The Permaculture Design Certificate course is an internationally-recognized, seventy-two hour course resulting in a Permaculture Design Certificate. It provides an introduction to permaculture design as set forth by movement founder Bill Mollison. The course is taught Rhamis Kent, with Geoff Lawton appearing via live stream and video as Special Guest Instructor, and other permaculture and/or sustainability educators.

The PDC serves as foundation for further permaculture work and study and is a prerequisite for the Diploma in Permaculture Design, offered through The Permaculture Institute. Credit for this course is now accepted by a growing number of universities around the world.

To date, thousands of permaculture designers worldwide have been certified in PDC courses, and now comprise a global network of educators, ecological activists who influence major corporations, individuals creating new business alternatives and groups of committed people working together to change the way we view and design into our landscapes.

The course covers sustainable living systems for a wide variety of landscapes and climates. It includes the application of permaculture principles to food production, home design, construction, energy conservation and generation, and explores alternative economic structures and legal strategies supporting permaculture solutions.

The Permaculture and Resilience Initiative Detroit (PRI-De) PDC includes additional materials intended to give students broader knowledge and experience specific to urban environments. Detroit was selected as our site specifically because of it’s unique position among large cities as being ideally suited to being reinvented as perhaps the world’s first large sustainable city. The combination of extensive green space, unemployment and abundant water are the perfect conditions for growing sustainable design. Detroit currently has one of, if not the, most active urban agriculture environments in the US, and possibly the world.

Students will have a variety of opportunities to apply what they learn in design and practicum elements of the course that are more extensive than is typical. They will have the opportunity to work directly with non-profit organizations, individuals and other groups/businesses to assist in designing and implementing permaculture-based solutions.

Students are also invited to bring details of their own sites or potential sites to consider during the course.

Specific topics include:

• Theory and principles of permaculture
• Eco-friendly house placement and design
• Energy conservation techniques for cold climates
• Recycling and waste management
• Organic food production
• Water harvesting and management
• Ecological pest control
• Drought-proofing
• Soil rehabilitation and erosion control
• Livestock
• Aquaculture
• Catastrophe preparedness and prevention
• Windbreaks and fire control

The foundation for this course is A Permaculture Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison, which is included in the cost of the course tuition. Attendees are encourages to acquire and read the text prior to the course. Those students who pre-purchase the text will be reimbursed at the beginning of the course.

T. Rhamis Kent, Certifying Instructor

Rhamis completed his Permaculture Design Certifcate certificate, PDC Teacher Training certificate and Aid Worker Project certification with Geoff Lawton, founder of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia, as well as completing an internship with Geoff. During his internship, Rhamis assisted Geoff in his duties consulting on the landscape architecture & water harvesting design of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City), the most ambitious and significant sustainable development project found anywhere in the world.

Rhamis’ professional work background is rooted in mechanical engineering. In addition to his engineering work history, he spent two years working as a high school algebra & physics teacher in Oakland, California, which included demonstrating a flair for creativity via creation of a physics curriculum interpreted through aviation science using wed-based NASA instructional materials. He also assisted in the development of an environmental science plan based on principles of sustainability for Oakland Aviation High School which resulted in the school being accepted by PG&E into its Solar Schools Program (www.pge.com/solarschools).

Additional experience includes grant writing for nonprofit organizations such as Zaytuna Institute (www.zaytuna.org), serving as a co-coordinator & administrator for Zaytuna Institute’s Summer Arabic Intensive (www.arabicintensive.org) held near the UC Berkeley campus at Westminister House and participation in a Citizen-based Advisory Task Force specifically formed to address environmental issues related to the Port of Oakland tasked with identifying items critical in facilitating a mutually beneficial relationship between the Port of Oakland and the City of Oakland. Our primary focus was finding viable ways to mitigate the environmental impact of the Port’s daily activities on surrounding communities.

Geoff Lawton, Special Guest Instructor

Geoff will appear via video and live feed. He is an internationally-renowned permaculture educator, consultant and practitioner. He emigrated from England to Australia and later studied permaculture with Bill Mollison in Tasmania. He established the Permaculture Research Institute at Tagari Farm in New South Wales, Australia, a 147-acre farmstead previously developed by Mollison. PRI was eventually moved to Zaytuna Farm, in The Channon, where it continues today.

Since 1985, Geoff has designed and implemented permaculture projects in 30 countries for private individuals and groups, communities, governments, aid organizations, and multinational corporations. He has taught the Permaculture Design Certificate course and designed permaculture projects in 30 countries.

Additional info:

Price: $1,400 US, deposit $300

Meals: B, L, D with two snack breaks. This includes both omnivorous and vegetarian meals. A value added meal service is possible at an additional $150 for those with special needs, vegan or special requests if a sufficient number of students request it.

Accommodation: Residential dormitory-style in the hosts home or local church, depending on the number of students. Bedding will likely be on pads or mattresses on the floor. Students should bring bedding/sleeping bags. Participants may opt to tent, but this will not reduce costs and is not encouraged due to the urban setting and lack of secure areas for tents. Individual home stays may be available at an additional cost, depending on meal plan, with sufficient notice.

Up to five fully paid scholarships are offered, with preference given to local residents.

For information on how to book, meals, accommodations, travel, or any other questions, please contact us at:

studentservices@pri-de.org
1 (313) 647-4015

PRI-De
Attn: Student Services
8910 Isham St.
Detroit, MI 48213

Permaculture in Detroit seems like a bit of an oxymoron, but urban agriculture is blooming all over the city. From the city-wide efforts of The Greening of Detroit in educating people on gardening techniques to the smaller-scale efforts of individuals such as Kate Devlin and her Spirit of Hope garden to groups such as the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and their 2-acre D-Town Farm and the Georgia Street Community Gardens/Collective, community gardens are being sown on vacant lots dotting this city of nearly a million, filling the holes left by the loss of nearly half its peak auto industry-driven population. Photos of the streets of Detroit from eras long past and rusted nearly away show tightly packed, neat homes. Today, half those homes have devolved into ruins or grassy, often debris-filled, lots. Estimates on the number of lots range from 60,000 to 80,000. Those numbers don’t include the many parks now being left largely untended by the city government.

This devastation didn’t come suddenly, but slowly, and as surely, as Katrina, but with more destruction. When the auto industry left town, they left a city. When they left their factories, they left the people. When they left, they started a slow cataclysm. New Orleans lost a couple hundred thousand people. Detroit has lost nearly a million – a slow-motion tidal wave of economic destruction. Unemployment is, and has been, far above the national average for a long time. There are no major chain grocery stores or warehouse-style stores within the city limits of Detroit, making the city a virtual food desert. Residents must either pay exorbitant prices for inferior food or travel out of the city to get decent prices and (somewhat) nutritious food. The best efforts of those building community gardens throughout the city still is but a brief shower in this desert compared to the wasteland that is this once-thriving city.

But what remains is a perfect template for rebirth: water, land, idle hands and a food desert. Detroit has the potential to become the first truly major American city that can provide a large majority of its own food, and in a way that protects the environment while reducing carbon emissions. It’s estimated that Victory Gardens provided up to 40% of all vegetables during World War II. With well-organized, intensive gardening, we can easily exceed that number. If ever Permaculture principles are to be applied on a massive scale, at a grassroots level, this is the place and this is the time.

But Detroit is not an easy city. She is wary. Many feel they have paid their dues here and look on strangers with suspicion. Long-term residents are often jaded beyond reaching. They’ve been left for dead, fooled time after time by big talk and little or no action. Consider Detroit the Show Me city. It’s not easy to come here with an idea or a plan and expect others to accept you. They won’t, by-and-large, even if they like the plan and see a buck or two hanging out of your pocket. They’ve seen both before. Of course, very few have ever heard of Permaculture, much less understand what it is. This can even be true among the “green” movement as one person said to me, “Permaculture isn’t the be-all and end-all” of agriculture. They were right. As you likely know if you are reading this, Permaculture doesn’t mean permanent agriculture, it means permanent culture. It’s not a system of agriculture, but of system design. It’s a way of designing our homes and communities so they can be sustainable and resilient. Food just happens to be a very important part of continuing to live and necessarily gets a lot of attention from anyone wanting to be self-reliant, eco-friendly, and eat fresh, healthy food grown in harmony with the rest of Nature.

Permaculture gardens in Detroit

Detroit needs a new permanent culture to replace the car culture that has abandoned it. Detroit has a plan in place to reorganize the city, but it is anything but harmonious with nature despite providing a lot of green space. Detroit is a very large city by area. The city plan outlines areas of the city large enough to be small cities themselves as areas for (re)development with large areas of green space surrounding them. Any permaculturist will recognize the folly of this as being nothing more than how cities have always been: pack the people together for efficiency and ship everything in. We’d rather see small, walkable, self-reliant communities built along primary thoroughfares that are both enclosed by green space and with each home(stead) having enough space immediately around it to grow at least their primary kitchen vegetables, perhaps connected by light rail, trolleys or other electrically powered mass transit system.

The Permaculture and Resilience Initiative – Detroit (PRI-De) will work with others to make Permaculture an important part of the rebirth of the Motor City as the Motor of Urban Agriculture. PRI-De will be offering PDC’s with a strong urban component in recognition of the great need for urban populations to redesign their access to food and energy within the context of an uncertain future. We will be applying the funds from paying students to provide Permaculture training to local residents on a scholarship basis. We will also expand into workshops that highlight green tech and sustainability.

Recession or not, people can provide for their own needs

Over time, we hope to have a staff that is virtually all local residents with some, if not all, trained at PRI-De. It is our hope these graduates will be active in creating Permaculture-based homesteads for themselves to demonstrate the value of their training, that they will be active in their neighborhoods helping their families, friends and neighbors to feed themselves, that they will be active in working for food justice and that they will help design a truly sustainable Detroit.

PRI-De is associated nationally and internationally with the Permaculture Research Institute of the USA and the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia as a Permaculture Master Plan project. We will hold our first PDC in March/April 2010.

Killian O’Brien
PRI-De (under construction)
admin (at) pri-de.org
(313) 647-4015