Contact: Margie Bushman
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
(805) 962-2571, email: margie@sbpermaculture.org

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
 Permaculture Around the World Series

Child Soldiers of Liberia, Transformation through Permaculture
with Warren Brush

Saturday, October 4, 7-9pm 2008
Fundraiser Donation $10
Santa Barbara Central Library, Faulkner Gallery

        Please join Santa Barbara Permaculture Network as it launches its new series “Permaculture Around the World” by hosting a talk with Warren Brush of Quail Springs Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm as he talks about his journey and work in Liberia, West Africa. 
 
      Invited by the Santa Barbara based non-profit Everyday Gandhis ( www.everydaygandhis.org), Warren Brush traveled to Liberia to teach workshops in Permaculture as a part of a peace building process, with vocational training for many former child-soldiers from a brutal 15 year civil war the country had endured.  After the long civil war, the land was injured, but so were its children, now grown to young adults.  Caught in the nightmare of a war they didn’t create, but had been conscripted into, many were reluctant to return to their homes after the terrible atrocities of war. Could Permaculture help heal the land and its people?
 
Warren Brush made his first journey to Voinjama, Liberia in 2007 to teach a Permaculture course to students from a wide variety of backgrounds. These included elders of all the local tribes, medicine people, ex-combatant youth, trained agriculturists, subsistence farmers, men and women, all teaching translated into the local language.  Teaching sustainable agriculture and building techniques, as a part of the course, the students participated in a design project for a newly created Peace and Permaculture Demonstration Farm.  In March 2008, the first graduating class of a Permaculture Design Course in Liberia’s history received their diplomas from an assistant to the country's President H.E.Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, noting the significance of the event.

Permaculture (PERMAnent agriCULTURE) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems that have the diversity, resilience, and stability of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape with humans in providing shelter, water, food, energy and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable manner.

Quail Springs is a 450-acre working farm and wilderness center focused on modeling and teaching the concepts and practices of sustainability. Located in the Cuyama Valley north of Ojai, CA, Quail Springs ( www.quailsprings.org) has been incorporating Permaculture into all of its land practices on their farm and demonstration site since it's inception.  Permaculture teachers from around the world have taught at Quail Springs, and most recently, students from Liberia have attended advanced training courses there.  The hope is to share ecological design techniques and strategies with both the local communities of California and the world.  Currently Quail Springs is involved in a capital campaign to help build a Core Mentoring Center to accommodate this work, and join a network of Permaculture Training Centers around the globe.

Warren Brush is a certified Permaculture designer, educator, and storyteller. He is co-founder of Quail Springs Learning Oasis & Permaculture Farm, Wilderness Youth Project, Mentoring for Peace, and Trees for Children.  He works extensively in Permaculture education and sustainability design in North America and in Africa.  Follow Warren's work in Africa on his blog at http://web.mac.com/warrenbrush/iWeb/Site/African%20Journeys/African%20Journeys.html .

 
The event takes place at the Santa Barbara Public Library, Faulkner Gallery, 40 East Anapamu St, in downtown Santa Barbara, on Saturday, October 4, 7-9pm, 2008.  No reservations are required, fundraiser donation for Quail Springs work $10. For more information please call (805) 962-2571, or email margie@sbpermaculture.org; www.sbpermaculture.org. Sponsored by the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network and Everyday Gandhis.

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Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
   an educational non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie@sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org

"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in new directions, in order to grow." - Anonymous

First Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence August 2008
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org