You Never Have To Dream Alone
Heading to Peru last August, I hoped to leave with passion. The Living Change team certainly delivered! As down-to-Earth and friendly people, they all made great facilitators and led many engaging discussions on permaculture design topics including how to use zones, chemical-free pesticide alternatives, how to close waste systems and how communities develop resiliency. The PDC portion of the course definitely provided me with basic permaculture knowledge and having the opportunity to apply them practically to the Kaway Monti site was priceless. The other aspects of the course such as community development and local culture immersion were equally inspiring!
Working with a real design team to come up with a magical and educational program for the Llupa primary school was an experience I’ll forever cherish. Racking our brains for ideas and then focusing and arranging them in a realistic timeline, all while keeping a central theme in mind taught me so much about working well with others and how to balance spending time on the project with taking time for myself. Dror and the others shared a lot about managing one’s self-care while in the middle of an all energy encompassing design project.
Alongside the PDC aspect, the other portion that struck me were our conversations about community and how they develop. I’m in the middle of a semester project experimenting with some of the ideas we talked about, applying them to a new management style for a growing Hampshire student group. I’ve committed my focus at Hampshire to permaculture design, a decision I might not have made without participating in the Living Change Program. This semester I’ve teamed up with some likeminded students to restart a sustainability student group called New Leaf. Our aim is to be a networking hub between all of the sustainability, climate justice, food justice, and on-campus renovation focused groups. I’m also involved with changing the campus composting culture with two class projects; the first being the designing and building of a physical composting system for a community garden and the second is an idea for an on-campus compost collection startup. These projects started in Peru.
The number of potential takeaways from this course are endless. However, there is one idea that has stayed with me and that I reflect on constantly from my time in the Living Change program:
You Never Have To Dream Alone
