This is an online space for sharing ideas, downloading some of the pre-course material, and being able to communicate before and after our time together.
Please take as much time as you need to look through the material and work with it:
+Tasks are more important, as some of them will relate to events at the course - the preparation work can be given as many hours as you have, though we are not looking for anything polished or perfect - just authentic to who you are. We invite your full participation
+Other than tasks, enjoy the links and pre-reading - it's leisure reading and links which will help you get in the mood.
Anyone can follow a study group on P2PU. Participating is the next level of engagement. The sign-up is a space where interested individuals can express their interest and background in the topic and commit to working with the rest of the participants. Please answer the following set(s) of questions if you want to become a participant or organizer.
This set of signup questions is common to all study groups, courses, ... in P2PU. The answers to these questions will be public once you get accepted.
This set of signup questions is particular to this study group. The answers to these questions will be public once you get accepted.
1. What most excites you about coming to Seeding Change?
2. What projects, ideas or organizations are you working with right now in your home area?
Bio:
46 Year old grand father of 4, grand father of 7.
Location: USA
Standard Set Answer:learning something new
none
Bio:
I am 34 years old. I have some college background but no degree yet. I have a 13 year old son. I still live at home with my parents and I help take care of my mother who has had MS for the past 34 years.
Location: Ballwin, Missouri
Standard Set Answer:I am 34 years old and have suffered from mental illness since I was 13 years old. This has greatly impacted my life and I have yet to discover what I would like to be when I "grow up". The one thing thing that I do know about my future and what I would like to do is that I would like to be able to help others who suffer and also inform and advocate on behalf of all others suffering from mental illnesses.
I hope to be able to learn to relate better with others.
I do not believe that I currently have the time to assist with the study group organization.
I am most excited about being able to take part in Seeding Change because it has been a very long time since I have been able to take part in any sort of meaningful social interaction.
Because of my mental illness I have not been able to undertake any projects or activities.
That is why when I saw this oppritunity I was very interested and hopeful because it seems like something that will be very meaningful to me and I feel that I can contribute quite a bit of my knowledge and experience to the group. With the hope pf at least being able to help someone else out there that is suffering.
Bio:
Location: bijapur
Standard Set Answer:hi
hi
Bio:
Location: UK
Standard Set Answer:Permaculture, community development
Discover and adopt useful tools for change
Bio:
Social entrepreneur
Location: Malaga
Standard Set Answer:I attended Seeding Change course, and I'd like to colaborate and stay in touch with the rest of the SC community
1. People who participate in it
2. A new social enterprise (Mercado Social) is being developed in Málaga. It intends to gather all different initiatives aimed to economic equity, ecology and justice.
Bio:
Location: Madrid
Standard Set Answer:This whole idea of change is attractive to me...
Getting new tools to face and implement change, and helping to turn ideas into real projects. Learning from other participants.
1. Learning and sharing.
2. Agroecological co-op (http://sindominio.net/wp/surcoasurco/) building a network in the center of Madrid formed by different co-ops and CSAs that can be the beginning of a new local economic syste. http://gruposdeconsumo.blogspot.com.es/.... And many other ideas.
Bio:
Born in Santiago de Compostela in 1981.
After living and working in Barcelona for about 8 years, in 2010 I decided to quit my job, travel and start walking on the path where I am now.
Location: Spain
Standard Set Answer:While living in the city I had been completely absorbed by long and stressful working hours, until it became unbearable.
Now my life is completely different, I feel more aware and I'm able to listen to my inner self.
Everything is driving me to a more sustainable life and I’m very interested on learning about permaculture and living in community.
By participating I hope to be in touch with people with similar interests and concerns, open my mind and create laces.
Right now I'm focusing on finding a Home where to grow my roots, create and share.
Bio:
Location:
Standard Set Answer:1.html,js
2.learn more
3.yes
Bio:
I am happy to find a moment to write this. I have been at Sunseed for three years, working in the organic gardens and more recently coordinating the project. I teach permaculture here and in other places and love exploring solutions for these crazy times and visioning and dreaming new futures with people. I practise and share non-violent communication techniques, deep ecology/work that reconnects. I want to create, with people and other species, healthy edible landscapes, regenerate ecosystems damaged by humans and develop healthy communities founded on sustainable cultures.
Location: almeria, spain
Standard Set Answer:I helped to get this course started, dreaming it up with patricia and martin last year and working on it to make it happen when we got the grant, with these two and cassandra and Sunseed people too. The topic brings together these two often separate parts of our lives, inner self and outer life.
I am excited to host this on a personal level and for Sunseed too. I can't wait to meet everyone, such diverse backgrounds, cultures etc yet coming together with some similar passions, interests.
This work is what i would like to do more of, getting people together, sharing life experiences, skills, methods, and care for the world.
Bio:
Educator & Communicator. II worked in Italy with ARCI Chieti – Officine Culturali, as coordinator of the Education Area, working on different issues: sustainable development, ethical consumption, fair trade, human rights, interculturality, pacifism, active and participative citizenship, art and culture promotion… ; at local and at a European level, with the Youth European Programme, organising youth exchanges, contact seminars, training courses, EVS European Voluntary Service, etc..
During the last few years I become more involved and interested about ecological, social, economical and humanitarian issues, taking part in different courses and activities, such as organic gardening, eco construction, and self development, before I arrived at Sunseed.
It's 3 years now that I'm at Sunseed as Coordinator of Education & Communication Department, doing many interesting things, organising courses, mainly Permaculture & ecobuilding. I'm also in to the networking, being a link with the Iberic Ecovillages Network, the Cooperativa Integral Cabo de Gata and other local groups and Associations. I'm also training in Dragon Dreaming (is my current passion) buy I'm fascinated by many other expresions of human and nature. Ready for learning & sharing !!!!
Location: Los Molinos del Rio Aguas - Almeria - Spain
Standard Set Answer:I'm co-organising this course.
1. The Challenge of a new project. The possibilty to co-create the Seeding of the change and have 7 full days to explore and go deep about how to create the world that we want, how to contribute to the change..to the great turn.
The amount of interesting & amazing people is going to come and I'm going to meet!!!!!
2. This Course - Sunseed - And a new project without name 
Bio:
i'm an idealistic, yet somewhat practical multitasker. i constantly find myself learning new stuff and teaching it the next day. i've changed quite a lot during last couple of months, so it's hard for me to put any labels on myself. I am motivated by social and ecological concerns, and willing to work on finding solutions to the pressing problems in these fields. I believe in empowering people and giving them information rather than forcing ethical living upon them.. eh, it's hard to sum this up :)
Location: tallinn, estonia
Standard Set Answer:i hope this gives an opportunity to get to know the participants before the actual meeting, thus enabling more productive cooperation. if i have enough time, i would like to look into the interests and hopes and wishes of the others and start planning my input to their ideas.
the question about "helping with the study group organization" -- i have no idea what that might mean, but if needed then sure, i'm always ready to help.
i really look forward to cooperation possibilities and learning about the experience of other participants (regarding the environmental, social, political, economical and cultural problems they have witnessed), but i'm also excited about seeing the Sunseed Spain in action, in all of its innovativeness. the topic of personal growth is also close to my heart right now.
in addition to working hard with "personal development" (sorting out my life) i'm also sort-of involved with many different projects. since it's a snowy winter here already, we're working on the eco-village project only on paper, now. as a new idea, i'm trying to organise an environmentally concious arts and crafts course for small children in the neighborhood. i try to help my friend start his wind turbine building classes, and we're writing a project for financial support for solar panels. mainly i spend time on my personal life goal: helping people getting started with their ideas, giving moral support, computer assistance, editing texts and sending them contacts and information. again, it's hard to describe, there's a lot of different small stuff going on :)
Bio:
I live in the Northwest of Ireland in Leitrim County in a town called Carrick on Shannon.
I live with my wife Geraldine and son Shane. I have two daughters Zolene and Tara.
I am a ceramic tiler and farmer. I keep Jacob sheep, a sow, bees and two donkey's on our 15 acre farm.
Location: Carrick on Shannon Leitrim, Ireland.
Standard Set Answer:
I have worked with my friend on various projects using hemp and lime and helped him to build his Eco home which he calls an Econo-space. Later I helped with his studio which he built using mud and straw around a wooden frame.
I was introduced to Sunseed by a friend and wanted to visit sometime but did not think it would be this soon as I only heard about it six weeks ago.
I have always realized that life is for learning and sharing and I want to gather as much information as possible not only from Sunseed but from the other participants from around Europe.
I will use the experience at Sunseed to enhance my own community when I return to Ireland.
I am also willing to help in any way I can.
At the moment I am working on transforming my 15 acre drumlin farm into a social farm, fit for people and disadvantaged groups to visit and experience nature at work.
I have recently created a large pond and extended an old laneway to make a circular walk through the farm. This winter my son and I will be carrying out a hedge management project which will include hedge-laying and coppicing.
Later we will introduce owl boxes, plant trees and create a wild flower meadow.
I am very much involved with the anti Fracking movement and I am a member of NO FRACKING IRELAND. I am one of six admins on the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/146055765467930/which has over 4000 members.
The extraction of gas from Shale rock by means of hydraulic fracturing will destroy our already fragile environment.
So the two projects that I give my time to are to BAN fracking and enhance my farm.
Bio:
I am 25 years old, living in the Netherlands. I love learning and connecting people and ideas. Since a year I deepened my interest in the topic of city farming, on a smale scale intensively trying to grow my of food/herbs. One of my dreams is to bring more green and edible (meeting) spaces in cities.
Location: Utrecht
Standard Set Answer:
Diversity: meeting change makers from different countries, exchanging experience
Holisitic approach to sustainability: permaculture as systemic and holistic, hands-on change filosofy for the future
Reflection: what I can use for starting my own social enterprise
Community: learning from other experiences.
Permaculture in practice: experiencing a permaculture sight in the Southern of Spain, see how the same principles are applied onto a different climate than in Holland.
NVC: practice and see how I could use/integrate it as a common language this for building communities?
What study group and organization ? Seed?
1. What most excites you about coming to Seeding Change?
2. What projects, ideas or organizations are you working with right now in your home area?
Growing Edges (project name, social enterprise), Utrecht, the Netherlands
Last year I started a blog about city farming, homescale growing food in the city. I have been writing about initiatives world wide and the actions I undertake. In the meanwhile I am studyinh the topic of permaculture. For next season I want to establish a social enterprise that brings more green into peoples citylifes. Organising workshops, events, selling seeds/books and tools and maybe more..
I am still working on building the brand, name, website, building partnerships and setting the first events for next year 2013.
Bio:
I'm from England. I've got a background in community education and development. I embrace all the pioneering creative, positive people, organisations and movements that are in transition to a happier, healthier post-industial world. I think permaculture provides principles for life. I love nature, music, growing food, and being inspired by learning new things and meeting new people.
I have extensive experience and interests in social enterprise, community economics, community resilience and conflict resolution. I've many years' experience of community activism and I'm a campaigner/activist for debt-free, democratic (by and for the people), ethical (value-based), transparent (open and honest) money systems.
Location: London/Ireland/Spain
Standard Set Answer:I'm interested in nature, peace, justice and solidarity. I hope to meet other like-minded people and to learn from the collective wisdom of the group. I am always interested in how we can learn from each other and move forward together.
Sharing experiences, skills, knowledge, insights. Meeting new people, making new friends, inspiring each other, celebrating differences, embracing creativity, a sense of togetherness, progress, positive relationships, solidarity.
I'm working with Positive Money, Share Think and Act, Transition networks, and much more!
Bio:
Sun sign - Leo, Ascendant - Leo, Moon in Pices :-)
By human design - Manifesting Generator, emotional authority, profile4/6 :-)
Interests: sustainable living, rural areas, youth work, non-formal education
Location: Plovdiv
Standard Set Answer:Most of my time I’ve been working on a voluntary basis being an active member of the non-profit making organization Traditional Culture and Sustainable Development. The theme of this workshop fits to our mission.
I hope: to get acquainted with a model community of low impact living in Spain; to establish contacts with people having the same philosophy of life as I and make new friends; to start cooperation with the host organization and with other, if there will be such representatives; to improve my knowledge of Spanish; to explore Spain, where I have never been before..
I am ready to help with whatever necessry.
In fact – everything about this workshop is exciting for me!
Staring from the title: “Seeding change”, which in my perception implies active citizenship to make change in the community, which I am doing I would say all my conscious life. By the way, in 2010 I was leading an EVS (European Voluntary Service) project in a mountainous village in Bulgaria. I helped the young volunteers from differnt countries to develop a project proposal, which they called “Seeds of Change“ J
Contentof the program: I am sure I can learn something new, and I have a lot to share with the local team and the other participants.
The venue of the workshop: rural environment, protected area nearby, Spain J.
Not only talking, but also doing it: law impact living during the workshop itself.
Right now I am exploring different opportunities for starting projects in the frame of the LLP program, as well as the Rural Development program.
Bio:
Hi, I am Inara from Latvia. I do believe that to change the word around me I have to start with myself. To change something we need 1) knowledge; 2) motivation. So I use every single change to get new knowledge and to meet people with similar thinking, ideas and aims. There are things what I can do myself, and there are things what we can do with joint forces ( physical, mental and spiritual). I am open and willing to change ( sometimes it is not easy at all).
Location: IKSKILE, LATVIA
Standard Set Answer:
1. To meet people with similar interests from different countries, to learn more about social aspects (tools how to approach community), to visit Sunseed village and to see how it works.
2. We have several projects (at the moment small ones, as we have not sucseeded in fund raising yet), they are:
Bio:
I am a young wanna-be-researcher on migration and a member of the local activist Group for Social Action founded around the ideas of: worker’s rights, urban change, and solidarity.
Location: Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Standard Set Answer:I heard about permaculture and saw some activities related to that and I wanted to have hands-on-experience with it and since I’m an urbanite, I personally hope to learn the principles of permaculture and to find ways of integrating and/or adapting them to the urban context. I'd be happy to be part of the ogranization of the study group.
Since I’m eagerly interested in urban change, landscape change I can bring with me some both theoretical and practical examples of local urban changes and share experiences as local activist.
I recently became, since I moved to Cluj-Napoca for a part-time job as young researcher on migration, member of the Group for Social Action NGO, a leftist group that aims to contribute to defining problems, launch public debates and generate solutions for a more democratic and equitable society. They are mostly involved in activities with local impact: worker’s rights, urban change, and solidarity in terms of taking a public position, but also taking part in manifestations and public events regarding other activists’ actions.
Bio:
I grew up in the Czech Republic, Portugal and Brazil, but my home has always been the closest patch of forest. I´m currently in a period of transition after having studied and worked in the United States for the past 10 years.
I´m fortunate to have an education in biology, teaching, nature-based mentoring, inquiry, wilderness survival, and permaculture. I love exploring and strengthening my connections to nature, community, and self, and supporting other people in doing the same. My favorite way to do this is going on walks with goats, but I love any and all ways of being with+in nature.
I´m currently traveling and learning about the cultural & ecological landscape of Europe, and I´m loooking for a place to settle down and a group to work with. My most recent discoveries include the Chestnut forests of Northern Spain, and the semi-nomadic goatherding practices from the island of La Palma. I speak English, Portuguese, Portuñol (Portuguese/Spanish mix) and Czech, and I´m looking forward to meeting you all at Sunseed.
Location: Galicia, Spain
Standard Set Answer:I am interested in learning and sharing ways to find my way through a transition and get to a place where I am contributing to a place/project. I´m curious about meeting others who are in a period of change or transition and exploring some of the questions we share.
I´d love to get some feedback/outside perscpectives on my journey so far, to share some of the techniques and skills I carry to help others on their journeys, and to leave feeling more oriented and with a cleared vision of where I want to go and what I want to do.
I´m interested in helping organize and will have limited internet access, so a non-internet-based way of helping is best for me.
I´ve already written a lot about why I´m excited to come to Seeding Change, so I´ll write more about my projects :-)
I am currently traveling through the regions of Galicia and Asturias, in Northen Spain, learning about the social, cultural, and ecological landscape. I am connecting with older people and learning from them about the traditional ways of caring for and using the edible chestnut forests of the region, as well as about how they work with livestock. Many of the people living in this area either still are, or remember being, completely self-sustaining with their food needs, and have been forest-gardening with chestnuts for the past 2000 years. I feel drawn to learn about and gather some of their knowledge, as well as gathering knowledge about semi-nomadic goatherding. I am also visiting some permaculture and ecological agriculture sites in the area.
This summer, I attended and gave workshops at the European Permaculture Convergence and the UK convergence. In the US, I was a part of the Wilderness Awareness School community, and explored wild and cultivated nature with groups of 4-6 and 10-13 year-old students.
I am curious about how my passions for teaching/mentoring, goatkeeping, inquiry, and community-building will come together into a livelihood.
Bio:
I believe food is more than just food in our belly. That access to healthy, sustainable food is vital for our physical and mental health as a species.
I think we are losing the understanding of the miracle that is plant life – the process by which these amazing things take sun, rain and soil and create the basis for life. Everything that we survive on comes back to plants taking energy from the sun – no matter how much we process and package it.
In 2008 I travelled working as a volunteer in communities and farms across the world. I saw many countries where the peoples’ right and ability to feed themselves and their families has been lost or taken away. Where people are starving because access to food has been put under lock and key.
And in my country of birth, the UK, I can see that here too we are dying and malnourished because we have become disconnected with ways of sustainably feeding ourselves.
We urgently need to consider how our food systems will cope in the coming years. How can we work with nature and biological cycles to improve our horticultural production? And how do we do it without increasing environmental degradation, climate change or consumption of finite resources.
I believe that we are at a crossroads. If you look to one side there are many horrifying things, factory farming, monocoulture, companies literally trying to patent and own life and on the other side there are there are many amazing people, communites and projects, community supported agriculture, permaculture, biodynamic farming.
I'm trying to be part of that growing number of people who are trying to follow the best path at the crossroads.
Location: Totnes, Devon,UK
Standard Set Answer:I'm going to be joining the Sunseed Community in November for their Seeding Change website.
1. I'm expecting to be inspired and challenged and I want to get as much out of my time at Sunseed as possible. I can find it hard put my personal beliefs, ideas and emotions on display for others to see but I believe to get the most of my time at Sunseed I'll need to have to courage to open up. This which is why I chose the herb borage, which is traditionally associated with courage, as my profile picture. John Gerard in his Herball writes:
'Those of our time do use the floures in sallads to exhilerate and make the minde glad. There be also many things made of them, used for the comfort of the heart, to drive away sorrow, & increase the joy of the minde.... driving away all sadnesse, dulnesse, and melancholy, as Dioscorides and Pliny affirme.'
2. I volunteer with Ecominds on a project called Spring to Life, which takes young people in mental health distress out into nature and teaches them skills such as wild food foraging, firelighting and green wood working. I'm also becoming involved in a project which is building a garden providing training, employment and volunteering opportunities for adults with learning difficulties.
I am also presently gardening and teaching sustainable horticulture at Schumacher College in Dartington.
Bio:
I live last 6 years in Ikaria island, Greece working in the start on environmental research coordination of a multinational team of scientists for an N.G.O. I started exploring the flora and the fauna of the island and get interested for the ecology either on level of earth protection but also on everyday level, like production of my food. I am a mountain guide, herb - mushroom - wildfruits collector and beekeeper and for the moment i am out of home almost for a year visiting collective projects on Spain,France and Greece trying to work on the same moment, selling my herbs and trying to arrange ecotourism activities back in Ikaria.
The main idea i work on the moment with other friends is the creation of an agricultural cooperative of social purpose, as an answer to the lack of local production where we live and preparing an activist group against a huge industrial plan of win turbines inside the natura areas of Ikaria's mountains.
See you all soon...
Location: Ikaria island, Greece
Standard Set Answer:1. Taking an idea of the Sunseed organisation as it works exactly on all the ideas i am interested and i try to implement in my everyday life last years, meeting people with common worries and dreams and make new friends
2. I work for the creation of an agricultural cooperative of social purpose, planning to create a farm on public land based on the principles of natural farming and permaculture.
I work for the conservation of the traditonal stone trails of Ikaria island, and i organise ecotourism activities
I participate to a movement against an industrial plan of air turbines inside protected areas of natura zones in Ikaria's mountains.
