The Eastern Pennsylvania Permaculture Guild (EPPG) has announced the details of their upcoming educational programming. The Guild, located in metro-Philadelphia, is offering a non-residential Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course and an Introduction to Permaculture course right here in the Delaware Valley, starting May 29, 2010. Successful completion of the PDC course enables participants to design and teach permaculture. Additionally, the Guild is opening the individual sessions, and workshops comprising the courses, to those not seeking certification.
Permaculture is a design science focused on creating sustainable human settlements. According to Bill Mollison, one of the movements co-founders, “permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted & thoughtless labour; of looking at plants & animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system.” Mollison, and his partner David Holmgren, coined the term “Permaculture” (permanent-agriculture) in the 1970’s, and the movement has spread throughout the world ever since, through courses and workshops like those being offered by the Eastern Pennsylvania Permaculture Guild.
Because the international standard for Permaculture certification dictates that a certificate be conferred only after a minimum of 72 course ‘contact hours’, traditionally PDC courses were given as 14-day, residential ‘intensives’ – participants remaining on-site for the entire course. More recently, due to economic considerations (and commitments which make a 14-day absence from work or family obligations an impossibility for many), Permaculture institutes and teachers have been obliging by offering non-residential PDC courses to participants. Prior to the EPPG’s 2010 courses, those seeking a PDC were required to travel to another state or, at least, to another region of Pennsylvania in order to attend the certificate course. The EPPG’s courses will be held in urban, sub-urban and rural sites throughout the Delaware Valley, and will take place from May through September 2010.
Participants will learn about:
- Natural patterns & Permaculture design
- The Built environment, water & waste management
- Soils and geology
- Seed Saving and plant nurseries
- Home and community gardens
- Kitchen permaculture- fermentation, food storage
- Forests, tree Crops, forest gardens
- Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
- Animal systems- chickens, small livestock, aquaculture, vermiculture
- Appropriate technology
- Cooperatives and Enterprise Development: LET’s systems, financial permaculture
The course dates are as follows:
Session I begins Sat. May 29th
Session II – June 12
Session III – June 26th
Session IV – July 10-11
Session V – July 24-25
Session VI – August 7-8
Session VII – August 28
Session VIII – Sept. 25-26
For information on course fees, and scholarship availability, visit the Eastern Pennsylvania Permaculture Guild’s website.
For more info:
Eastern Pennsylvania Permaculture Guild
The Permaculture Institute
Permaculture – a viable solution to the threat of industrial ag induced disease
