12th December 2024

Kumi/ EUPO Day 5 & 6

Students and EUPO training team at Kumi Happy Home.

Pictures below of the EUPO/ S39 trainers in Northern Uganda in 2018 working with NRC and South Sudanese refugees:

Small and slow solutions

Pictures above are taken in 2018 in Bidibidi refugee settlement Western Nile. They represent the practical work undertaken by the permaculture training participants. It shows a selection of some of the wonderful outputs from the project. Permaculture is based on a few very strong concepts. Its ethics and application of the understanding of natural principles. These combine together over time very powerfully, building on themselves and creating an increasing effect.

Below I am compiling pictures from some of the practicals the EUPO team are undertaking at the Happy Home currently.

Personal action plans

Participants are working with our training team to develop their own personal action plan. How will they take forward the ideas they have learned on this course. Design is a process, and we encourage people on a journey to help them work towards long term secure goals.

Building consensus

The morning session focused on the final two principles of 11 and 12, Edges and Change. We illustrated how edges work through an exploration of water pollution and water treatment using natural methods. Edges allow for an interface, for nutrient and gaseous exchange to happen and the more we can maximise the surface areas, the more effective is the exchange.

Key point: Nutrients dissolved in water are a danger, because they are mobile and will mix with other sources of pollution and kill water borne life.  Sewage farms, fish farms, outfalls from cattle barns can all be dangerous sources of pollution, as well as humanure.

Practical activities this morning also include building a dry compost toilet, which we offer as an example of how to lock up nutrients safely and kill pathogens using only natural processes.