Oct.2 - Nov. 21, 2010 /LA Permaculture Design Course/The L

Permaculture is sustainable land use design based on ecologically sound principles. Its aim is harmonizing habitats and inhabitants, creating richly productive food systems. Permaculture is an eye-opening set of principles and concepts that make a tremendous impact on communities. This experiential course is a practical, project-oriented, support training. It moves beyond theory to hands-on applications. Participants will become certified permaculture designers upon successful completion.

An environment of support and unity between classmates is fostered, which will enable collaboration in design projects and a strong network of fellow designers. The subjects to be covered have the potential to generate green jobs and abundance of all kinds.

Warren Brush is a certified Permaculture designer and teacher as well as a mentor and storyteller. He has worked for over 20 years in inspiring people of all ages to discover, nurture and express their inherent gifts while living in a sustainable manner. 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 sustainable systems design in North America and in Africa through his design firm, True Nature Design. He can be reached through email at w@quailsprings.org or by calling his office at 805-886-7239.

Howard Yana-Shapiro, PhD is the rare visionary who is also a success in his own lifetime. He is currently the global director of plant science and external research for Mars, Inc. Howard has guided Mars toward the goal of 100% sustainably-sourced carob production since joining up with the company in the latter 1990Åås.

His more than 35 years working with sustainable agricultural and agroforestry systems, plant systems, plant genetics, and food production systems in Europe, Asia, Africa, Mesoamerica, South America, and in the United States have led to his being a party to functional ecological enhancements the world over. During his years as a geneticist, he released over sixty lines of maize, helianthus, and tagetes into the public domain.

In 2008 Howard was named a fellow of the World Agroforestry Centre, and was lead author on the biotechnology and biodiversity chapter of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, a study initiated by the World Bank.

Howard's latest ventures include directing Mars' global cacao genome sequencing work (in conjunction with IBM and the USDA's agricultural research service) and engaging the 17 heads of state that comprise the African Union to implement an economically sound ecological roadmap for Africa.

Lois Arkin is the Executive Director of CRSP (the Cooperative Resources & Services Project), the nonprofit organization she founded in 1980 as a resource center for small ecological cooperative communities. In 1993, she co-founded the Los Angeles Eco-Village. Lois' current focus is CRSP' emerging Institute for Urban Ecovillages which provides training, education and resources for urban ecological cooperative community development.

Lois is the former editor for the "Ecovillage Living" column in Communities Magazine, represents the Western U.S. with the Ecovillage Network of the Americas, and is on the board of the Global Village Institute as well as on the Community Advisory Committee of the Wilshire Center/Koreatown Redevelopment Area. A co-founder of the Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust, she lives and works in LA Eco-Village, and is passionate about reducing auto use in L.A.

Lois co-authored and co-edited Sustainable Cities: Concepts and Strategies for Eco-City Development which won an American Planning Association-L.A. Section award. A second book she co-authored and co-edited, Cooperative Housing Compendium: Resources for Collaborative Living, was published by the Center for Cooperatives at U.C. Davis. She received a second award from the APA-L.A. Section for Advocacy Planning in the late 1980s, and recently the L.A. Eco-Village received the Local Hero Award from the Returned Peace Corps Members of Los Angeles.

Anaturalist from a young age, and a childhood witness to rapid land degradation in one of the world's biodiversity hotspots, Owen Hablutzel has since taken a whole-systems approach to the ecological design and management of ranches, farms, and landscapes; working with landowners and communities to address this global issue. Having worked and lived in Africa, Australia , and much of the western United States , he received world-class training in Permaculture systems-design science through Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton, and Keyline Design® under mentor Darren Doherty. His ecological work includes Keyline soil building and water harvesting; building swales, farm dams, riparian and wildlife buffer strips; integrated whole farm planning; watershed restoration, dryland afforestation, grazing planning, garden and food forest extension; gully rehabilitation; greening desertified rangelands, Holistic Management® and more. Integrating a broad spectrum of practical, leading-edge solutions to the global ecological crisis, Owen serves as director for the Permaculture Research Institute USA, while growing his ecological consulting and education businesses. Owen holds a masters in Eastern Philosophy from St. John's College, New Mexico.

Kirstie Stramler holds a Bachelor's in Geophysics from UC Santa Barbara and a Doctorate in Atmospheric Science from Columbia University, where she apprenticed with climate scientists Anthony Del Genio and William Rossow at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA/GISS). After working at a government laboratory for a few years, Kirstie's impatience with the glacial pace of scientific revolutions compelled her to leave the field of basic scientific research in pursuit of solutions that have the potential to stabilize the earth's fluid envelope and failing ecosystems while simultaneously allowing humans to thrive. After realizing that Permaculture is an ecological design system that has such potential, Kirstie trained with Geoff Lawton for the Permaculture Design Course, and with Rosemary Morrow for the Permaculture Aid Worker Course. Kirstie is currently developing sustainability curricula for schools and communities, researching alternative economic systems, and is a producer at Permaculture.TV.

A permaculture designer and educator from San Francisco, California, Lindsay Dailey is part of a new generation of permaculture teachers working on the edge of what permaculture can do to restore landscapes and create abundance. Lindsay has worked passionately in the realm of sustainability education since 2001. She is a founding member of Villa Sobrante, an urban permaculture and natural building demonstration site and community in the East Bay. She also founded Earth Repair, a regenerative design and education firm inspiring people to build topsoil and rehydrate the land while growing useful and edible plants.

Gavin Raders is a co-founder and volunteer-executive director of Planting Justice, a social justice activist, and a permaculture demonstrator/teacher. Gavin has gone through extensive training with some of the most inspiring and effective permaculture teachers in the world: Geoff Lawton, Penny Livingston-Stark, Brock Dolman, Darren Dougherty, and Nik Bertulis.

Prior to co-founding Planting Justice, Gavin interned at the Regenerative Design Institute in 2007-2008, studied cultural anthropology at UC Berkeley, and organized on a range of anti-war, anti-nuclear, environmental and human rights issues, including knocking on nearly 30,000 doors in California, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada as a community organizer with Peace Action West. In India, Gavin studied and advocated for the right to water and against its privatization by massive water corporations (such as Coca-Cola), which you can read about in his Berkeley Undergraduate Journal publication.

Gavin thus came to permaculture and ecological design through a social justice framework which recognizes the right of all people to peace, security, housing, healthy food, clean water, jobs and healthcare, and the rights of future generations to a just and livable world. For this to happen, he believes that Americans need to understand and respect the intimate connection and the shared fate we have with all people and all life on this planet, and organize effectively on the local level to come up with replicable and effective solutions to the range of hardships and oppressions we currently face. Gavin explained Planting Justice's socially and ecologically just philosophy and successful business model to a rapt group of food justice activists at this year's US Social Forum, and encouraged his audience to replicate Planting Justice's efforts in their own locales [link to watch videos of Gavin at USSF 2010].