CAP-OP5: Path Ahead

Within our agriculture-livelihoods subprogram, a considerable fund was allocated to training program so I worked with my colleague Ali to design a Training of Trainers program focused on sustainable agriculture and community building solutions that can be applied within the local context. We defined the training material so that they cover the most challenging issues that face regular farmers: water shortage, soil fertility, and market access. We also added educating materials in order to promote sustainable solutions including: management of organic waste through composting, local seed saving, and community action. The training will start in early July.   

My friends in Egypt are currently organizing a PDC in August 27^th in Alexandria, close to the site of their nascent intentional, spiritual community. Preparations for this event started as early as November 2017. In the beginning, I was asked to support in preparing learning material and designing the course content. This lead me to prolonged discussion with my contact their on the suitability of PDC model to the Arab world and the modest results achieved through the few PDCs that were organized in this region. We also spoke a lot on how we can localize permaculture teaching to have greater impact on Arab audience. Based on these discussion, I was asked by them to be a co-speaker in this event besides their team and the main Speaker, Rhamis Kent.

Since travelling abroad is becoming extremely challenging for Syrian people, I am currently working on official paper to facilitate my entrance to Egypt. Once things are settled, I shall start preparing my training material which will cover the first two days and will focus on introducing permaculture theory, philosophy, design concepts and themes to the trainees in Arabic. The experience that I will be collecting through the training and piloting projects described above will potentially add more depth and practicality to this training material.

Based on the online training we received by Andrew from Gaia U, Ali and I managed to allocate a piece of land in Rural Damascus in an area called Zabadani where we intend to pilot the potential of permaculture design and transfer the knowledge to local farmers through training courses and through this demonstration site. Technical support will come from Gaia U as this site development will be the subject of the second online training which we are planning with Andrew. My aim is that this site will eventually become our “greening the desert” experiment where outstanding results will speak of the potential for applying permaculture principle in the local context.  

This is the least developed project of them however no less important. To my eyes it became a matter of life or death actually, because I believe that our own survival as a community depends on our ability not only to survive the aftermath of the current devastating conflict, but also to adapt with the accelerating changes without losing ourselves to the mainstream. And investing in children is the ideal beginning. So, my idea is to explore channels for pumping knowledge to children through summer activities outside the school system. The idea is still in the very raw planning phases but hopefully will take more concrete steps within the current year with few potential partners.