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<back | home Robina McCurdy Planetary Permaculturist by Philippa Jamieson Robina McCurdy is a New Zealander who has become a planetary citizen. She is co-founder of Tui Land Trust & Community and trustee of the Institute for Earthcare Education Aotearoa (the Maori word for New Zealand). For three decades, Robina has been engaged in community development, and for the past 18 years in permaculture design, organic growing, and environmental education. Human capacity building is one of her special skills: inspiring, guiding, and offering specific tools and techniques for people to access their gifts and live their dreams. Emerging Into Permaculture In 1984, Robina attended the first permaculture course run in New Zealand, and that same year co-founded Tui Community in Golden Bay, her home and an intentional community nested within a Land Trust. Robina’s work grew from the Tui gardens and orchards into schools, farms, and urban areas in other parts of New Zealand. Gradually, other organizations heard about her work, and she was invited to do permaculture training in several other countries. In South Africa, Earthcare Education Aotearoa piloted the SEED program, which brings permaculture and organics into school grounds and classrooms in squatter settlements outside of Cape Town. To do this work, Robina created and trained a "catalyst team" consisting of two environmental educators, a horticulturalist, and two cultural tutors. SEED gives equal weight to the culture and agriculture parts of permaculture, with the permaculture principles underpinned by relevant traditional and contemporary songs, dances, stories, and drama. SEED’s process always begins with holistic goal-setting by representatives of the whole school community: parents, teachers, and children. "To my amazement, in one school, colorful flower gardens were rated a higher priority than food gardens," remarked Robina. "Both children and adults yearned for soul nourishment from the windswept environment of incessant grey sands covered with corrugated iron shacks." Skillful Facilitation Robina’s approach is to empower people by using specific interactive and hands-on methods. "Then," she says, "when people get the hang of the methods, they can easily apply and further develop them to suit their own situations." Robina’s methods rest on some basic understandings: that all learning modalities (seeing, hearing, feeling, doing) need to be applied in order to know something fully; that learning needs to be engaging and fun; that to grow food for ourselves and our whanau (extended family) is our birthright; that somewhere back in intergenerational time, we were once all connected with the earth, and depended on her sustenance for our survival. "It’s just a matter of awakening this latent memory; that nature is our teacher, and observation of nature is our most fundamental learning tool; and that we all hold a piece of the puzzle." At Tlholego Permaculture Centre in South Africa’s northwest province, where Robina lived and worked, she would bring Stanya, an elderly illiterate Tswana man who had farmed all his life, onto the team of permaculture tutors to teach ecological literacy: reading of the land. "Once we had a course for white agricultural graduates from a Johannesburg university; some had a string of degrees after their names, but they were completely out of touch with the natural world. Stanya taught them how to read indicator plants for mineral deficiencies in the soils. It was always such a humbling experience." Robina finds the New Zealand situation limiting. "We take small, cautious steps instead of strong, courageous leaps toward a sustainable future," she laments. "Small steps coupled with meager resources are not going to make sufficient difference in these times of severe environmental and social decline." She believes New Zealand has the capacity to be a world leader in sustainable systems, that there are brilliant minds, ingenious inventors and down-to-earth practical people, ready to make bold steps, but that we are hamstrung by our dependence as an island nation on a global policy and economy which seems to be at odds with our overall value system. Deep sustainability, she says, requires a shift in perception and priority. Planet Organic Robina kept getting requests for apprenticeships from young people who encountered her work. Out of this need grew Planet Organic, a course in sustainable land use within community development, which Robina and a team have run in Golden Bay since 2002. The course equips people to be permaculture educators, designers, and growers. Several US citizens have attended and returned to their home country to apply their skills. Robina is currently working with a small group to plan a large ecovillage of about 300 people, with full-scale food self-sufficiency and sustainable economic systems. This village is envisaged as being the home of Planet Organic. Workshops in the US Robina McCurdy is planning to conduct numerous workshops in the US this summer: permaculture design, sustainable land use, earth/nature relationships, sustainable social organization, ecovillages, and permaculture in schools. At her workshops, the surrounding land is the outdoor classroom, where observation, analysis, design, and the first stages of hands-on implementation happen. Philippa Jamieson is a New Zealand journalist whose work has appeared in Organic New Zealand magazine. If you want to find out more about her workshop schedule, or are interested in hosting Robina in your area, please contact her at robina@planetorganic.org.nz . <back | top^ |