Permaculture Course Summary

Hosted by Center for Sustainable Community in Stelle
July 17 to Aug. 1, 2004

The Results on the Course!!!!!!!!!!

As many of you are aware, this 15 day permaculture course was the largest project undertaken of this nature by individuals within and by the community of Stelle in over 20 years. Although CSC and the community as a whole were open and excited about hosting this event there were many questions about our ability to organize something of this size and duration as well as what the effect on the community's day-to-day life might be.

Dave Blume in action.

Here is what we have gathered. As heard from the people on the community Board of Directors and elsewhere around town the course was a very pleasant surprise.  Some of the descriptions were “fun, enlivening, interesting, really neat, wonderful, enriching, and revitalizing”.  

We feel that the course was a very big “WIN” for CSC as well as for the greater Midwest area.  As a non-profit organization we invested quite a bit into this course and are happy to report the following beneficial outcomes:

1. The community received a permaculture design for the CSC building and for the surrounding farmland.
2. Five attending community residents have a deeper understanding of permaculture, and are now certified permaculture designers.
3. We have learned that we can host a large course like this in our community and have it be successful.
4. In the process of getting the word out about the course we have made many connections with individuals and organizations in the Midwest who are interested and willing to hear from us or work with us again in the future.  This includes people in universities, ag -extension services, newspaper and radio, public institutions, professional people, other non-profit organizations and more….
5. We have tripled our ‘Friends of CSC' email list.
6. We have extended our email ‘connection reach' (through other organizations) by probably 5000%.
7. We think that CSC is now better well know and considered a viable asset for future educational activities and programs on the topic of sustainable living.
8. The word ‘Permaculture' is now on the minds and lips of hundreds, if not thousands of people around the Midwest who had never even heard of the word before.

No doubt, there are more benefits, but even if there were none the above list made our hosting of the course a very worthwhile undertaking as far as we are concerned. Where we go from here is being carefully and honestly considered.  We are planning on taking at least one of the small pieces from the permaculture course design which applied to our CSC building/lot and implementing it this fall.  If it turns out to be a bigger project than we can handle over a weekend by ourselves we will put the call out to anyone interested in joining us for a couple of days of good, healthy work and fun!.