[Scpg] The Humanitarian Water and Food Award 2010 for The Permaculture Research Institute (PRI) for their initiative "Greening the Desert". Jordan

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

The Humanitarian Water and Food Award 2010  for The Permaculture 
Research Institute (PRI) for their initiative "Greening the Desert". 
Jordan
by Craig Mackintosh

http://permaculture.org.au/2010/11/30/we-won-and-are-winning/
Do you remember my mentioning we were amongst the finalists for the 
Humanitarian Water & Food Award for 2010? Well, it seems we stole the 
show with our Jordan work and won first place!

The Humanitarian Water and Food Award announced the 2010 winner last 
night, at its first ever award event held at LIFE, Faculty of Life 
Sciences, Copenhagen.

The prize, 10,000 Euros and a copy of the Award Statuette, was handed 
over to Rhamis Kent, representing The Permaculture Research Institute 
(PRI) for their initiative "Greening the Desert".

Representing the Selection Committee, Professor Alfred Opubor, 
commented that "the initiative brings us hope. With approaches that 
are easy to carry out, and replicable, PRI have clearly demonstrated 
we can produce food where it is needed in a sustainable way". - Water 
and Food Award

Aside from the very helpful 10,000 Euro prize, which will go to 
further our aid work in Jordan, the placing of permaculture design at 
top of a list of positive food and water initiatives is exciting on 
its own - permaculture is starting to get the recognition it 
deserves! Winning awards like this ensures that more and more 'high 
level' individuals and groups - people in a position to help make a 
real difference if they could only see both the writing on the wall 
and the holistic solutions available to change our course - will have 
our work brought to their attention.

Geoff was busy teaching in Turkey, so couldn't go along to accept the 
award, and being pretty busy (and preferring not to venture too far 
into the limelight myself!), I asked PRI helper Rhamis Kent, who was 
conveniently not far away in the UK, to head over to represent us and 
accept the award should it turn out to be ours. Rhamis got to speak 
to quite a few people interested in our work. Hopefully we'll be able 
to share a report from his trip with you all when he gets a moment to 
scribble something down.

As well as Rhamis, we would very much like to acknowledge and thank 
the authors of the submission for this award, Ms Ali Godfrey and Mr 
Matthew Salkeld. Their taking the initiative to work on the 
submission on our behalf is much appreciated.

Current economic realities present us with an interesting paradox. As 
pockets worldwide are hit, people tend to become less interested in 
'the environment'. Who can be green conscious when you're just trying 
to survive? That's where the paradox hits, and we confront 
permaculture. Although the interest in being 'green' may fall off the 
bottom of people's priority lists, their interest in survival goes 
up. We can expect a rush towards all concepts that offer resiliency 
and a healthier, better way of life. There has never been a better 
time to get involved in whatever capacity you can.
As far as I can see, it's permaculture, or bust.

On a related note - we can also celebrate another permaculture 
victory, in that Gary Caganoff's The Garden at the End of the World 
documentary on the work of Mahboba Rawi and Rosemary Morrow in 
tragically war torn Afghanistan has won the Human Rights Award 2010. 
Well done Gary and all involved!
Onwards!
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