It started with a group visit to Uganda in 2014, visiting regenerative agriculture proejcts, community initiatives and the like. I came away thinking the groups I had been visiting might benefit from a PDC. I returned in 2016 with a team of 4 of us frim Wales and delivered a full 12-day PDC at a conference cntre in a regional town, Kamuli. We had 15 attendees, drawn from the groups we had visited previouly, along with a few individuals we had met via Facebook. It was such an expereince, we returned in 2017 to do it again. This has been an important part of an incredible journey we have sence been on. We had some seed funding from the Wales for Africa program in 2018, and some more in 2020 from a small UK educational trust, but mostly this has come about through the sheer determination of all concerned.

I can say we have trained over 3,500 people since 2020 and recent evaluati0n visit reveal a training of trainers program from 2018 had touched 40,000 people, maybe more. This was in the refigee settlemnt areas in teh north of Uganda, where there was a lot of interest. These achievements are the result of some remarkable work done by the trainees from those inital courses, our role since has been more in support, and we are cirrently working with the Permaculture Association here in Britian to work out how we can build on this work.

I have been writing about some of this on Substack, I called my Blog Chimanimani, as that is the place, in Zimbabwe where I first learned about permaculture back in 1991. I would love to hear from those with similar interests and can see the huge potentials that permaculture design thinking has on rural and marginalised communities such as these. I strongly believe the world needs new leaders, coming from the edges of society, refugees and small farmers for example not invested in the status quo. Along the way we have met so many inspirational people from these quarters, it has given me some faith in what we might be able to accomplish if we put our minds to it.