Spring 2017
Kia ora tatou, from the new Permaculture in New Zealand Council. Eight new members of the team alongside the original Chairman Nandor Tanczos have brought fresh motivation to PINZCouncil volunteering their time to help make Permaculture stronger in New Zealand. Our 1st PINZ Council Newsletter is out in time for Spring Equinox, it has been quite some time since the last one so please read on to find out about what’s happening and how you can be apart of it!During the winter season, PINZ has been ‘underground’ broadening and deepening its root structure so that it can nurture a healthy flourish of spring blossoms to grow the fruits PiNZ 10 Year Strategic Plan. Several key areas stood out as next step focus for the council, with each of the 9 strong team choosing one or few areas of focus from this plan.
COUNCIL PRIORITIES 2017
1. Get the website live
2. Grow the financial base of the organisation
3. Develop an overarching communication plan
4. On-going engagement with members
5. Link to international permaculture movement (esp Asia – Pasifik)
6. Support the national hui
7. Support development of more education pathway
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OUR LAST PERMACULTURE HUI, at KAIWAKA, 22 - 25 April
The mornings began with keynote presentations by Kay Baxter, Herbie Skipper, Graham North, Rueben Taipari and Tui Shortland. An ‘Open Space Technology’ structure was used to schedule parallel-running afternoon workshops - consistently of high calibre, with a balance of presentation and participation. Some examples of workshop topics: establishing food forests in northland, making friction fire, biochar, sacred space design, beyond compost, landtrusts, alternative economics. Evenings featured the ‘SOS: Save Our Seeds’ video and an open mic, abound with talent. As a gifting to the local community, a large sheet-mulch garden was put in at the primary school next door. The event also included the AGM with election of a new council, and meet-up of PEG (Permaculture Educators Guild).
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Next National Permaculture Hui
10 - 13 May 2018
Waihi Beach, Western Bay of Plenty.
Generating Change
So much tIme to organise travel and join us at our annual hui...It's gonna be awesome!
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We have a strong team in place busy getting ready for our next year's gathering. The team includes- Jo Pearsall, Bryan Innes, Louise Shaw, Niva Kay, Yotam Kay and Leo Mufasa Murray. The proposed theme is Generating Change and we are looking forward to hosting inspirational speakers and exciting discussions. Please get in touch with Niva (niva.kay@gmail.com) or Jo (jo@ecoshow.co.nz) if you would like to speak, host a workshop, run the children's program, or help co create this Hui in some way!
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Website News!
The PiNZ Council are getting ready to go live with our much anticipated newPermaculture in New Zealand Website which will enable the Permaculture Community and the public to easily link up with each other, learn, communicate, add content, advertise, find out all about what’s going on in your Bio region and all over New New Zealand ... for more in depth read see Nandor's article below.
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Our Great New Membership Plan
We looking forward to reconnecting with you all again.
Keep an eye on your email for your new login details if you are a current PINZ Member or a invite to rejoin if we have you listed as a past member or contact.
Share this email with your friends if you think they would be interested!
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BIOREGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Supporting bioregional linkages has been something council has always wanted to do but has lacked capacity in the past. A number of ideas are now being developed around this, including mapping active permaculture properties and developing a pilot internship development project for a region.
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PiNZ has been offered a unique opportunity fun events to raise much needed funds for its activities. A chance to do something great for the environment and help PINZat the same time. For every 2 people we provide, PINZ will receive a $100 koha, up to $1000 for 20 people.EVENT 1 : Parnell Festival of Roses, Sunday 19th November 2017
EVENT 2 : Albert Eden School Cultural Fest, Saturday 25th November 2017
Please contact Guenther on 021 300 408 or 817 9589 or email guenther65@yahoo.com if you can help out with either or both of these fund raising opportunities. ·
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MAKING PERMACULTURE STRONGER
As part of this professional development movement, kicked off by Dan Palmer at the 2015 hui, 3 events have been held to date:
* Permaculture Designers – Sth Auckland, 29 -31 July 16
*Permaculture Educators – Raglan, 2-4 Dec 16
* Permaculture Designers – Taranaki, 1 & 2 July 17
The new website will depict the outcomes of these hui.
This next installment in the "Making Permaculture Stronger" hui series will be held from Friday 16 March to Sunday 18 March at Sixtus Lodge, near Apiti.
The hui theme is "social permaculture", an area of permaculture that is beginning to attract increasing attention. Also referred to as "invisible structures", social permaculture applies to everything from community development to living economies, ways of learning (processes of social development and transformation), governance, participatory processes, facilitation, and much more. Those with an established interest in social permaculture are warmly invited to join us: your input is highly valued!
Save the date! We'd love to have you join us. The defined hui parameters are broad and can accommodate many interests and more specific open space topics. The venue allows up to 50 people. To be put on a contact list for more information and future updates, please contact Sharon Stevens (of Ashhurst): sharon@slowfarm.co.nz.
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National Hui 2017 in Kaiwaka.
Floyd passing on the sacred stone to Lillee, Kaitiaki until it is past onto the next hui in 2018. Which at that point was thought by those gathered to be held the South Island.
Next possible South Island Hui would be 2019 and we are looking for a strong team to take it on...Keen?
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Another successful Permaculture Teachers Training was held in conjunction with the hui, and it is intended to hold this as a annual event.If you are interested to find out more, contact: earthcarenz@gmail.com
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New Council at the 1st Face2Face meeting at Eco Matters in Auckland. Pictured above after planting their Pet in a spot which use to hold their weather data station.
Alandra, Nandor, Louise, Kharen, LIllee, Robina, Shine, Gunther, James and our pet tree Ribby.
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Finn Mackesy from Auckland Permaculture Workshop presented a paper around planning for the Oceanic Convergence / Forum
in 2019 (and joined the council with his family for pizza).
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World Social Enterprise Forum
Christchurch 27-29 September
Forum is an international event for social enterprises from all over the world to come together, share wisdom, build networks and discuss how to create a more sustainable future.
http://sewf2017.org/ |
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Greenpeace has been doing a lot lately here in Canterbury. And on the 14th September they just held the biggest peaceful civil disobedience to save our rivers from the big irrigation and more intensive dairying farming. Follow on link below.
http://www.greenpeace.org.nz /SaveOurRivers/democracy.html
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International Permaculture Conference & Convergence (IPC13) INDIA
CONFERENCE: 25 - 26 NOV, 2017 @ Hyderabad, Telangana
CONVERGENCE: 27 - DEC 2, 2017 @ Medak district, Telangana
LOCAL TOURS: 3 – 7 Dec
Teacher Training: October 21 – 30, 2017
PDC Course: November 3 – 22, 2017
IPC's have been happening bi-annually since 1985 in different locations throughout the world. In 2015 was in the UK and in 2019 is to be held in South America. They are an epic gathering of permaculture practitioners from around the world, sharing knowledge and expertise and strategising about the future of the permaculture globally.
Some of those attending from Aotearoa NZ are:
Trish Allen, Dave Hursthouse (Phoenix), Courtney Allen, Robina McCurdy, Ash Pounamu. If you wish to have any specific information or networking requestsplease get in touch with Robina: earthcarecommunity@gmail.com
AUSTRALASIAN PERMACULTURE CONVERGENCE 14 (APC 14)
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Timor-Letse PermaTil Project in action - featuring PiNZ sponsored IPC candidate Ego Lemos (featured above far right)
PiNZ is Fundraising
to support two Pacific Rim delegates in attending the 13th International Permaculture Convergence Nov 25 - Dec 2, 2017.
https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/indiaconvergence2017
and PERMA-YOUTH movements.Timor-Letse (PERMATIL), as well as the founder-counselor of PERMASCOUT Ego Lemos is the founder-coordinator of the Sustainble Agriculture Network and Organic Agriculture Movement in Timor-Letse. He is also the founder-coordinator of Permaculture.
Doni Marmer is Resource Development Officer and junior facilitator for the IDEP Foundation, an Indonesian NGO established in Bali in 1999, working with disaster risk reduction and social permaculture to support Indonesian communities to be more resilient and environmentally sustainable, whilst embracing and preserving local wisdom.
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WEBSITE UPDATE Sept 2017 - Nandor
A lot of our time on F2F meeting was spent on the website. Clarifying at a very detailed level how the website can work eg. what kinds of information should be available to who? There is a careful balance to be found between having some member-only content and so providing benefits to being a member of PiNZ, and wanting permaculture information to be freely available without restriction. Website navigation to draw people in- the pathways between sections of the site are critical. Tara Fowler, our designer, did a lot of great work on how to make that happen with a few changes made from Council.
The most important change has been to the structure around the website project – specifically who is responsible for what. This sounds a bit abstract but we are already seeing tangible results from this.
To give some background, the website development is made up of two parts. CiviCRM is a database that has been specifically designed for organisations like ours and which is the engine behind a lot of the functionality in the new website eg on-line membership payment and processing, access areas by membership type etc. Drupal is the front end of the website which the public and our members see (to oversimplify it a bit).
In the past it has not always been clear whether the problems with the development site have stemmed from CiviCRM or Drupal. Making it more complex, some functions can be driven from either and the decision about where to locate such functions can either impede or facilitate other functions further down the track.
PiNZ contracted Fuzion, who are CiviCRM and Drupal specialists, to fix the database, prior to being able to identify what Drupal work still needed doing. This has now been completed.
Unfortunately we cannot afford to contract Fuzion to do the Drupal fix as well, but Erwan Veraine has stepped in to lead that part of the project. He has some past history with Drupal but is getting reacquainted very quickly and with support from Fuzion is moving forward pretty well to implement Tara Fowler’s design (which you may have seen presented at the AGM).
In addition, we have finally got approval from the bank to receive on-line credit card payments and are working through the final details with Payment Express, who will provide the payment gateway.
Even with new people involved, however, there is a lot of work in managing the process – in particular clarifying at a high level of detail what is needed to implement the development plan. In addition it is up to council to source or creating content for all the different parts of the site. Seeing all the discrete tasks still to be done can be a little daunting, but at least now (and for the first time) we have a very clear picture of what is involved. That, along with the strong commitment from the current council to get the new website live, gives me great optimism.
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For input into future newsletters please submit to info@pinz.co.nz
deadline is 2 weeks before each Solstice and Equinox.
Next Deadline is 6th December 2017
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