Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.

Each week here at Sabina is very different, and it helps keep the monotonous tasks interesting. This week we have lots of people around the site helping us out. First Charles came back from Kampala, then (while he and I visited another primary school that he’s hoping to create links with) Gerald Jagwe joined us at Sabina. Later that night Luigi returned from Fort Portal. On the Saturday we had the help of 6 local workers who helped us to reshape the Mandala garden into beds ready for us to plant into. There have been more people around the site which has been a great energy lift and it has made everything move along so much quicker.

Due to the fact that we have such a big team that stays here at Sabina, we have been able to also leave the school to make visits elsewhere. On Wednesday Charles and I went by Matatu and BodaBoda to Alpha and Omega school just outside Kalisizo where we were shown all around the school and we saw the crops they were attempting to grow in order to supplement the children’s diets. We were given a huge welcome by all of the children where they sang and danced for us before Charles spoke to them and invited the head teacher to the convergence.

On Thursday Grace and Charles went to Masaka in order to cordially invite the local member of parliament, the regional education minister and the district chairman to open and close the Permaculture Design course in May. They also were able to buy all of the things we have been unable to get in Sanje.

In just one day Charles, KB and a group of children managed to build us a new shower that we really needed – it means we no longer have to bucket wash! The team worked really hard to finish the project in a matter of hours. It is really a very peaceful feeling to use this shower at night as the moon has been getting bigger and so there has been enough light to shower without torches! 

Tom has been working further on a permanent toilet structure that will have removable buckets underneath. The idea is to dry the waste and use it as a fertiliser in the gardens in the future. Tom has been trying to make the structure with completely natural resources but has had to resort to using other materials in some places to better suit the structure’s function. We will have two latrines, one squat and one seated which will be accessed by steps enabling us to get to the buckets underneath the base easily.

Fencing has been put up all around Sabina site, it encourages the children to avoid walking on the plants and instead to use the pathways. The school children have also found a use for them, so, not only have we created borders for the gardens but also the school now has extra space to spread their clothes after washing them.

One of the big changes we have made to the site this week has been re-landscaping the Mandala Garden which is just outside the kitchens. We had a group of workers come in to dig the beds and since then we have been sowing and planting into it with all sorts of vegetables that the kitchens will have easy access to once they have grown.

Last week we mixed together some comfrey, chicken droppings and water to create a fertiliser tea, we stirred a few times over the week and it’s beginning to get nice and smelly! The kids can’t believe that something so foul smelling will be so helpful in the garden.

After the rapid growth of the seeds we planted, we have begun transplanting them into the newly dug beds. The cabbages, chard, tomatoes, peppers, onions and kale have been especially successful in their growth and so we have been trying to dodge the intense heat to transplant them with the best chances of survival. The peas have been shooting up getting bigger and bigger everyday. We ventured into Sanje and purchased some local beans from a shop there which we have sown this week and hopefully they will begin to show in the coming week.

The weather here at Sabina is very changeable; if in the morning it is really hot then it’s almost guaranteed to rain in the afternoon and vice versa. We have had some ridiculously hot days where everyone has to stop working outside and also torrential rain storms which again disrupt our work schedules.

Problems and Solutions

The pupils have been getting more and more brave spending more time with us than before. Our hair is especially popular with the girls who are twisting it about and brushing through it at every opportunity we give them. We have also been able to introduce them to some card games like UNO and Go Fish which they have really enjoyed. They taught us a game called Mattatu which translates to just ‘cards’ and everyone knows how to play this one game. I have also tried to introduce games I know like African Bend-down and  21. The children have all loved getting to know us better and it’s been nice to share some games with one another. 

With the help of the permaculture class we have been able to create a large compost area which they will be able to add to now that they understand the components and processes. The primary 6 class had the opportunity to plant their own trees into our new food forest garden. They chose mangoes and orange trees and under Charles’ supervision they carefully planted their trees into the hole of their choosing, digging the earth so it wasn’t so hard for the young plants and working together to water and mulch after planting each new tree. All together we planted over 45 trees with the classes help which will be producing fruits in a few years that can help supplement the children’s diets.

We have experienced the negative to everything growing so fast- weeds. The places that we spent hours weeding last week are beginning to turn green with weeds again and with so much land to upkeep it’s a huge job for everyone involved. We have had a big job weeding around the carrots and chard some of which we harvested for the kitchens so that the children can have a more varied meal for once!

This week there has been a drumming soundtrack to our work, the children are rehearsing for a competition between local schools. They have been drumming, dancing and singing all week in preparation for their competition.

On Saturday night we ventured into the rehearsal studio (the dining hall) and were enthralled by the energy that everyone had, with even the smallest children up until 11pm dancing and drumming! Dan taught Grace how to drum -Ugandan Style!

The most exciting progress this week has been the compost toilet, it has taken us far longer than we anticipated but it is worth it! Grace and I have been quickly learning basic carpentry on the job! We decided to do this project at the wrong time in some ways due to the fact that both Charles and Luigi are away for the majority of the time we are building and our strength doesn’t match theirs! Thankfully we have had help from other people who are working around Sabina School. Initially we designed how we wanted the compost toilet to look and act from a book about composting in Africa (thanks to Dan Grove!), but we came across some issues and had to improvise their solutions! To begin with we built the frame with poles that were too thin and as a consequence not strong enough. We decided instead of working with what we had to remake the structure and now it is really strong! The sides are made from papyrus and it has a tin roof, we have included a ventilation pipe in our design, this is to try to minimise the amount of flies and smells in the toilet when we have finished.

We had help to build the pit for the toilet on Friday from some of the children around the School. In the heat of the day it was tough work for everyone involved and the children playing about us really made the time go quicker! We used one of the smallest children, Marion as a measure of how deep we were digging the hole. She took great pleasure with being lifted in and out of the hole. While we were digging some of the younger children were catching flying white ants and holding them in banana leaves, we were told that they taste really nice – we are yet to try any!

It has been a week since we made the first compost heap and today we have turned it over, it’s super impressive how quickly it is decomposing down and how hot it is!! Unfortunately the permaculture class on Monday was cancelled due to exams and so the children didn’t get to help us and understand the next stage in the process, hopefully they will be around next week when we do it again.

Growth at Sabina School

We have gotten used to our life here at Sabina School just outside Sanje. We have settled into our routine and do things by default now. We know enough faces about that we don’t feel like strangers in this place but a part of it. We have been able to work more on bigger projects as we know what can be done and how.

I have been getting more hands on with the work after I have documented what the school site was like when when we arrived, it feels good to be learning from Grace and Luigi about things that are so basic to them but to me are as alien as neuroscience. On Thursday I learnt the hard way about how weeding for hours on end in this country can give you seriously sunburnt hands! Ouch!!

The more we work during the day the more we eat in the evening and Aunty Anette has provided us with delicious meals every single day! Each day the meals vary but one common factor between all the meals we are eating is Avocado. Never before in my life have I eaten so much avocado (and I love it!). We are surrounded by trees so laden with avocados that they’re doubling over, and of course we are making good use of them. In just under two weeks we have eaten about 25 avocados between us.

The only thing we are fighting against is the weather (be it the midday heat or the pouring rain!) even time is on our side with over 5 weeks to go until the Permaculture Design Course we are well on our way to having examples of growing, composts and soon some compost toilets ready for the course. We are already able to see some growth from the seeds we sowed last week, it is really exciting how quickly things grow in this climate and it is promising for what we might be able to achieve in the coming weeks.

We have also had the help of three classes from the school, in their permaculture lessons they have come to help us with our work, planting orange trees and banana trees as well as moving earth to create beds. The children work hard and fast all the while with huge grins on their faces and it really helps to have that extra 70 hands each time they come to help!

One of our big projects this week has been building a big compost area near to the vegetable garden. We felt that the amount of compostable waste that we were creating was too much to have to wheelbarrow across the site to the other compost heaps and so we wanted to build an area close by. When we explored the area we found that there were already the beginnings of some heaps but they were riddled with plastics and other undecomposable  waste, and so we decided it was important to create a more obvious compost to avoid contamination.

Grace, Luigi and I worked together to create a strong structure that we will begin to create compost in. Ready for examples during the course.

One big thing with a small solution, that we tackled this week was hand washing. We were using too much water every time we washed our hands, because you could only wash one hand at a time. Using one hand to pour water out of the jerrycan meant that we used more than twice the amount of water we needed to.

Grace had the brilliant idea of constructing some kind of foot peddled tap. After a quick look around the shops in Sanje we had what we needed to build our very own Tippy Tap! It was such a success that we decided to make another one with the help of some children near the teacher’s toilets on site.

We have spent lots of time this week planning what kind of compost toilets we are going to build and where we might build them. This is really high on our agenda due to the fact that we have to walk halfway across the site to visit the toilet and during the night it’s very difficult to access. Tom, Grace and Charles have been working on planning this week and hopefully we will be building over the next few days.

We have been so busy and productive this week that I feel excited about what this next week has in store for us!

Welcome To Sabina Home

Week 1

On Tuesday the 27th March, we left Wales and made our way to Manchester Airport, our first point of call, after one short flight we geared ourselves up for 10 hours on an uncomfortable airplane seat and some unsatisfying sleep. We touched down in Entebbe (Uganda) late on Tuesday night and as soon as they opened the airplane doors we were hit by a strong humid blast of Ugandan air!

Charles met us at the airport with a big smile, on our ride to our hostel in Kampala we were brought up to date on all the business affairs and we discussed a plan of action. When we finally got to bed it was past 3 am and we hadn’t had a decent sleep for about 48 hours!

We spent the next couple of days around Kampala, getting used to the heat and planning our trip to Sabina School. We watched as Kampala buzzed about us, with all the Boda Boda’s weaving in and out of the traffic and people selling their goods on the street sides.

On Thursday afternoon we left Kampala for Sanje, Charles went on ahead to sort the Taxi because if the drivers saw a Mzungu we would be charged high prices. We loaded all of our possessions onto the top of the bus and climbed aboard. As soon as the bus was full we set off on our way South on the road towards Tanzania.

We arrived at Sabina School late in the evening where a group of children came to meet us from the bus and helped carry our luggage to our new home, the Banda. We have been working on the site at Sabina School since, getting to know the children and the land.

We visited some projects of a local man in the Rakai District who farmed two areas in a town between Sanje and Masaka. We toured around his land and marvelled at his coffee plantation, jackfruit trees and aubergine plants. We went on to his 25 acre plot of land where he was growing oranges and mangoes with great success and kept pigs in order to use their manure to enrich his soil. He told us about his hopes to build an animal sanctuary and further develop his produce, creating a seed bank for the local community.

At the school itself we have been working on building up compost heaps around the grounds with natural resources from the school site as well recycled papers from the school buildings. Grace has began creating a nursery for seedlings with Luigi’s help and Charles planting orange and mango trees as well as improving the layout of the beds and gardens.

As it’s Easter weekend, the school only has a few children around but everyone who has stayed for the weekend has been getting involved with our projects. Learning about growing and compost with Grace and a few of them are picking up how to use a camera with me. With Charles they are learning how to make structures and helping to clear the space for beds to be made. As the future generation of Uganda and the school, they are vital assets to our work here at Sabina.

For Easter Sunday, there was a football match between local sides at the school that had a huge turn out just before the sunset. We have gotten used to our new way of living, eating delicious fruits and I have been discovering lots of the Ugandan foods.

One thing we were concerned about was our access to clean drinking water, and we didn’t want to be buying bottled water everyday and produce loads of waste. Thankfully when we were in Kampala we sourced a water filter from a market and carried it with us to Sabina, the water is filtered by using a clay pot with holes made by sawdust that has been burnt out of it creating holes for the water to filter through and we now have safe drinking water at hand.

Yesterday we got electricity in our Banda and now we can use lights at night and charge our phones.

After just one week in Uganda I am already starting to feel at home, thanks to the kindest of people and the welcome they have given us.

Paul’s permaculture plot

I thought you might enjoy this short video… a quick tour of Paul’s permaculture farm. Paul is a farmer and Blacksmith from Homa Bay Kenya, He came on a Sector39 permaculture course in 2016 and is now part of our teaching team in East Africa.

See the short tour of the garden using the link above
The rains have just started and the new season’s crops are in the ground, revealing the diversity and complexity of the 70m square plot that Paul began less than two years ago.
Paul Ogola came on our first PDC in Kamuli in 2016 and in his own words, ‘Was in the darkness’. He had no real plan as to what he was trying to do, basically trying his best and copying what he saw around.
He returned in 2017 and did the PDC again, this time with 3 people from his community who had already become involved in permaculture via his inspiration. They have in turn gone on to start their own projects. In 18 months since becoming involved in permaculture Paul has moved from being a farmer without a plan to a teacher, community leader and role model. Paul said to me recently that his permaculture work has made him ‘someone in the village’. He has used online funding platforms to raise small amounts of money for investment in water tanks and other infrastructure, used Facebook to recruit volunteers and students, and from a bare patch of scrub has built a productive and inspirational garden that is now helping raise the expectations of a whole community.
From the video you can see the diversity of plants, techniques and approaches Paul is using. He has built a classroom and is already running his own courses and will be returning this May to Uganda to contribute to the next PDC and to become part of the Sector39 training team currently planning to soon be working in Northern Uganda with South Sudanese refugees and their Ugandan host communities.
We believe permaculture can make a significant contribution in developing climate resilient farming systems, more stable income from more diverse sources and in the process building the confidence, outlook and achievement of many people like Paul. Imagine the collective impact of such development if we can mobilise whole communities!

See what Paul is getting done: https://permoafrica-centre.weebly.com/

Steven Jones

Local to Global

team 39 portrait

team 39 portrait
Team Uganda: Nina Duckers, Angharad Rees and Grace Maycock with Richard Stephenson outside Dragons shop in Llanrhaeadr.

This month three ex Llanfyllin High School pupils will be heading to Sabina school in Uganda, where teachers and students alike are embracing permaculture as a tool to aid learning and to build a climate smart school.

Llanfyllin High School may not realise it, but three of their ex pupils are planning to work together on a ground breaking project at Sabina school in Uganda over the coming months. With a good 15 year age gap between the three, they did not know each other whilst at school, but there is enough in common to draw the three together and onto this project in post school years.

Their work is a testament to the ongoing work of the school and the wider community to develop and maintain these essential international links that both broaden all of our horizons and remind us of the interconnected nature of the modern world.

The opportunity has come about via a collaboration between locally based enterprise Sector39, Sabina school and Dolen Ffermio (Farming Link), also local, and a charity with long-standing connections to the Llanfyllin High School. Dolen Ffermio go back to 1991 and began from the desire to link communities in the wider Llanfyllin area with communities in Uganda. The charity’s work now encompasses supporting orphan projects, facilitating links between schools and promoting environmental projects.

The seed has been sown

Mid-Wales based permaculture enterprise Sector39 have been expanding horizons by partnering with friends and colleagues both local and global. They had already started to work with Dolen Ffermio developing permaculture education in Uganda before launching The One School One Planet project here  in Llanfyllin. This has drawn in and created links and partnerships between Wales and Africa, opening exciting new opportunities.

poster and ticket link WORLD BRIDGER
Event Poster and link to Eventbrite ticket window

  • Teachers and students alike are embracing permaculture at Sabina as a tool to aid learning and to build climate resilient food and energy systems for the school.
  • Llanfyllin high school has also been working with One School One Planet project over the last 18 months to explore how to better embrace the challenges of the 21st century.

More recently Sector39 have been approached by the Norwegian Refugee Council, requesting us to devise training packages for South Sudanese refugees entering Uganda from the North. Early surveys for this work will begin in April, and one of the tasks for the three ex-pupils will be to meet and interview some of the trainees, helping assess the impact of the work.

So the connections grow! It will be fascinating to see what comes from it.

Permaculture, refugees and Uganda

Its a hot arid area and water is trucked in daily from miles away on hastily built roads.

Since visiting Adjumani, Jube and Zone 5 refugee settlement areas in Northern Uganda recently, I don’t think I will be quite the same person again.

A huge influx of refugees has swamped the area with displaced people who in turn are having a devastating impact on the landscape.

Whole forests are disappearing as wood is the only easily available source of energy and land is being rapidly prepared for crop production. There is an air of determination rather than desperation as people there come to grips with what is a hugely challenging situation.

Who knew that Uganda accepted more refugees than any other country in the last 12 months? Over a million from Sudan alone!

From refugees to settlers
New arrivals are being invited to stay, offered ID cards, 30m square plots of land and basic tools and training to establish themselves along side host Ugandan communities.

There are people flooding in from the Congo as well where resource fuelled wars (for minerals to make mobile phones) is also greatly impacting the region. It puts the UK’s 12,000 Syrian in-comers over 5 years into perspective somewhat.

permaculture design course 2018Sector39 have been invited to work with the Norwegian Refugee Council along side our local partners to put long-term training plans together to help the region transition from a food aid reliance to self reliance, a transition that will take 4 or 5 years. Naturally many Sudanese will choose to return home when the chance arrives but the likelihood is after 3 or 5 years of settlement Uganda will start to feel like home for a great many of the settlers.

Sector39 have been supported by the Wales for Africa programme administered by Hub Cymru Africa

Next Steps Our next objective is to establish a training of teachers strategy which we are calling the Permaculture Academy. We have recognised the need to create literally millions of permaculture pioneers in Africa as well as across the world as this is possibly the most effective way to create climate resilience on a scale required of us by the Paris Agreement.

Sector39 have won support over the last year from the Welsh government to pioneer in this field and are grateful for the opportunities created by their help.

Their investment of £10,000 into our enterprise has set a series of outcomes in motion. We have directly trained 25 students, via the full 2 week PDC course enabled by the grant. Since the course completed in June ’17 several of the graduates have progressed to start projects or initiatives of their own that are already having an impact.

  • PermoAfrica Centre, Paul Odiwor Ogola, Homa Bay, Kenya
  • K5 village permaculture, Omito Abraham Owuor, Kenya
  • Nateete urban project, Ali Tebandeke, Kampala, Uganda
  • Busoga school project, Connie Kauma, Kamuli, Uganda
  • Nyero Rocks School project, Opolot Godfrey and Joseph, Uganda
  • Prince Sebe and Rama Mutebi permaculture outreach, Busia, Kenya

the list grows.. most are linked to this Facebook page

The next Sector39  course will also include several returning graduates on their way to becoming teachers and project leaders in their own right.

Charcoal is a cash income generator but it comes at great cost to the wildlife and environment. This picture was taken within a national park, a supposedly protected area.

More importantly perhaps though, is with the momentum created so far we have found ourselves in government offices, talking to budget heads and opinion formers, to head teachers, planners and politicians all of whom can see the immense value and potential of permaculture.

This incredible opportunity to work with refugees and the Norwegian programme has stemmed directly from the work supported by the Welsh Government as well as through networking and promotional activities in line with the grant maker’s requirements.

We have now completed two full PDC’s in Uganda, the first in 2016 was part funded by a business development grant from our local Credit Union (Robert Owen Community Bank) and involvement from Dolen Ffermio, Wales Uganda link.

The second PDC in 2017 was in part funded by the Wales for Africa programme and delivered through existing Wales/ Uganda support links. However through the process of the work and the huge number of people we have met in the process, we have come into contact with a great many of the permaculture practitioners and pioneers of the wider East African region.

It is hugely exciting to think where this might all lead and we intend to use this momentum to reach a great many more people.

S39 on  Go Fund Me
Donations subsidise course places for Africa permaculture pioneers

We are currently running a Go Fund Me campaign to raise money to support student costs on PDC courses for African participants

Revisiting permaculture ethics

Permaculture ethics, that’s easy right? Earth-care, People-care Fair-share… everyone knows the mantra, but do we remember what these things actually mean when we recite them parrot fashion?

Recently I have seen online chat suggesting they should be updated, improved if you will, the suggestion is that of Future-care being floated as an alternative to the Fair-share – which was always a bit lacking and the least understood of the three. But no Future-care really doesn’t do it for me and its inclusion would greatly impoverish the ethics model.

Let us re-trace our footsteps a bit here and roll things back the 1992 and the Rio Earth Summit when the ‘S’ word entered the lexicon in a much bigger way than it had ever been used before. Sustainability, they told us is the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Okay, so far so good, then Toby Hemenway in his lecture, ‘How permaculture can save the world but not civilisation’ pointed out that the definition is lacking in that it fails to define what a need actually is and come to that, why are we putting meeting the needs of the present before that of the future? What is a need? Do you really need that cappuccino or another pair of shoes, when it comes to it, who gets to define what a need is? One man’s need is another man’s indulgence.

If we are not careful we are back in the finger wagging judgemental territory most criticised of environmentalists who seem to want to tell everyone else what to do whilst at the same time alienating the vast majority of the population. Telling people they can’t have the stuff they feel they need or deserve or holding one’s own virtuous lifestyle up as some master template has yet to win over the masses.

The ‘S’ word is fraught with difficulty and within a few short years of Rio we have government ministers talking about ‘sustainable growth in the car industry’ or ‘sustainable economic growth’ or various other oxymorons. The word rapidly lost its meaning being hi-jacked left, right and centre to represent a vast swathe of viewpoints.

Back to the drawing board then. Actually before we ditch the ‘S’ word entirely it has something of immense value to offer us and this emerged in the mid 90’s with the idea of the triple bottom line in business. This was environmental sustainability, social sustainability and economic sustainability. Sustainability is a three-legged stool is the metaphor and it needs all three to stand up. Yes to environment and society but what if we can’t afford it? How can we pursue goals that fail to endure economically? Somewhere in this lies the key to understanding the permaculture ethics especially the much maligned third ethic of Fair-share.

Full disclosure; I studied economics, not in its pure theory but within the context of sustainable development (yes that tricky ‘S’ word again). I studied economics and ecology at the same time and I have always understood that permaculture lies at the intersection of these two disciplines. Economics is about how we meet needs from available resources, ecology is about how we access those resources within an understanding of the mechanism of the living biosphere of which we are all a part. So balancing the needs of people and those of the planet; the earth and people care prospectively is the origin of the first two ethics. I think everyone gets that, although some go further and say screw people, the planet comes first but that is a hard sell in today’s consumer paradise. I think most people are with us on the People and Planet aspiration but the key question as ever is how do we achieve this finely balanced mix.

This is where the third ethic comes in to play and I strongly believe it is the key one… you can take the first two ethics as read… I really want to drill down into what this tricky third one is all about.

Yes it is about economics, it is about choices, it is about priorities and the ‘Fair-share’ epithet doesn’t do it for me. It is a handy mnemonic for sure but it fails to convey meaning and sounds dangerously like a naïve socialist doctrine, leaving us once again with the challenge of who gets to decide what is fair exactly?

Bill Mollison never explained it that way anyway, fair-share was a late arrival, an upstart if you will, one that could have come from a branding agency. The real meat on this bone is about setting limits to consumption, yes my friends at the heart of permaculture is the most radical idea of all, that there is such a thing as enough. In a world where consumerism is touted as an end in itself and conspicuous consumption is worn on the sleeve one might be forgiven for forgetting the setting limits to consumption bit, I guess this equates to Fair-share but still it goes so much deeper.

David Holmgren can help us here, I refer you to principles three and four of his set of twelve. Principle four being about setting limits and three is about meeting needs, obtain a yield, ‘You can’t work on an empty stomach’. It is not in any way selfish to meet one’s own needs, in fact it is essential, without breakfast you are no good to anyone, and can’t do a full day’s work. Anyone who has been on an airplane knows that in the safety demo they always tell you… ‘in the unlikely event of the cabin de-pressurising an oxygen mask will descend, take care to put yours on first before assisting others’. There you have it, you might be a great altruist with only your fellow passengers’ concerns at heart, but at the moment you go blue in the face and pass out you are no good to anyone, in fact you are now a burden to those around you. Meeting one’s own needs first is the first rule of survival for all. It is not selfish it is self empowering.

So with these ethics I would also argue we actually put them the wrong way round, from a permaculture perspective the process of empowerment and enabling positive change begins with meetings one’s own needs, whilst ensuring there is still a surplus for investment. This reinvestment of surplus turns out to be the key, the thing, and most likely to be overlooked. The reinvestment of surplus is the how, it is the mechanism that empowers us to achieve the people and planet aspiration.

The rule is you meet your own needs, setting limits and realising there is such a thing as a enough… only you know what is enough for yourself and this should and can be constantly re-evaluated. Where we set the line for cappuccinos or shoes is a personal choice and no one should be telling us as individuals what to do. However we need to know that if we go into deficit meeting our supposed needs we will never have the faintest chance of being sustainable or doing permaculture effectively.

Sustainability is the meeting of core needs whilst retaining a surplus for reinvestment back in the system. What we do with surplus is what defines us. I argue in my public speaking and teaching that what you choose to do with that bit left over after survival is the key decision each and every one of us makes. Reinvestment of surplus in social and ecological ends guarantees a world of constant improvement, an expansion of possibilities, sticking it away in the Cayman Islands for some possible rainy day is the thing that drains the life blood of any system and constantly impoverishes it.

We were chatting about this on Facebook recently and someone asked what if there is no surplus? Then of course the preconditions for sustainability in this case are not being met and changes have to be made, this rule holds true for all. If there is no surplus then changes must be made and a redesigning is in order.

I am an enthusiastic advocate of co-operatives, they are vastly superior to a PLC and I will tell you why. PLC’s are owned by shareholders who appoint directors to maximise the return on investment. Profits are siphoned out of the company to channel towards personal ends, tax havens and consumerist endeavours. Co-operatives exist to benefit their customers, users and  members and any surplus is used to reward loyalty and is reinvested in the co-operative so that it can continue to benefit its stakeholders. Co-ops reinvest surplus, PLCs extract it and put it elsewhere.

This is the key difference and this is why to my mind Bill Mollison is absolutely right to state the ethics are… set limits to consumption and reinvest surplus, for the enablement and betterment of other people, society and planet i.e. people care and the environment.

Put simply, as an example, I live in a housing cooperative. We set our rent at a level that covers our bills and responsibilities and returns a small surplus we can spend on improving the environmental performance of our home, insulation, heating etc. and allowing us to choose socially responsible alternatives for our food, services etc. So I am sorry if it does not scan as well, or make a great t-shirt but these are and will forever be the permaculture ethics… saying Future-Care… as I have seen proposed, tells us nothing, it is already covered by the first two anyway.

The third ethic gives us the mechanism by which to achieve our ambitions of not just sustainability but regeneration and genuinely sustainable growth; one that builds soil, stores water and nutrients and protects and enhances biodiversity, the very tools we need to sustain our own needs.

Sector39 celebration

It’s about time for some good news

Sector39 is growing; as well as our standard courses we have launched a series of projects as well. Inquiries are also arriving from an ever broader spectrum of sources as ever more people wake up to the potentials of permaculture.

We are holding a celebration in Llanrhaeadr Village hall, 24th March.
There will be food, music and of course excellent company for an evening of talking dancing and celebrating! It’s also my 55th birthday.  Please join the celebration!

Steve Jones, S39 Director

It has to be a good thing that permaculture has never been more in demand and Sector39 is finding opportunities in all sorts of new areas:

  • Chester Cathedral and the Anglican church
  • One School One Planet schools and permaculture project
  • Permaculture Uganda and East Africa
  • Refugee work with Norwegian Refugee Council
  • Consultancies on housing co-operative formation

The big idea we have been working on for a few years now is that of a Permaculture Academy. On going teacher training and project facilitator development…  really it’s a mentoring process to develop new permaculture informed initiatives where we can.

  • May this year we are running a PDC for 60 participants within an established school and permaculture site in Uganda, followed by a 2 day permaculture convergence.
  • The intention is to launch the Academy and showcase the best permaculture can offer to an invited audience and opinion formers and budget heads, school heads and trustees.
  • We are fundraising for a student bursary fund, applications will be competitively assessed for the number of places available via successful fundraising. Your contributions really will change lives!

Please do support our fundraiser event, tickets are available from:

If you can’t make the event please consider supporting our