Online Permaculture Design Course begins in September
Elfin Permaculature’s next Permaculture Design Correspondence Course, with an email classroom, will begin in September 1997. The course draws on the Elfin Permaculture’s standard three-week design course and follows the outline below:
SECTION 1: Introduction and Basic Principles
a) World ecological problems and interrelationships.
b) Principles of natural design.
c) Permaculture design concepts.
d) Classical landscapes.
e) Patterning, edges, edge effects.
f) The Permaculture Design Report
g) Principles of transformation (in process--you will get as much as we have worked out at the moment--this is not part of ordinary permaculture design courses).
SECTION 2: Appropriate Technologies in Permaculture Design
a) Energy--solar, wind, hydro, biomass, etc.
b) Nutrient cycles--soil, microclimates, gardening methods, perennials, tree crops, food parks, composting toilets, livestock, "pest" management, food storage, seed saving, cultivated systems, forests, etc.
c) Water--impoundments, aquaculture, conservation, etc.
d) Buildings.
SECTION 3: Social permaculture. Design Report.
a) Design for catastrophe.
b) Urban permaculture.
c) Bioregionalism.
d) Alternative economics.
e) Village development.
f) Final design reports and critiques.
g) Final evaluation.
DESIGN SECTION. (Requires Section 1.) Students complete a permaculture design
Students follow a set reading schedule supplemented by notes from the instructor. They discuss reading assignments in an email classroom. The instructor also supplements course materials with resources drawn from varied components of the internet. Students practice explaining or teaching permaculture basics, give special reports, and prepare a complete permaculture design. The course runs 20-26 weeks, depending on the time needed to complete discussion of various topics. Students completing all course requirements receive a Permaculture Design Course certificate.
Students may arrange to enroll individual sections of the course in any sequence, depending on their financial and schedule requirements. People may also arrange to monitor the course at nominal cost. Enrollment in the Design Section is limited to 20 people.
Instructor Dan Hemenway has taught permaculture worldwide in Europe, Asia, the Pacific and North America. Dan is also founder, editor and publisher of The International Permaculture Solutions Journal, highly regarded among permaculturists and PROD (Permaculture Review Overview and Digest ). He is program director of APT (Advanced Permaculture Training), founder of the Forest Ecosystem Rescue Network (FERN), and active in related movements such as remineralization. He contributes to the development of permaculture with ongoing work on principles of transformation. Dan holds five diplomas in various aspects of permaculture from the International Permaculture Institute. He received the annual Conservation Award from Friends of Nature in 1983 and the Community Service Award from the International Permaculture Institute in 1984. In 1991, he was named as a delegate to "Roots of the Future," a conference of NGOs in Paris, France, to prepare input to the UN "Earth Summit" held in June, 1992. More recently, Dan was cited in Swathmore's Who’s Who in America for 1996-97, and from 1995 to the present has served as Honorary Chairman, Permaculture Foundation - Net_Work - Kenya, Homa Bay, Kenya.
For details, email Elfin Permaculture at elfpermacl at aol.com
