Wow!  I can hardly believe it's happening.  The seed of an idea was planted more than a year ago.  It took root and now it is beginning to grow.  Four students from Home of Hope Orphan Care Center in Malawi, Africa started The Seeds of Change permaculture program this week at Nature's Gift in the capital city of Lilongwe.

They will stay at Nature's Gift/ Kusumala Institute for the next six months where they will learn everything there is to know about permaculture.  Then, they will return to Home of Hope to implement what they know.  It's the beginning of a long-term project aimed at assisting HOH to grow a more diversified crop and to help them become a more self-reliant organization.

Here is a link to the most recent update from Kusumala:  http://t.co/nxssKNCP

If you have donated already, a big THANKYOU to you!  If you haven't donated yet, we still need your help to complete this dream and spread change to this part of the world.  What we do, no matter how small, effects everything around us.  Even a small act of sharing can add up to big change!

Fundraising Update!

We made it HALFWAY!!  As we inch closer to the $7,000 mark, I'd like to offer a big THANKYOU to our family, friends and supporters like you.  Because of you, we are seven thousand steps closer to making a difference to hundreds of children in Malawi!! 

Let's go all the way...... We can change the world!

With love,
Michael

A Special Post from Nature's Gift in Lilongwe, Malawi...

Hello from Nature’s Gift permaculture centre. We thought we should give you more of a background as to who we are and what we do.

The centre is a training and demonstration centre, run by our umbrella organisation, the Kusamala Institute of Agriculture & Ecology. The centre was founded in December 2009, primarily to serve as a demonstration area for permaculture/ agro-ecology techniques. We offer trainings to complement these demonstrations, and this has also developed into the apprenticeship scheme that we now offer. Our focus is environment, food and nutrition security.

Permaculture is many things to many people, but we most broadly see it as a method of sustainable agriculture that can enhance food production in Malawi, make greater use of the available inputs, and combat local environmental degradation and climate change. Malawi is a developing country and there is certainly poverty, but there are solutions. Given that agriculture employs 85% of the nation’s workers (DFID, Malawi climate change facts), our approach starts with agriculture as the main contributor to Malawi’s development. Improved techniques using agro-ecology can immediately “help small farmers to farm in ways that are less expensive and more productive” (Olivier de Schutter, special rapporteur on the right to food, 2010); it is these techniques that we display at our centre.

We divide our centre into several areas, or permaculture zones. We have household vegetable production close to our on-site living areas in addition to our commercial-scale organic garden. We have recently launched a successful vegetable box scheme in the last few months, adding to our well-established restaurant sales. These areas provide us with an income, but also access to a variety of tasty and nutritious foods: an unfortunate rarity in Malawi. We also have “food forests”, similar to orchards, that help us grow food year round, mimicking the productivity of nature even when the weather works against us. Our Zone 3 is where we grow our staple foods, such as maize, sorghum, millet and soya. It is in this zone that we are doing some of our most exciting work, demonstrating improved water harvesting techniques, the benefits of trees in agriculture (agroforestry) and alternatives to the traditional mono-cropping of maize. With food security and climate change an ever-present concern, these techniques will help our centre and our trainees demonstrate continued food security. In Zone 4 we have sustainable woodlots, where we plant and harvest our own trees. With deforestation another major dilemma for Malawi, we showcase the merits of planting trees for our own use, to replenish the natural stock, enhance our local soil fertility and fight climate change. Beyond zone 4, we leave nature to look after itself, with our centre performing a benign stewardship role. 

We are greatly looking forward to working with the children from Home of Hope. It’s a really exciting opportunity to have these kids for six months and train them to grow their own food in a sustainable and profitable way. We believe that their knowledge will be able to transform the way Home of Hope uses its land, and the health and nutrition of its inhabitants. With food one of the major concerns for many Malawians, we believe providing this solid foundation will set them on the right track as they grow up.

We also have other projects on the go, and if you keep up with our website, you can stay abreast of the news. We are growing our own Jatropha for biodiesel for our truck (although we use bike delivery as much as possible), conducting trainings with a local co-operative in many permaculture aspects, including bee-keeping, and training and demonstration developments in Dowa district for Jatropha, Moringa and Neem as tree planting with a financial benefit beyond the wood itself. With a little more time and hard work we hope to spread permaculture and its many facets throughout Malawi.

Thanks to Michael and Jared for their wonderful work on this amazing project. We hope it’s the first of many to come!

So, thanks for reading and I hope you feel like you know our centre a little more. Please let us know what you think about us and our programmes, and any support you can provide to the apprentice scheme is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

The team at the Kusamala Institute of Agriculture & Ecology

PERMACULTURE VIDEO!

Here's a great introduction to permaculture.  I promise you will be amazed.  Who wants to make a permaculture garden with me??

--Michael

THE ONE STRAW REVOLUTION

Here is a great video with some fascinating background on the basics of permaculture farming!  YOU MUST SEE THIS!!

--Michael

Welcome!

The seeds have been planted and they're beginning to grow! Since we began fundraising, we've raised nearly $4,000! That's close to one-third of our goal! Thank you to everyone who has supported this amazing venture. Every donation goes to educate our Home Of Hope students. They will begin their training very soon. This is Phase One. Once they've completed their training at the Nature's Gift site, they will return home to start work on Phase Two: transforming the farm.

We are creating permanent solutions that will change the lives of hundreds of kids today, and generations of Malawians for decades to come!

If you haven't already supported us, please do so now by donating generously, and by "liking" us on Facebook and spreading the word to everyone you know!

More updates to come....