Urban Permaculturalist

Showing posts with label Dunedin. Show all posts

Ten Steps to Organise a Community Project

Are you visiting this post for inspiration and guidance for your own community group or project? Are you inspired by an issue or looking to create an interest group around permaculture? Here are ten steps to get you started.

Click Here to Read More About Community Organizations

The Ten Steps to Organize a Community Project

To begin you need to have something to organize around. This might be a service or a goal. For example organizing a community permaculture group or fighting to save your local public transportation from oblivion. Luckily, many issues are not just national but also global and so a bit of research can turn up national or international organization with active networks and a working model to follow, just make sure they are grassroots.
Next you must get out there. Meet other people with the same interests. You will likely find an already established network of people or even better, an already established community group. This could be at a town meeting, an online forum, your child's school, or anyplace where there might be action around your interest.
If no such thing exists, go simple and create a virtual space on Facebook or other forum. All you really need to start a functioning group is three people or so.
You then begin by creating, in order of priority, goals. You should have an ultimate long term goal as well as smaller intermediate goals to achieve your objective.
Now you put the work in! find a place to meet, start seedlings or create an informative leaflet about your bus system and go on the streets. A table on the sidewalk or at a farmers market is a perfect place to start.
Keep your routine up! sometimes it takes people a few weeks between hearing about your meetings and showing up. You must have meetings every week or fortnight even if they are small and short and even if they are still only online. In my experience once a month is not often enough, members forget its going on. Its no good to ditch a meeting just because you think no one new will be there. If a new member does show up, but there is no meeting there, than you have lost a member and their networks.
Alternatively, if you are swamped with new members make sure your organization keeps to its agenda. It is easy for an organization to get hijacked or pulled into five different directions when it grows too quickly. There is nothing wrong with organizations maintaining their original intention even if it means losing a few members.
How you are going to fund raise is the next challenge. If your group can organize a moneyless operation perfect, that is always a goal of mine. If not, membership dues or fundraising events need to be planned. Remember Autonomy is key, do not become dependent on outside organizations giving regular contributions, especially if they are government, businesses or political organizations.
As the members begin to come your goals and methods need to be reassessed to include the wishes and opinions of new members. If new members aren't joining then keep on going, it can take a while, sometimes years. Just make sure you are as active as you can be without burning yourselves out.
Remember to be Democratic! Organizations often split over important differences in either their goals or methods. Even if they have separated they can still work together on issues they agree about without losing their integrity. I consider it a growing pain. If your organization has one or two splits, it means you have matured to refined your goals or strategy. And remember grassroots organizing is democratic and doing things democratically with a decent majority agreeing can amount to a lot of debating and deliberation and consequently a lot of time talking when you might prefer action. Ah well! that's just how it goes, Ive never seen a way around it, it may try your patience but that just the democratic process at work.

I hope this helps! please leave a comment if you have any suggestions, tips of your own or links to good grassroots organizations.

Links to Great Community Projects:

Website and online network: Free Cycle
The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 5,035 groups with 8,917,299 members around the world. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills.

Wikipedia: Give-away shops, swap shops, freeshops, or free stores
The free store is a form of constructive direct action that provides a shopping alternative to a monetary framework, allowing people to exchange goods and services outside of a money-based economy.

Website: Transition Valley Aotearoa NZ
This website is a small aspect of the work which is going on all over the country, as people begin to understand the importance of acting now to mitigate the effects of some of the most direct impacts of peak oil and climate change.

Wikipedia: Critical Mass Movement
Critical Mass is a cycling event typically held on the last Friday of every month in over 300 cities around the world.

Resources:

Website: Did You Say Free Shop? Otago Daily Times News Article
Website: Free Trade Flourishes. Otago Daily Times News Article
Website: Adventurous rat stows away in Donation Otago Daily Times News Article
Facebook Page: Free Shop Dunedin
Website: BBC Arguments against Charity
Website: Dunedin Volunteers Start DIY Bike Workshop. Otago Daily Times News Article
Facebook Page: The Crooked Spoke Bike Workshop

Community Projects and Permaculture Why Charity is not Sustainable

Anyone who practices permaculture, sustainability or is a political activist comes across a good few community projects. I Emphasize that these projects are not charities. What separates these organizations from charities is that they organize to fulfill a need for the community and have nothing to do with whim and generosity for their continuation. These are groups of people who come together to make their goals a reality. There are as many community projects as there are problems and unlimited ways of organizing. This blog post is about their function politically, their role in urban permaculture. I will mostly use examples from groups in Dunedin, NZ.

Click here for my post on creating your own community group

What is a Community Group? The Difference Between a Charity and a Community Organization

"It is more socially injurious for the millionaire to spend his surplus wealth in charity than in luxury. For by spending it on luxury, he chiefly injures himself and his immediate circle, but by spending it in charity he inflicts a graver injury upon society. For every act of charity, applied to heal suffering arising from defective arrangements of society, serves to weaken the personal springs of social reform, alike by the 'miraculous' relief it brings to the individual 'case' that is relieved, and by the softening influence it exercises on the hearts and heads of those who witness it. It substitutes the idea and the desire of individual reform for those of social reform, and so weakens the capacity for collective self-help in society. -J A Hobson, Work and Wealth, 1914"

This quote is great. It eloquently sums up the fundamental problem with charity. If you wanted to look into it even more you will find many scandals and critiques of individual charities that illustrate the systemic incompatibilities between charity and social gains, but I find that a distraction from real organizing. A community group is an organization which is organized and maintained by those who use and need it. It may be a service like free shop, a toy library, a food growing cooperative and also includes activist groups, support groups and general interest groups alike. Not all community groups are free, they may do fundraisers or have membership dues, but they are independent and self determining. Some community organizations may find themselves acting charitable from time to time as well, for example, free shop got a good few visits after the Christchurch earthquakes. But this was a natural disaster and the organizers, while happy to help out, did not have any intention of relief work at the outset. The members of the organization decide what is done and how, they are not passive recipients of what they need from a foreign organization based on random generosity or worse, pity. They are also not deciding on what third party receives the fruits of their efforts. In my opinion there is nothing more politically empowering than community organizing and nothing less empowering than receiving charity.

Community Projects, Community Organizations, Community Groups and Grassroots Organizing

These terms are often interchangeable but can hold specific meanings. Community projects are more synonymous with free shop or toy libraries while community organizations often refer to smaller institutions like rape crisis centers or food shelters. Community groups are often less specific and come together to fight for or against public policy or speak out about local issues. Often a community group does two or all of these things and often in cooperation with other community groups in the area or nationally. What separates these organizations from NGO's as they are typically perceived, is that they are smaller, democratic, and in cases where there is a national group that breaks down into local chapters, the local chapters have autonomy financially and in decision making. This type of organizing is often called Grassroots because the power of decision making comes from the very bottom, its members, and not from the bureaucratic levels.

Permaculture and Community Groups

I believe that Fundamentally, all progressive change comes out of community organizing and that community projects strengthen a community and equips it to fight for their interests. To have a sustainable society, a lot of progressive change needs to happen. Grassroots organizing teaches people activist skills and tactics as well as providing working alternatives for this change to be modeled on. More specifically, community groups can be based around permaculture, gardening, food growing, handicrafts, home repair and tool sharing. Ride shares are common as well. Many organizations are based around preserving indigenous knowledge as well as breaking down racist, sexist and homophobic barriers within communities. Grassroots organizing creates a space for people to meet their neighbors and network with other people to form mutually beneficial arrangements and also just to make friends and socialize. Some specific organizations in Dunedin, NZ that work with permaculture ideas are Transition valley (creating a more sustainable community), Critical mass (promotes the use of bicycles as transportation) and Oooby (Out of our own backyards, local food growing). Their websites are listed under the references at the bottom of the page. Frankly, I believe that community groups are a fundamental part of any democracy whether environmentally sustainable or not and permaculture is no exception.

Links to Great Community Projects:

Resources:

Forage for Wood Sorrel, Oxalis acetosella

All through Dunedin you can find a large number of edibles around. I make good use of them. There are many plants you can forage for and most of them taste pretty good. One of the tastiest is a plant called wood sorrel Oxalis acetosella.

Wood sorrel is found everywhere poking out from under hedges along a shady road and finds its way into every part of my garden here in Dunedin. It happens to be my absolute favorite weed to forage. I will admit many weeds you can forage for have uninteresting or somewhat unpalatable flavors, but wood sorrel is truly tasty. Its got the tang of lemon with a floral flavor and is brilliant raw as well as in teas. The leaves and flowers are the parts I've personally eaten and I often go out to hunt for them. A welcome addition to any salad greens or on their own. The Leaves are a bit hit or miss in my experience. It depends where the plants are growing (or maybe its because clumps of plants with similar genes grow together). Either way, I have not had a nibble that tastes bad, just more or less bitter.

The plant itself looks a bit like a clover and is mistaken for it easily. If you take a close look you should have no problems distinguishing them. The leave look like folded hearts, unlike clovers, where the leaves are oval with a white chevron on them. The flowers are singular, where the clovers have many flowers shaped into a ball. Clover grows in colonies connected by runners like strawberry's and the wood sorrel grows independently of its neighbors but close together.

Resources:
Wood sorrel Wikipedia Page

A Mini Portable Forest Garden

As a renter who moves every year by means of a gas station rented trailer, I keep most of my garden perennials in containers and plant out annuals in any patch of ground I can find around the property. This year I have a sunny deck for my container garden! We've had a rainy sunless winter and a summer that hasn't quite broken yet, but that's not too unusual for Dunedin. 30 degrees one day and 12 the next. At least I can grow in the wintertime here. My container Garden consists of 20 litre mayonnaise buckets (classy I know) as well as some 20 litre planters I've gathered from previous flats that were laying around unused. I have a collection of two litre ice cream containers from a fish and chips shop that I used to grow lettuces in too but I've got plenty of space in the garden this year. The pictures on the page are some of the containers that are established.

While not really permaculture, I do use some of the same ideas you would find in a guild in the containers. The polycultures, while bit limited by space, are some of the same you might find in a setup in the ground. the white clover I am so fond of is edible (leaves and flowers and roots) and nitrogen fixing. I gave up on garlic and shallots as root crops but the leaves are tasty and they deter pests. I put beans wherever I can fit them in the containers and around the garden. The fuchsia has edible berries too. Cape gooseberries are perennial if brought in over the winter and are just now flowering. White clover is low growing unlike red clover and grows as a weed around the city( aka. free!). Nasturtiums are tasty (similar to turnips: leaves and flowers) and attract bees. I've read that beans don't like garlic and its relatives but they seem to be pretty happy together. There's usually something always flowering in the containers except in the middle of winter but the bees aren't out then anyway.

fuchsia and white clover growing in a container

There are many companion planting sites that list good matches. Most are repetitive and few are cited scientifically. I find contradictions here and there too. I personally feel its most important to consider that the root shapes are compatible (the roots need to be of varying shapes so they don't compete for nutrients in the same area of soil). There are theories that say some plants deter pests backed with some science. Some may make surrounding plants taste better. I'm not sure of the scientific validity of the latter. I cram as many plants as I can so there's less weeding, might as well go for species that may benefit each other in that way. Soil conditioners like nitrogen fixers are always good. Other plants attract wasps or provide habitat for predatory insects. In little containers that's not too relevant but if you put your container area near a more wild spot in the garden those strategies can be used. Deep rooting plants use nutrients and bring them up above the soil to build their leaves, these leaves are useful for mulching container plants. At the end of the day the more biodiversity (or more species that are not closely related) you have in the garden the less any one pest should be a problem. If you have a specific pest problem look up its natural predators and find out what plants they may eat and what habitat they live and breed in.

Resources:
Wikipedia Page on Companion Planting

Ten Steps to Organise a Community Project

The Ten Steps to Organize a Community Project

Links to Great Community Projects:

Resources:

Community Projects and Permaculture Why Charity is not Sustainable

What is a Community Group? The Difference Between a Charity and a Community Organization

Community Projects, Community Organizations, Community Groups and Grassroots Organizing

Permaculture and Community Groups

Links to Great Community Projects:

Resources:

Forage for Wood Sorrel, Oxalis acetosella

A Mini Portable Forest Garden

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