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.