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Permaculture in schools in Southern and Eastern Africa |
By Mugove Walter Nyika, Regional Coordinator, ReSCOPE Programme
It all started with the establishment of Fambidzanai Permaculture Centre (FPC) near Harare, Zimbabwe in 1988 following the training workshop facilitated by Bill Mollison in Botswana a year earlier.
In 1994 FPC teamed up with other not for profit organizations and with the Ministry of Education in Zimbabwe to set up the Schools and Colleges Permaculture (SCOPE) Programme. The goal was to assist schools to benefit from the multiple outcomes that arose from a re-design of school environments using the Permaculture approach. Permaculture has been defined as a design system for creating sustainable human environments (Mollison 1991). It is a design based framework for sustainable living that can be used to transform lives and landscapes in a manner that is ecologically sound, economically viable and socially just.
The Schools and Colleges Permaculture (SCOPE) Programme developed a tool that schools can use for planning and implementing a very productive, healthy and ecologically sustainable environmental management system on school land. The system is developed with the active involvement of the whole school community and will then be a good model for replication in the community. The tool is called Integrated Land Use Design (ILUD) and it has been applied in over 200 schools in Zimbabwe since 1994 with exciting results. In addition to Permaculture, the development of the ILUD process was informed by thinking from a number of contemporary theories and techniques such as
- Holistic management
- Participatory methodology
- Practical rural appraisal
The main features of the ILUD Process are:
- Tool for planning , implementing and monitoring sustainable land-use in schools
- Step by step process undertaken by representatives of all key stakeholders in any given school community
- Stakeholder participation and ecological integration are the key principles
- Implementation begins with sensitization of leadership, followed with the training of implementers, participatory and holistic design of the school environment and finally monitoring
- The whole school is involved and all the resources at the school are incorporated in the new design
ILUD process is a step by step process that involves:
- Situational analysis – the stakeholders observe the existing situation to develop a common understanding of the current problems and potential resources that they have to start off with
- Holistic goal formation – The stakeholders define their vision for the school environment
- Integrated design – The stakeholders re-design their land by creating connections between the various elements in their environment
- Plan of action – The stakeholders draw up an implementation and monitoring plan for their project
The integrated land-use design process is a tool for a holistic approach to the management of the school environment. Schools can benefit from a wide range of physical and socio-economic outputs of the ILUD process if they implement it successfully. Below is a list of some of the benefits that accrue to schools that use this tool to implement Permaculture well.
1. SOCIAL OUTPUTS
- The participation of children, parents, staff and other stakeholders in the planning, implementation and monitoring of their new landscape design for their grounds
- Positive attitudes towards indigenous knowledge and endogenous development
- Increased sense of ownership of the project, and of the school
- Relationship building skills
- Stronger school and community linkages
- ILUD as a tool for social analysis
- Increased access to fruits, vegetables, herbs and other foods
- Culinary, aromatic and medicinal use of herbs
2. ECONOMIC OUTPUTS
- Organic fruits, vegetables and herbs
- Increased income from the school land
- Increased value of the school land
- Agro-ecological production skills
- Affordable source of seeds and seedlings for the home economy
3. EDUCATIONAL OUTPUTS
- Enhanced teaching and learning using locally available resources (TALULAR)
- Opportunities for comparative studies of conventional and organic agriculture
- A real mixed forest at school – a source for real life examples across the curriculum
- ILUD tool for problem solving
- ILUD tool for environmental analysis, planning and monitoring
- Increased motivation
4. PHYSICAL OUTPUTS
- Soil and water conservation
- Organically improved soil
- Greener landscapes
- Improved ground cover
- Integrated cropping systems
- Increased biodiversity
- Predator- prey systems develop
- Improved air quality
- Wind break
- Cool micro climate in classrooms
- Shady school grounds and outside classrooms
The Regional Schools and Colleges Permaculture (ReSCOPE) Programme provides technical support for organizations that are interested in working with schools in promotion of more productive and healthy schools that become resource centres for their communities. For more information please contact us at P.O. Box 32280, Chichiri, Blantyre 3, Malawi or on telephone +2659788373 or on email
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