permaculture

12 Facilitator’s Handbook for Permaculture Workshops

At this time you can also discuss course scheduling and attendance. Ask the participants to

share information about their commitments and any problems they may have attending,

then fine-tune the proposed schedule accordingly.

The better participants express their needs, the better you can design the course to fulfill

those needs.

Step 2. Prioritize the course modules based on research results

Once you have done enough research to give you a clear sense of what the participants

need, you can begin to prioritize the contents of the course to make it as interesting and

useful as possible for the participants.

Section 3 of this handbook, The Permaculture Workshop Modules, provides detailed

summaries of possible materials that can be delivered during courses, divided into several

modules.

When delivering Permaculture workshops, you should:

Keep in mind that sustainability is directly related to holistic integration of all aspects of

community life. Therefore, each lesson delivered should address how the component

presented works in the community system.

Also, ideally, the course should cover as many modules as possible, even if they are only

touched upon briefly.

The main content of Permaculture workshops should focus on topics that address the

participants’ needs, demonstrate the course theme, and make use of the land and/or

tools available for hands-on field practice (see steps 3 and 4 for more details on choosing

themes and preparing field practice sites).

The opening and final components of the modules and the first module are compulsory;

you can organize the other modules in whatever order and with whatever priority you

feel will best suit the participants’ needs.