SEEDS, the time for sowing is now — Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance Course
SEEDS, the time for sowing is now
It’s all about sowing, then reap. Sow food. Sow trust. Sow the future.
Many folk I know around here (Northern Hemisphere, Mediterranean climate) have started sowing so their seedlings will be ready for the spring plant out in the vegetable gardens.
This spring has brought me a bunch of somewhat different Seeds to sow!
I enrolled in the Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance course that sounded quite cool… “Better-than-free” and the image the use is kind of funky (couldn’t find the source just now).
Its main theme is SEEDS. Hey, isn’t this the community and regenerative currency colleagues in the Permaculture CoLab are working with/on? I believe it is! Besides that… didn’t that one contact send me an invite to its “Passport” (the phone app) a couple of months ago? Sure is!
So here I find myself at the beginning of 2021… 2020 was one hell of a ride which made me totally re-design my life, and this year it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to go back to any of what was (job as a hiking guide for slow but foreign tourists on the Balearic Islands, enjoying and slowly building my new relationship with a man a boat or plane trip away on the Spanish peninsula — where I now am since lock down number 1 last year — and still keeping my network of friends and connections…).
I miss the hiking, the island, my friends… (I’m the second from the right)…
I’m not complaining though (too much). I feel I am amongst the privileged for having a computer, a reasonably stable internet connection, and some savings from my rather fast flat sale on Mallorca at the end of 2019 (I felt I HAD TO sell, who knows why, so I sold with a loss, but at least I am now mortgage free and so glad I took the offer at the time!).
Having to do another year without hikers is not going to hack it though, the savings having been eaten up by 1 year no income; luckily the demand for Sustainability and Permaculture Design is on the up, and how!
We can’t service the demand Permacultura Mediterránea has just now for in-person courses and training due to the covid-19 restrictions, but online is the new place-to-be! So I’m happily mentoring online permaculture students in the Permaculture Women’s Guild course, tutoring participants in the Diploma programs of the Integral Permaculture Academy as well as the Spanish Permacultura Íbera Academy, co-facilitating Gaia Education’s online Ecological Design Dimension, and re-inventing the course we had started with the cooperative and farm school Mas Les Vinyes locally, but that had to be stopped mid-way. We’re even prepping for a MOOC at the Barcelona University! Exciting times and lovely to be able to share our passion with others, even if it is virtually for now.
Online teaching makes for me needing to cross reference and double check a lot more content continuously though, as most of the immediate human interaction and collective intelligence input falls away due to the virtual and often pre-recorded container. This means I have to up my game and be loads more knowledgeable! Yaiks! Imposter Syndrome creeps up!
I am always keen to learn though and to keep recycling the knowledge I have received over time, so that I am indeed able to pass on the best and up-to-date possible information on the matter. Now it’s more needed than ever! In these difficult and daunting times, I feel I want to and can “accelerate succession”, above and beyond our own little “island” of downsizing and resilience at home (looking for a site to house a “La Casa Integral” Living Lab just now!), so actively promoting this extremely promising and regenerative crypto-currency and its community might just be another branch on the resilience tree!
Therefore, when coming across this “Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance” — course, it caught my eye… and my interest! Pay with Seeds, get a course, get lots of opportunity to connect with like minded people. then get loads more of those same Seeds back if you complete the course and the homework?! I’m in!
And as the Permaculture Principle goes: multi-function as much as you can to “Catch and Store Energy”. In this case, I want to learn more about SEEDS because of my interest in Permaculture’s so called “Invisible Structures”, I want to see it in action, I would like to see what other people see as “Tools for the Regeneration” and I definitely am always up for building bridges and making connections. Seemed the right way to go, signing up for this course!
Lucky I did, so it seems, as there now is a 450+ waiting list of people wanting to get into the next edition of it! So much good info in this course, many really practical tools and loads of eye-opening information on Regenerative Agriculture, on Energy Sovereignty, on Resilience in our Economy, on Going Horizontal in our organizations, on taking response-ability and co-owning the company where we work or even where we shop, on Regeneration of our Ecosystem and on the connections and beautiful and inspiring conversations that emerge out of the facilitated time spent with other participants in this course.
So I can only say it is so going to rock your world! I feel like the day I came out of my very first Permaculture Design Course a decade ago! This means that SEEDS have indeed been sown, and I am very much looking forward to the harvest of these particular seeds!
Next step? I have enrolled into the SEEDS Ambassador Academy to get my head around the tech side of things (blockchain, DAOs and DHOS, capping and AI for the app…) and then hopefully getting on to translating a lot of the material to Spanish. As Permaculture uses Action Learning and as the Pyramid for true Learning states: “I can best learn by teaching”, I’m up for opening this new pathway, and co-design for the resilience of my local future. I believe I can currently contribute more effectively to my more local and bio-regional network in this way, than sitting around for the restrictions to be lifted until we can teach in-person courses again! So roll on SEEDS “career”!
Because that is what Permaculture Design is all about, it’s about designing within your context, it’s about covering your needs within the current resources and limits, it’s about generating resilient ecosystems. And that is what I feel SEEDS is: a thriving and bio-diverse ecosystem making use of the tech in an appropriate manner and here to help us reach our Vision of living sustainably, yes, regeneratively, on this planet!
(Drop me a line on AlineVaMo@protonmail.com if you want more info and/or an invite to the Passport)
