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matto
31-01-2011, 03:30 PM
Warm Greetings to all members of the Permaculture community,



The idea of unifying the many components that make up the Permaculture
movement in Australia is not a new one, but after a rich 30 year
history, an idea whose time has come. This survey initiative enables
all of you that have completed a Permaculture Design Course in that 30
years or are currently active within your local Permaculture group to
provide input toward progressing this concept to the next stage.



A brief history that has resulted in the culmination of this survey
dates back to the Australian Permaculture Convergence in 2006 held in
Melbourne. It began a dialogue that turned into a mateship between
Bruce Zell, Ian Lillington and myself (the Amigo Troika) about what we
perceived to be the differences embedded between key individuals and
groups within the movement. We saw this as holding the voice of
Permaculture back in its country of origin in order to refine an
ideology that could effectively shape environmental and social capital
at a time when the word 'sustainability' was on everyone's lips.
Permaculture defines 'sustainability' yet our enormous grassroots
efforts were not having much impact for a lack of unity. We were an
elephant acting like a mouse and felt in necessary to apply Principle
8 -'Integrate rather than Segregate', to ourselves.



We saw APC 10 in Cairns last year as an opportunity to flesh this
subject out but wanted discussion beforehand to canvas views. We set
up a Google Groups mailing list titled -

'Permaculture Australia' (http://groups.google.com/group/permaculture- (http://groups.google.com/group/permaculture-)
australia-?hl=en-GB)

to encourage this. The results of the discussions in Cairns were by no
means conclusive, but rather a positive response to further the idea.



The 'Permaculture Australia' Google Groups list continues today and
you are all welcome to join to get a better perspective of this issue
by reading the past conversations (see Discussions & Pages) and
contribute yourself to ongoing ones.



This survey is a product of these discussions as it was felt that many
valuable contributors were unable to attend the Cairns Convergence and
deserved an opportunity to have an input into this 'Great National
Design Challenge'. It’s a starting point and just one tool that will
inform this design process. The survey will close at the end of March
and all those that complete their contact details will be forwarded
the results.



It's important that this survey reaches as many PDC holders and active
group members as possible. Some of you have mailing lists of your
local group, some are Permaculture teachers with a database of former
students and some of you have friends you could pass it onto. Please,
it’s vital we get as many responses to the survey as we can.



Responses from the survey will remain completely confidential and none
of the information obtained from the results of the survey will be
shared with any other party without expressed written consent.



We thank you for your contribution and here is the link to the survey:



https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/permacultureaustralia (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/permacultureaustralia)



Kind Regards

John Champagne on behalf of the Amigo Troika.

Nick Huggins GC Qld
01-02-2011, 09:15 AM
Great work all involved. I just passed it on to my contacts.

ecodharmamark
01-02-2011, 09:55 AM
Yeah, thanks all (and thanks for the email reminder, Nick).

As a researcher, I understand the importance (and thus support the practice) of data collection. To this end, I just completed the survey, and would urge all permies to consider doing the same.

Concerning the survey, I did leave the optional question at the end blank because I feel I need more information about the Google Group - Permaculture Australia (http://groups.google.com/group/permaculture-australia-?lnk=) in order to respond in a qualified manner. As such, I understand that I now need to join Google Groups and then 'apply for membership' to Permaculture Australia in order to review the discussion. I'm pretty busy at the moment, so this will have to wait.

Cheerio, Markos