise on how to tweak it. So after the meeting, the funding circle had many Skype meetings – And a few more!!! At the end of January, we were still consenting to SMARTE Goals (Specific, Measurable, Agreed-upon, Realistic, Timebound and Ethical) and timelines. This was agreed to using consent, but later changed in fairly minor ways for practical reasons. The deadline for Erasmus was 31st March, and we only had a first draft ready one week before the deadline – and that was a big stretch! – Phew!

When we sent the first draft to different people with more experience than us to comment, they each gave different responses, some of which we agreed with, and some we didn’t! This was definitely a challenge, and with only a week to go, and an ambition to agree to everything by consent – this was a combination which was simply impossible!! In the end many unilateral or bilateral decisions were made, some as late as 4:30am when we both had to be up again at 7am – to lead a workshop!!!

Yet, we got the application completed with all the questions asked – all 95 pages of it agreed and submitted a few hours before the deadline (at 00:30) – no mean feat!.

J: What is the plan?

L: The project commenced in September 2015, with a transnational meeting in London. The next step is to create the following ‘intellectual outputs’:

• a website – the front will be ready soon: www.childreninpermaculture.com
• a research paper which summarises what resources are currently available to share permaculture with children.
• a database attached to the website, in which practitioners can share their lesson plans and activities.
• case studies of sharing permaculture with children.
• a film about children in permaculture.
• a manual which includes a tried and tested curriculum with associated lesson plans, activities, methodological guidelines, and dissemination strategies.
• a training course which will be publicly available for permaculture educators to introduce school & kindergarten teachers to permaculture and our resources, enabling educators around the world to access the resources.

We will also be meeting face to face annually, running training courses for permaculture educators, and a pupil exchange to Romania.