| See the SEEDS training on Agro-Perma-Lab website |
“Agro-Perma-Lab: SEEDS” 2021 Training is an online training series of 10 thematic modules for educators, social activists and community leaders in agroecology and permaculture from the Food Sovereignty Network in Poland and, by extension in English, in Europe. The training aims at developing a Polish curriculum and raising competences in the following areas:
1) strategies for creating Community Homes (Banks) and Seed Networks;
2) technical, economical and political aspects of managing seed production;
3) organizing and facilitating knowledge exchange and community education in seed-saving.
The training also addresses a variety of issues related to the preservation of seeds – from the practices of preservation and processing, to the organization of seed exchanges and live collections, to maintaining high-quality seed stock and the design of seed education. The main aim of “Agro-Perma-Lab: SEEDS” is to empower and skill-up Polish permaculture and agroecology educators and community activists within Food Sovereignty network to apply seed-saving strategies and seed-education in their local community food-growing initiatives and to contribute to the growth of the seed-savers’ network in Poland.
The project gathers 20 participants and over 15 expert-trainers from Poland and from other European countries. It is using the methodology of horizontal knowledge exchange and intergenerational dialog of diverse types of knowledge (dialogo de saberes). As a result of the project, the local community of Kaczawski region in Poland’s South-West will be supported to create the first pilot Community Seed Home* (Community Seed Bank) in Poland. The project also completes a series of educational resources on seeds, including podcast, guidebooks and audio-visual materials.
Agro-Perma-Lab training programmes are inspired by the training methodology of Schola Campesina – the international school of Agreocology based in Italy -and the international schools of agroecology of the La Via Campesina movement. We experiment with different pedagogies that foster ecological awareness, local self-organising and autonomy, leadership and collaboration in a horizontal ‘laboratory’ environment, usually on educational farms. This means that the key role in learning is played not only by the transfer of knowledge (the so-called know-how) by the experts but also the dialogue of various perspectives.
We encourage participants to express their own views drawing from personal experiences, appreciating and recognizing the value of various types of knowledge including feelings– cultural and spiritual ties with one’s own locality and community. As such, the open lecture series you are about to watch constitute presentations of experts in a WEBINAR format, and are then followed by close-group dialogue discussion among strict group of 20 trainees after.
The training is part of the three-stage project “Agro-Perma-Lab: SEEDS”, co-financed by the Community Seed Banks Academy (Arche Noah), and is supported by Schola Campesina in training design and by the National Seed Bank of Poland in providing expert technical knowledge on seed-saving.
* In Poland, the seed-savers of Food Sovereignty network have chosen to use the term “SEED HOMES” as opposed to SEED BANKS, to indicate the equal right to and stewardship of all people of our common natural resources – SEEDS.
