I recently had the privilege of visiting Rosemary Morrow, a wonderful opportunity in which she shared her approach to overseas Permaculture development projects and allowed me to look over her reports from the past 15 years. With a year long project in Samoa beginning next March, this was an invaluable experience and I’d like to share some of what I learned.

Rosemary is an incredible woman. She is the most ethical person I have met, and lives Permaculture in every aspect of her life. Her approach to development work is obviously no exception, and as a long-standing member of the Quakers, this only strengthens her selfless service. Permaculture often has a strong focus on Care of Earth and Share of Surplus, but Rowe believes that it often falls short on the Care of People Ethic. The approach of the Quakers satisfied that urge for her.

APPROACH

Rowe is a very pragmatic person, and she calls a spade a spade. She measures the success of a project by the uptake of Permaculture in the local area. In fact she expects 60% of households to be practicing within two years. If this isn’t achieved then “What are you there for?

In developing world rural communities there are no supermarkets and welfare does not exist; farmers cannot afford to take risks. If crops fail it can be the difference between eating and not. Introduced technologies must therefore be low risk. Confidence and trust should not be expected, but rather earned. To the people you are no different than every other aid organization which has come through promising ‘the answer’ over the past 10-15 years (in fact what differentiates us from any other missionary? They ‘believe’ in what they are offering also).

A strategy, which Rosemary likes to adopt, is the introduction of home gardens, working especially with women. As well as the instant nutritional benefits and supplement to family income, these gardens allow farmers and community members an opportunity to observe and understand permaculture techniques on a small scale, with relatively low risk. Skills learned and strategies adopted will of course include soil improvement, composting, mulching, land shaping, water harvesting, animal integration, green manures, nutrition, seed saving, propagation, and natural pest management.

When these strategies are seen to be successful, then farmers can begin to integrate them into the larger systems. The successful factors of such a programme are discussed below.

DEMONSTRATION MODELS

Not to diminish their work, but Rosemary does not place as much importance on a large-scale central demonstration site as some other Permaculture development workers do. She does believe models are essential, but in her experience smaller demonstrations on the land of local farmers are far more effective in gaining the trust and acceptance of the people. Hence, replication is far more likely. There are a number of reasons for this.

Large Eco-Centre demonstration sites are usually constructed with the big dollars of NGO support behind them. No matter how affordable and low tech the technologies and methods used may be, in the eyes of the local people, the project will still be associated with the support of the NGO money behind it. As such, despite the undeniably impressive nature of many sites, it is difficult for farmers who are working hand to mouth to relate; poor knowledge translation and replication in the local community can result.

Large demonstration sites can also suffer financial dependency and management dependency. As such they are prone to collapsing once funding runs out.

There is also the question of who owned the land on which the centre is situated. A recent unnamed case involved developing world people being unwillingly displaced from their land due to land purchase for a Permaculture site. Hardly Care of People.

Her alternative approach is this:

-        Develop connections with a range of properties, which can function as models.

-        Support those farmers with more sustainable methods.

-        Enlist these farmers as trainers and peer leaders.

-        They can be paid for holding training workshops and open house days, and supported with further training in Permaculture, developing training resources and monitoring of success (all discussed in further detail below).

 

TRAINING APPROACH

Rosemary sees the two-week Permaculture Design Course as the foundation of the projects she works on. However, she understands that although the PDC creates an exciting momentum, the real point of implementation occurs when key farmers and gardeners in the area begin to practice. For this reason, the budget and work emphasis must include this aim and objective, ensuring that funds are not all expended during the PDC phase.

It is anticipated that the key to good implementation within the community depends on trainers at every level being sure of their knowledge. Her projects include:

-        Permaculture Design Course with carefully chosen participants

-        Training of trainers programme including:

o      Detailed training programme in permaculture principles, strategies and techniques.

o      Course in Adult Learning Methods

o      Course in the design and creation of learning materials

o      Course in ongoing monitoring of project success and report writing.

-        Follow up specialist training short courses

-        Training should be in the local language as soon as possible.

-        Translation of resources into the local language essential.

 
THE PDC

Rosemary recognises the PDC as an exercise in ideas transfer, and can be looked at as the transfer of ‘many ideas to a few’ as opposed to the common development approach of ‘one idea to as many as possible’. Hence, the choice of course participants are important, aiming for those who can initiate action and cause change, to help justify the cost of a PDC.

At the beginning of every course she introduces Safe Learning Agreements. This is a common technique in adult facilitation and can be compiled with the class coming up with the agreements themselves (examples may include: Co-operate not compete; We are all learners and teachers; Listen to each other – respect the airspace; Everyone has the right to speech; Everone has the right to pass; Everyone knows something and has experience; Have fun and enjoy your training). These can be written out and posted on the wall for the remainder of the course for all to see.

Analytic thinking leads to problem solving which leads to empowerment to act sustainability. However, the ability of participants to analyse problems and develop solutions can sometimes be recognised as weak at the beginning of a course. This is often likely to be cultural. Responses may come in the form of ‘I agree with my neighbour’, ‘I agree with the facilitator’ or ‘I don’t have an opinion’. If this occurs, Rosemary starts off a recurring joke of the course that these are ‘Lazy answers’. Through peer humour and support, this encourages the open class discussion, which she places a lot of emphasis on. By the end of the course she finds that discussions become very animated.

POST PDC TRAINING

A range of 3-5 day technical courses can be offered to course participants. The list can be developed with the participants themselves, with encouragement in those areas which the facilitator recognised as weak during the PDC. These could include: bio-fertilizer, local production, practical nutrition, seedsaving and botany, alley cropping for hill farmers, fruit tree planting and propagation, information on high value economic crops for the future, animal disease prevention, farm planning and budgeting, simple food processing, product marketing and distribution, benefits of value adding and environmental monitoring (the latter three subjects are often lacking in agricultural communities).

TRAINING OF TRAINERS (TOT) COURSE

As mentioned earlier, the key to good implementation within the community depends on trainers at every level being sure of their knowledge. Thus the standard of the TOT programme is extremely important.

Rosemary likes to work with the women, introducing a pyramid Training of Trainers programme. The women are usually the primary carers in the family, and in so many cases their natural maternal instincts have proven to be a very beneficial attribute in recognising and carrying out those activities which will have a direct positive impact on their families.

There is the old saying “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”. All trainers who are conducting training in home garden establishment must first have created their own gardens and taken them through an entire cycle. Hence, they really understand all of the processes and steps involved and can teach far more effectively.

During a PDC, Rowe runs a half hour workshop at the end of each day, where TOT participants are encouraged to observe and discuss topics such as:

-        their own learning style and response to different content and methods.

-        Participants’ learning styles and responses

-        Analyse teaching methods of the facilitator

-        Special strengths or weaknesses of learners.

-        Class arrangement and facilitator focus.

-        Their own opinions.

This becomes a component of an additional course in Adult Learning techniques, which the TOT’s participate in. This course will also include learning how to design a course curriculum, educational posters, training books and leaflets.

Rosemary really stresses the need for ongoing monitoring to gauge the success of a project. She includes a three-day course at the beginning of the TOT programme in quantitative and qualitative monitoring, carrying out an evaluation and in report writing. This is then followed up and supported with step-by-step training of these skills over a period of two years.

Training in evaluation procedure will include a number of steps including: setting evaluation objectives; discussing ethics and bias in evaluation; deciding on methods of collecting data (documents, visual, questioning); selecting categories of interviewees and the sample size; writing questionnaires and interviews; setting timetables; determining where to sample ie. random sampling; carrying out an analysis; and report writing.

Some of the main areas of qualitative and quantitative assessment may include: The effect of training and gardens on the health of course participants; Gauging whether knowledge, attitudes, practices and skills of women have improved; To what extent the family and social economy has been affected; Assessing the effect of training on farmers (are the skills transferable?); Whether the garden programme is a productive way to spend time; Estimating the overall sustainability of the project (was the training sufficient for it to continue once the funding stops); Evaluating the project objectives.

The report writing is a very valuable skill, as it enables access to further funding for other projects. It also allows the possibility of further employment in the form of training programmes in surrounding regions. Empowerment is the key aim here.

INTRODUCING NEW TECHNOLOGIES

It is important to talk through the implications of new technologies which are introduced with the village elders.

Appropriate technologies are those which can be produced using locally available resources. For example, there is no use trying to introduce paper sheet mulching where the local paper is 2 pages and comes out once a week. That paper is like gold, and can be used far better elsewhere. An alternative such as banana leaves may be appropriate.

Technology should be replicable. That is, can be reproduced using skills which are already held in the community.

In Rosemary’s experience, introducing new seed stock has usually not been a productive activity. New varieties are often highly susceptible to disease and attack.

Finally, the title of this article relates to an approach that both Rosemary and Rick Coleman use. They are both extremely humble, a pre-requisite for this line of work, and like to keep their work in perspective. They do this by taking a step back and looking at things from the angle of the people they are working with. Rick imagines the absurdity of someone from overseas walking into Leongatha where he lives and saying “You guys have it all wrong, this is the way you should be doing it!” (any suggestion of change implies that something is wrong, so basically this is an honest translation of well meaning development work). Rosemary’s is similar, but rather she pictures her own home setting of the Blue Mountains: “Hooray! The Eskimos are coming to show us how it should be done!” Keeps things in perspective doesn’t it.

(By the way, my Canadian mate Marty told me once that Eskimo means 'shit eater', and Inuit is a much more appropriate term)