Andriy – Tepla Gora

In 2019 Andriy Grushetsky co-founded Tepla Gora, an eco-community and retreat centre in the mountains in the west of Ukraine. They own 5 hectares of land and they practice eco-living by collecting rainwater, using solar panels, wind turbines, and compost toilets.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Tepla Gora has been providing shelter for refugees. This includes war veterans and people who have been displaced from their homes. They are providing food, shelter, and psychological and logistic help to anybody who needs it.

Visit the website for Tepla Gora

See the Tepla Gora guidebook

CoLab Podcast with Andriy © 2023 by Learn Team is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International 

The creation of this podcast episode was made possible through funding received from the Emergent Festival.

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Clement – Dream Village Project

Clement Mathorwmasen is from Ghana. He grew up on the streets and many people helped him to create a new life. He wanted to find a way to give back to the community and find a purpose. When Clement was assisting a local community to set up a water system, young people started coming to him, and Dream Village grew up organically.

Clement set up a college for young people who were left behind by the education system. They teach sustainable agriculture as well as business and marketing. They also train small-holding farmers in permaculture practices. Dream Village has built an eco-village using sustainable materials where they grow local crops using agroforestry.

Visit the website for Dream Village

CoLab Podcast with Clement © 2023 by Learn Team is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International 

The creation of this podcast episode was made possible through funding received from the Emergent Festival.

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Rakesh – Roots ‘n’ Permaculture

Rakesh “Rootsman” Rak was born in the UK. He works around Europe and sometimes in India. He is the founder of Roots n Permaculture. The name comes from his background as a reggae DJ. Rakesh runs courses and workshops and has created Roots n Permaculture as a community of students that can support each other after their permaculture studies.

He is involved in trying to decolonize permaculture. Indigenous cultures already lived in harmony with nature and used their resources wisely. The colonizers, who have destroyed the natural world, have now repackaged indigenous values and branded them as “permaculture”.

Warning: this interview contains some expletives

Visit the website for Roots n Permaculture

Visit Rakesh’s other online content

CoLab Podcast with Rakesh © 2023 by Learn Team is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International 

The creation of this podcast episode was made possible through funding received from the Emergent Festival.

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Cathrine – The Nordic Permaculture Academy

Cathrine Dolleris lives on a small island in Denmark. She lives on a plot of land and is 50% self-sufficient when it comes to her food sources. She gets food from a forest garden, no dig beds, hens, fermenting, and foraging.

She is the co-founder of the Nordic Permaculture Academy. Its primary purpose is to provide facilitation, mentoring, and networking services to apprentices pursuing a Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design. This will enhance their skills within regenerative practices and as efficient designers. The Nordic Permaculture Academy wants to promote a world that is aligned with the permaculture ethics.

Visit the website for the Nordic Permaculture Academy

CoLab Podcast with Cathrine © 2023 by Learn Team is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International 

The creation of this podcast episode was made possible through funding received from the Emergent Festival.

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Daniel and Candida – Climate Design Project

Daniel Mello-Mattos and Cândida Shinn live on an organic farm cultivated for the past 50 years in the countryside of the Algarve, in the South of Portugal. The farm has apple, fig, pear, persimmon, custard apple, guava, 9 varieties of avocado, 15 varieties of citrus, apricot, peach, plum, sapote, Surinam cherry, mulberry, loquat, almond, walnut, pecan, macadamia, pistachio, olive trees, carob trees, cape gooseberry, pomegranate, passion fruit, blackberry, grape, a great variety of aromatic herbs, more than 50 ornamental trees and flowers, besides a large diversity of spontaneous native vegetables and herbs. There is also an Agroforest, vegetable gardens, compost units, a nursery for fruit trees, a garden and natives, a well-equipped workshop, a woodworking workshop (carpentry), a toolshed, plenty of spots for meditating and resting, a small pool, a trampoline, dry toilets, and a complete house and facilities for volunteers. This is all embedded within the educational program they hold through Ecotopias, a school for Sustainability and Regeneration.

Their main project is called Climate Design, whose purpose is to mosaic landscapes across continents, nurturing strategic partnerships to restore and rebuild livelihoods in the mountains and ranges, with biodiverse forests and agroforests, to influence and interact with climate on both regional and continental scales.

Visit the website for Ecotopias

CoLab Podcast with Daniel and Candida © 2023 by Learn Team is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International 

The creation of this podcast episode was made possible through funding received from the Emergent Festival.

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Aimee Fenech – Finca Verde

Aimee works as the project manager of the International Permaculture CoLab. She is the owner and steward of Finca Verde, a 4-hectare farm in the South of Spain. It is a very dry area affected by climate change, and Aimee is aiming to have a positive effect on the local environment.

She is transforming the farm from a conventional farm, using pesticides, insecticides, and soil tilling, into a regenerative agricultural farm. She is using permaculture solutions, such as planting green manure, putting ground cover on the land, and using a black water treatment system.

Visit the website for Finca Verde

CoLab Podcast with Aimee © 2023 by Learn Team is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International 

The creation of this podcast episode was made possible through funding received from the Emergent Festival.

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