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Permaculture Association of the Northeast

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2017 PAN Winter Retreat Registration – Conversation on Standards

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Permaculture is at a tipping point. Now that it has reached a critical mass of practitioners and has entered into many mainstream venues, conversations around standards, who is qualified to teach and certify, and what the process is to become a teacher are coming to a head. PAN has been convening teachers and organizers around this topic for the last three years.  We have been documenting the ecology of permaculture education, asking important questions and listening. Growing out of these conversations and other national and regional conversations we’d like to establish a set of voluntary, bottom up,  standards and run a pilot program for permaculture teachers and courses in 2017.  This topic will be our main focus at the Winter 2017 Retreat. We will come together to pro-actively create pilot standards from and that are informed by our network.  Your continued input and feedback are important in this process. We would love to have you in this conversation  – please join us at the Winter Retreat, February 25th at D Acres in Dorchester,  New Hampshire

Here are some documents to help establish a common understanding:
Mapping the Permaculture Education Ecosystem
By Jono Neiger from our conversations during the 2014 PAN Omega retreat

Rough answers from our standards brainstorm 
During the 2016 Omega Teachers Retreat

Permaculture Institute of North America

REGISTER HERE

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Why you should come to the Omega retreat

PAN has heard for a few years now that what the northeast network needs is a training in how to make our permaculture courses and events more relevant to communities of color.  As it stands now, the demographics of our network are fairly homogeneous, and that is understandably how the permaculture movement has started.  PAN is offering this professional development opportunity in service to that larger goal of making our work more relevant to a diversity of communities.

We are very excited that Relational Uprising will be facilitating the diversity training at the beautiful Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY.  Here’s a bit more about them:

“Relational Uprising is a training and coaching project that supports activists, organizers, movement builders and changemakers from diverse fields to build healthy, relational-uprisinginterdependent, relational culture. We believe it is time for a new era of social change work in which we bring an intentionally humanizing, relational culture to our lives, organizations and movements. It presents a nuanced approach to issues of identity, intersectionality, and privilege using an embodied, relational practice of narrative and somatic movement.

The Culture of Radical Engagement (CRE) framework is based on an integration of social capital research, social neuroscience, radical relational theory, community organizing, and somatic education. It presents a nuanced approach to issues of identity, intersectionality, and privilege using an embodied, relational practice of narrative and movement. Training modules include: Stories of Separation, Stories of Connection, Ecology + Diversity, Support for Conflict Resolution. Originally incubated at The Relational Center from 2012-2015, Relational Uprising is now its own training and group facilitation project for changemaking communities.”

This training, all by itself, has a degree of importance, but so do the other facets of this retreat:
Day 1: Diversity Training with Relational Uprising
Day 2: Developing Community Derived Standards of Quality in Permaculture Education
Day 3: Peer to peer module and curriculum exchanges

Our goal is to support permaculture teachers in our region to continue improving the diversity1quality and outcomes of our educational offerings and experiences in service to our region.

WHEN:  Sunday October 16th (afternoon arrival / dinner / opening greeting Sunday eve) through Wednesday October 19th (am closing session followed by lunch and departure)

WHO:  Up to 30 individuals from our region (NJ/PA up through Eastern Canada) who self-identify as permaculture teachers and organizers who derive some portion of their livelihood from the design and delivery of permaculture educational events.

COST:  $200-300 per person.  Pay according to your means.  OMEGA is graciously subsidizing the cost in solidarity with the permaculture community.  The true cost of running this event is about $250 per person to cover both Omega expenses and the cost of the facilitators.

The time to register is now!  We’re delighted you’re here.

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Save the Date – Northeast Permaculture Teachers Professional Development Retreat

featured5Permaculture Friends,

Do you identify as a permaculture teacher, permaculture educator or designer of permaculture educational experiences?

This fall, the OMEGA Institute in Rhinebeck NY is once again generously offering their space in service to our regional network. PAN (Permaculture Association of the Northeast; formerly PINE), is organizing this event at OMEGA.

The overall goal of this professional development retreat is to continue to be a learning community that innovates and improves the entire field of permaculture together, collaboratively, in service to our whole region!

This is what we know so far:

  1. This will be a professional development retreat for permaculture teachers and persons who identify as earning some portion of their livelihood from permaculture education.
  2. DATES: Arrival at OMEGA will be afternoon of Sunday, October 16 (Opening Circle that night).  Departure will be Wednesday, October 19 after lunch.
  3. There will be a limited number of spaces available due to the logistics of the site, etc.
  4. There will be a sliding-scale cost to attend to cover some of the costs of lodging and food.  The balance is being donated by OMEGA.1374348_963016073714897_4570522059429145025_n
  5. There will a request for your online feedback published in the next couple of weeks to determine your top priorities for the content of our professional development retreat.
  6. We will open up registration in August.
  7. In addition to what we hear from you, the retreat will very likely include topics such as 1) social justice and anti-oppression work in permaculture education, 2) peer-to-peer cross training on best practices for designing and delivering specific permaculture modules (content and pedagogy)** and 3) furthering the work of creating voluntary community-based standards of quality for permaculture work in our region.  There will be pre-work on this last point prior to the retreat.

So please save the date and we look forward to seeing you in the fall!

** An example of this can be found in the “Permaculture Teachers’ Guide” assembled from the work of many European teachers sharing modules with one another.

 

Permaculture Institute of the Northeast Opens for Membership! Join today.

Greetings Northeast Permies!

You’re invited to JOIN the Permaculture Institute of the Northeast to strengthen our Permaculture network and to increase community resilience throughout our region.

Permaculture inspires and empowers thousands of people across the Northeast to imagine and design healthier and more functional relationships with nature and with each other. Whether you apply Permaculture at home, a garden, farm, or regenerative business — connecting with others for community and to share resources and best practices will support you.

Through our Membership Drive, PINE will:

  • Map the thousands of individual and business members that make up our network. Regional organizers in the U.S. and Canada estimate there are 6,000-10,000 permaculture supporters in the Northeast – wow!
  • Further develop a searchable database of regional Permaculture demonstration and teaching sites, courses, jobs, internships, and useful seed/plant/equipment resources;
  • Circulate regional permaculture news about innovative projects and collaborations, “permacultural” responses to major issues, and more;
  • Call together a Spokescouncil to support cross-regional communication and support local permaculture organizing efforts
  • Continue to convene regional gatherings and convergences

Between now and March 1, 2015, PINE wants to connect 1500+ people and raise $30,000-$60,000 to fund these initiatives.

On average, $20-$40 per member will reach our goal! At the same time, we invite you to join us nowregardless of whether you can make a financial contribution. 

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PINE members have direct access to participate in and shape the projects that PINE takes on and to influence the direction of our regional movement. The projects above are based on years of community input and PINE wants your involvement. For example, join today and nominate local leaders to the regional Spokescouncil!
We thank you for your participation and support and trust that building PINE will give everyone in our region better access to each others’ wisdom, enthusiasm, vision, and good strategic thinking.

Thank you,
Elyssa Serrilli and Uma Lo (former PINE Board member)

on behalf of the PINE Board of Directors
Jono Neiger
Lisa Fernandes
Keith Morris
Steve Gabriel
Alice Oldfather
Laura Weiland

Click here to learn more about PINE and 10 years of service to our network.

Van Jones at Omega – Live blogging at Collaborative Commons Summit, Oct 24, 2014

http://www.eomega.org/workshops/conferences/where-we-go-from-here/join-us-for-a-free-public-talk-with-van-jones-social-justice-and-the-new-economy

Blessed to be here at Omega, again, and sitting 10 feet from Vandana Shiva.

A crowd of teens just left the stage – teens from Yonkers, NY, my parents’ home town… where I spent the first 15 years of my life visiting my grandparents.  It’s a superb urban “suburb”, just north of the Bronx.  The talked about helping the community create a railtrail to Van Cortlandt Park . . and stewardship there . . and weeklong field trips to National Parks around the country . . Yosemite, Yellowstone.  Lives changed?  Yes.  New ways of thinking about your home community?  Yes.  Audience inspired?  Yes, a resounding Yes.

Van Jones takes the stage… and immediate laughter.  How do you get folks to laugh about racism and Ferguson?  . . must be something about juxtaposing what’s true and terrible with what’s possible in the human spirit.  Should dogs be allowed to pee at funerals?

Now we are on Julia Butterfly Hill.. who lived in a redwood tree for over a year to stop the loggers.  He recalls their meeting and discussion . . her heart speaks for the irreplaceability of species . . of individual trees . . no clear cutting, no extinctions.  Van’s heart speaks about the irreplaceability of our young people . . no gun violence, no gangs.

And they realize how much they have in common.

<3

Now he is talking about the Oakland Green Jobs Corps… energy retrofitting, solar installs, is gardening in there?  Cali’s know for being pretty green… but still there was quite a ‘dance’ when Van talked the talk at city hall into getting this program going… and it’s good, b/c there was a crazay backlog on solar installs due to lack of trained workforce.
#theproblemisthesolution

More humor… how teens don’t always watch the news… he is hearing them talk about Nancy Peloskyyy… who?  Yeah, they were watching t.v. and she said that she liked their program.  And it comes full circle . . local action, national attention, local attention . . more funding . . and the Green Jobs Corps grows.

Van is seriously hilarious… he’s talking now about conspiracy theories . . and how the Koch brothers interest group killed the green jobs movement in America.  How are we laughing about this?  Because we are.  Because it’s too awful to believe, and yet it’s true.

“People ask me how I can get along with Next Gingrich.  I tell them – there are only two political parties in this country – The Give-a-Damns and the Don’t-Give-a-Damns.  If you care enough to actually stand for something, I want to talk to you.

“Let’s talk about fossil fuels. Let’s pull up 2 million year old dead stuff from the ground, without ceremony, and burn it . . all over the world.  There won’t be any problem.
You shouldn’t be surprised that our kids have asthma . . You shouldn’t be surprised that there are oil spills in the ocean . . You shouldn’t be surprised that we’re having death with climate change.  Ask Winona LaDuke . . indigenous people have know this for years…
A Saudi Arabia’s worth of solar energy falls on the US every year.  George W. Bush . . that’s right, George W. Bush, said there’s enough wind blowing across our plains to power the whole country.
Focus groups spent 10 million dollars to kill green energy . . to kill the green jobs bill.
Why? . . for profit.

“Last time I went to jail . . that’s right.  I like to say that.  The last time I went to jail, I was marching with coal miners, who were asking for their pensions back.”

“You punch a right-winger, they get mad!
You punch a left-winger, they get sad.
What’s that about?  It’s called low self-esteem.”

“We need numbers in the green movement.
When we set out to create green jobs, we didn’t have the numbers.
We have to set numerical expectations.
When I worked in the White House, we created a million jobs.  But it wasn’t the numbers we promised.  If we created a million jobs now, people would be ecstatic.

“Problem 2.  When Obama got elected, we acted like the battle was one.  We acted like it was Yes He Can, instead of Yes We Can.  We sat down instead of getting up.  And so others got up, like the Tea Party.

“Problem 3. We’re not using our power.  We’re hot right now.  We’ve got Pelosi, we’ve got lefties everywhere.  Look at what the other communities of power are doing – we’ve got the plutocracy, the celebtocracy . .

“It’s very simple.  Thank you very much.”

<<<awkward silence.  then laughter.  that van jones 😉 >>

“I amuse myself.

“Okay, it’s simple.
1. Close prison doors.  25% of the world’s prisoners are American, mostly black, brown and poor.  I went to Harvard law school – 95% nonviolent drug offenders . .  Past skulls and bones, where the hard drugs were being used . . straight to the projects, where kids are getting 10-20 for less.  You know it and I know.  This is something Newt and I actually agree on.

“Let’s bring these people into a new economy.”

“I’m tired.  Help me.  I’ve been a grass-roots insider.  I’ve been an oval office insider.  I’m equally uncomfortable everywhere now.  Help me.

“Thank you.”

. . . on to questions . . .

A vocal woman from the front of the room lauds what we are doing in our cities, in our communities.
Van says, can I get an Amen?

Now Van is talking about the opportunity for young folks, especially people of color, to step up and fill the growing need for tech workers.

Now a young woman for “Off the Mat and Into the World Yoga” is talking about the need for GREEN to be everyone’s movement . . the need to organize cross-movements.
Can I put in a plug for 50 Shades of Green?  Because this is the people want.

And now Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is the 13 year old indigenous environmental activist and youth director of Earth Guardians (http://www.eomega.org/workshops/teachers/xiuhtezcatl-martinez) is speaking . . and Van says, you’ve been by mentor for 4 years. <3 <3 True.

Van’s talking about stretching our muscles . . about how when his wife started yoga, there were things she literally couldn’t do . . and then she stretched and she practiced and she stretched.

The muscle we need to stretch now is our hearts.
There are things we couldn’t do yesterday that we can do today.
There are things we can do tomorrow.

Thank you.  

<<<thanks and apologies for para-phrased quotes – – may the heart-speak of his words come through.>>>

(Thank we, Laura Weiland!)

Northeast Regional Permaculture Convergence History

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by Jono Neiger

July 2013

The convergence was conceived when a group of people from around the region gathered at Jono and Kemper’s house in western Massachusetts in winter 2005. The question was raised, “How can we support the growing interest in permaculture and what resources and tools are needed to support the network?” Out of this series of meetings several actions were taken, including founding PINE as a regional support organization, and starting a yearly gathering of people involved in permaculture from around the region. The central idea of the convergence was to bring folks together to share ideas and inspiration around permaculture; to support people in their local areas and encourage connection to the larger regional network. The event was conceived as a celebration more than a conference, a bringing together of people practicing and organizing around permaculture.

The convergence was also designed to move around the region and thus bring the network to the host community. In this way the local areas host an exciting, highly visible event with knowledgeable, experienced permies from around the region. The organizers can use the event to educate locally and build the local permaculture community. Additionally, the event is a chance to highlight projects in the local area. So typically the Friday before the convergence weekend there are field trips to any number of sites. This is also a good chance to share what people are doing and what is working both technically and also in communication and outreach.

The idea of moving the convergence around the region to stimulate and promote permaculture has been very successful. I remember being on the site tours at the Vermont convergence in 2009 and we heard a radio program interview about the event. The interviewer was trying to understand what exactly permaculture is. In this way the event really highlighted that neighbors in the area are doing permaculture, this really exciting and transformative practice.

Each local host group designs the particulars of the event with an eye towards continuity as the years have gone by. (Incidentally the Permaculture Olympics have not been repeated since they were held initially in Holyoke Massachusetts. The saladathalon and dale swigging champions have gone unchallenged.) This allows the convergence to fit the local needs and capacity of the area.

In the early years choosing the site was ad hoc and very loose. At the 2007 event in Ithaca there was a Saturday evening keg party. I went through the crowd and asked the western mass contingent if they wanted to host the next year. In the excitement, everyone said “of course!” Little did we know what a big undertaking it would be, though it was very successful the next year at Nuestras Raices in Holyoke, MA.

At the first convergence there were only 30 to 40 people. The inspiration was David Holmgren’s visit to North America and we used his visit to New Hampshire to bring folks together to meet him and talk about what was happening with permaculture and how we could reach more people. He toured the Dartmouth College student farm, thus beginning the tradition of tours of local projects as part of the convergence.

Here is the list of where the northeast regional convergence has been held so far, and the local permaculture groups which supported the event

  • 2005 – 1st NE Regional Gathering “Convergence” with special guest David Holmgren, Cold Pond Community Land Trust, Acworth, NH
  • 2006 – D’ Acres Farm, Dorchester, NH
  • 2007 – Cayuga Nature Center, Ithaca, NY / Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute
  • 2008 – Nuestras Raices, Holyoke, MA / W. Mass Permaculture Guild
  • 2009 – All Together Now Farm, E. Montpelier, Vermont / Winooski Valley Permaculture Guild & Transition Vermont
  • 2010 – MOFGA Farm, Unity, ME / Portland ME Permaculture
  • 2011 – Epworth Retreat Center, High Falls, NY / Green Phoenix Permaculture & Rondout Valley Permaculture
  • 2012 – Soule Farm, Marlborough, MA / E. Mass Permaculture Guild
  • 2013 – Frelighsburg, Quebec, Canada / Mouvement des Artisans du Changement
  • 2014 – ?

permaculturally yours,

Jono

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[Editor’s note: Attendance at regional convergences has now grown routinely into hundreds of people, and the NE permaculture network as a community (and a network of communities) continues to evolve and grow. PINE continues to strengthen our intra-regional communication and connection and to support the local groups that step-up to host the convergence each year. We welcome feedback and input about regional-scale gatherings and other topics.  Join the conversations at http://northeastpc.ning.com/ or receive announcements and discussion items on our regional listserve https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/northeasternpermaculture — A. Lo]