This two-week, hands-on training brings together sustainability designers, teachers and practitioners with enthusiasts who want to learn how to implement projects that integrate and localize solutions to meet basic human needs of healthy water, food and shelter.
Through hands-on projects,
demonstrations and presentations, classes and discussions, participants
will have a chance to wrap their heads, hearts and hands around:
Here in El Manzano we are interested in solutions that work, in a positive approach to creating regenerative landscapes. We realise that the anti business and government approach to activism based on negative crises campaigns has largely failed us. It is time to move on.
One regenerative strategy to the transgenic problem, for example, is on the saving, growing and sharing of organic open pollinated seed varieties. This is a regenerative, positive, and solutions based strategy that is very subversive to the intentions of corporations like Monsanto. If we retain our own seeds, and control our own food supply, thier strategies become irrelevant, we can transcended the problem.
There are basically three broad strategies available to those of us who wish to see an equitable, healthy and viable human future:
In addition to enhancing nutrient availability, carbon performs many other functions in soil, including the maintenance of soil porosity, aeration and water-holding capacity.
Glenn Morris (Morris 2004) extensively researched the water holding capacity of humus (an extremely stable form of soil carbon) and concluded that within the soil matrix, one part of soil humus could, on average, retain a minimum of four parts of soil water.
From this relationship it can be calculated that an increase of 16.8 litres (almost two buckets) of extra plant available water could be stored per square metre in the top 30 cm (12”) of soil with a bulk density of 1.4 g/cm3, for every 1% increase (in absolute terms) in the level of soil organic carbon.
A community of active citizens is forming in BíoBío, connecting and
collaborating for the transition of the region. Over the weekend 5-6 of
July they put on a show; Expostsismo 2, the second feria for sustainable
reconstruction post February 27th earthquake.
Almost 600 people attended the two day event in Chillan-Viejo, content to have connected to local people with simple solutions at hand. Everyone is reminded that sustainability is not a distant goal, nor something terribly complex and difficult, but starts in humble acts of responsibility, at the centre of sustainable economies; the household. If many people can make a small contribution starting at theif own front door, a wave of change arises.
This is the second story from the learning process in Millenrama. You can read the first here.
The week 5-9th of May 2010 team El Manzano was hosted in Millenrama, Mantagua, 5th region to run an Applied Permaculture Design course.
As El Manzano tests ideas for assisting people and communities to engage in transition and design for resilient human settlements, the team develops competency in the delivery of catalytic learning events, in facilitation and leadership by design. As the experience is reviewed once again it is confirmed that there is no power equal to a community deciding what it will become.
FRESH is more than a movie, it’s a gateway to action. Our aim is to help grow FRESH food, ideas, and become active participant in an exciting, vibrant, and fast-growing movement.
Helping the First World Reduce its Ecological Footprint
While Vandana Shiva was in Berlin recently promoting her book ‘Soil Not Oil’, Andreas Teuchert and Thomas Finger of Transition Berlin,
who were filming the event, spontaneously asked her for her thoughts on
what the Transition Towns movement could do that is of real use for
people in the global south.
She said that “the most important pressure the people in the south face
is the grabbing of their resources to feed a consumer machinery in the
north.” She points out that while there are a number of products that
the north can’t provide such as spices, coffee and cotton, fresh
vegetables are the reason that poor peasants are losing their land.
Masanobu Fukuoka is another of the major pioneers of sustainable agriculture
who came to the 2nd International Permaculture Conference. We spoke with
him a few days before the conference while he was visiting the Abundant
Life Seed Foundation in Port Townsend, Washington.
Spanish
Interview with Carolina Heidke 
A community of active citizens is forming in BíoBío, connecting and
collaborating for the transition of the region. Over the weekend 5-6 of
July they put on a show; Expostsismo 2, the second feria for sustainable
reconstruction post February 27th earthquake.
This is the second story from the learning process in Millenrama. You can
One of the articles in 
