Education

 

The Importance of Getting a Permaculture Education

Nothing really substitutes for a personal understanding of permaculture as a whole systems design approach. You can pay a professional designer to produce a plan for you though, without a real understanding of the ecological thinking that underpins it, it will be a challenge to implement properly and difficult for the result to have real integrity and long-lasting effectiveness.

People who have an ongoing relationship to the landscape, community or organisation can provide lengthy, thoughtful and sensitive observation and interaction that will give rise to a genuinely living design process.

That is why having a well-developed and reliable permaculture education pathway is so critical. Watching videos, reading books and sharing ideas with people, even doing an "Introduction to Permaculture" course is a great start though, it is very easy to miss important elements of permaculture thinking without the comprehensive treatment that comes from doing the basic permaculture qualification – the Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC). To complement and enhance (but not replace) a PDC,  there are numerous short courses, workshops, and demonstrations covering specific aspects of permaculture.

Many permaculturalists also offer opportunities for informal one-to-one learning ranging from short-term WWOOFing through to internships.

Currently, the final educational step is the Permaculture Diploma is a 2-year journey into applying permaculture design to a specific project. This is arranged through the Permaculture Educators Guild.

For more information on the 3 tiers of education options, follow the links below.

The Permaculture Educators Guild

PEG is a group of permaculture educators set up by PiNZ for the furtherance of permaculture education in the bioregions of Aotearoa/New Zealand. They provide teacher affiliation & diploma applications and offer peer support.

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Learning with a PiNZ Affiliated Teacher

PiNZ affiliated teachers go through a process to demonstrate that their course covers the core curriculum (recognising that each course also has its own particular strengths and emphasis).

 INTRO TO PERMACULTURE

 

 PERMACULTURE DESIGN CERTIFICATE

 

 

DIPLOMA IN PERMACULTURE