S2 Episode 012 Transcript
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0:00
Before we begin, we would like to acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have been the original change makers and stewards of Australia for over 60,000 years.
Their profound wisdom, resilience and deep connection to country have fostered countless stories of survival, adaptation and transformation.
0:18
The knowledge held by these communities is an invaluable resource for understanding how to create positive change and build a more just and sustainable world.
Welcome back to Change Maker Q&A.
I’m Tiana Jay, your host and founder of the Humanitarian Change Makers Network.
0:35
Change Maker Q&A is the show where we answer all of your questions about anything to do with creating social change.
If you have a question that you would like answered, you can head to our website humanitarianchangemakers.net/podcast.
You can directly ask your question on there.
0:52
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So today’s question came from somebody on one of my YouTube videos and I loved this question so much that as I started kind of planning and prepping to answer it, I decided to actually turn it into a little bit of a series throughout 2024.
1:23
So the question was and do you think having a background in systems thinking and design helped with your permaculture journey slash is necessary?
I’m keen to begin permaculture but overwhelmed at where to start.
First of all, Congrats to this person.
Beginning your permaculture journey is going to be life changing and I don’t mean that in a very cliched way.
1:43
It is literally going to change the way you think about the world.
It’s going to change the way you live in your day-to-day life and the way you engage with the world as both a citizen and a consumer.
It is also going to equip you with some of the systems thinking and design skills that you can then actually apply in other areas of your life.
2:04
So to answer this question, the TLDR version is I don’t think you need to have a background in system thinking and design at all.
I think that they are actually embedded within permaculture as a framework and as a design system.
2:19
So you don’t need to have a background in those things.
You can actually learn those things through permaculture.
And like I always kind of advocate in a lot of my permaculture content and my videos on my YouTube channel, I think that you can actually use the skills that you can get from permaculture and actually use them in other types of social change work that you might be doing in the social change space.
2:44
So what I want to do to kind of answer this question in a little bit more detail is break it down and actually explore the 12 principles of permaculture.
So I’m going to do one principle every month throughout 2024, and we’re going to dive deep into each of the 12 principles of permaculture, look at it from both a systems thinking lens and a design thinking lens, and then look at how that principle more broadly not only helps us in permaculture.
3:18
And I’ll share some stories and experiences of how I’ve applied that particular principle in my own permaculture journey in my suburban backyard.
But we’ll also look at the, I guess, value that that principle and maybe some tools or frameworks can actually bring to other work that you might be doing as a change maker.
3:37
So a little bit of background information for those of you who maybe aren’t super familiar with permaculture, permaculture.
Some people say it’s a philosophy.
Personally, I agree with the kind of school of thought that says it is a design approach for me.
3:54
For something to be considered a philosophy, it has to have either an explicit or an implicit approach to epistemology, ontology, and perhaps even methodology.
But it definitely needs an epistemology and an ontology for me to consider something a philosophy and permaculture, I don’t think has either of those.
4:17
I think that that’s one of the strengths of permaculture is that it actually doesn’t matter what your ontological view might be, how you perceive reality.
It also doesn’t matter your epistemological view if you want to take a more, I guess, westernized, scientific empirical kind of approach to gaining knowledge about your environment and the world, or if you want to draw upon more traditional wisdom and knowledge like indigenous wisdom and knowledge.
4:48
I think the beauty of it is that it doesn’t need to take anyone specific approach.
You can kind of take permaculture and apply it to your own epistemology, your own world view and your own ontology, how you understand the world and reality around you.
5:06
I like the idea of thinking of it as an approach to design and one that I think is very much grounded in both design thinking and systems thinking.
So before we dive into these principles, permaculture as an approach to primarily it evolved as an approach to agriculture, but it is kind of more generally an approach to just living and building communities.
5:34
It was developed by two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, and it kind of evolved, I think through three kind of distinct waves or stages.
So there’s a book called The Politics of Permaculture, which I definitely recommend.
5:50
If you’re kind of interested in kind of like the theory or the sociology of permaculture as an approach and kind of understanding how different practitioners of permaculture actually understand permaculture as a like approach to their work, definitely check out that book.
6:10
But in that book I kind of agree with this notion that there was kind of these like 3 distinct waves or periods that permaculture evolved between Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.
They each have a series of works that they published from around the late 70s that kind of set the scene for what would become permaculture.
6:34
The term itself actually comes from the it’s an amalgamation of the two words permanent and agriculture.
So this idea of permanence and this idea of something being sustainable and resilient or renewable.
6:50
So not necessarily static, like not permanent as in a static thing, but permanent in the sense that it is always going to be there, It can continue to evolve and adapt.
And then this idea of the culture in agriculture, I think not only being about food production, but also just culture more generally about the kind of informal ways that we organise as communities.
7:14
So that’s what permaculture is, that’s what permaculture means.
Like I said, I think the beauty of it is that it is very much grounded in systems thinking and design thinking, but they’re kind of, it’s flexible enough to be applied in a whole range of different concepts.
7:33
And the way that you can kind of apply permaculture is through these 12 principles.
So there are three permaculture ethics, which I like to kind of think as like forming the kind of like foundation upon which permaculture has kind of evolved and continues to evolve.
7:51
Or you could think of it as an overarching thing if you wanted to.
But there are three ethics.
They’re often shortened to people care, Earth care, and fair share People.
Care is all about caring for other people.
It’s about caring for humans.
8:06
It’s about seeing humans as an important part of the ecosystem and not necessarily like seeing the ecosystem as something that humans are separate from, but seeing us as a part of it and prioritizing our needs as much as we prioritize the needs of our broader environmental ecosystem.
8:31
I think that’s important because a lot of the time in Western societies in particular, we have this idea of like humans as being separate from the environment.
And we have these concepts like wilderness, which you know is kind of a construct that separates us from the natural environment and you know, we kind of value untouched nature or untouched ecosystems above those that we engage in in our day-to-day life.
8:58
So this idea of people care is really central to permaculture.
At the same time, so is Earth care.
So it’s not about saying we prioritise people over the planet, it’s about saying we prioritise people as much as we prioritise the planet.
9:14
And obviously the the ethic of Earth care is all about thinking about the environment, how everything we do in some way has an effect on our natural environment.
And the way I like to kind of conceptualize it is particularly in the context of agriculture and food production, which is kind of at the heart of a lot of what permaculture practitioners focus on is this idea of recognizing our food systems as not only ecosystems in and of themselves, but also as part of wider ecosystems.
9:51
And then we have this permaculture ethic of Fair share, which as you could imagine, is all about finding that balance between caring for people and the planet today and those in the future.
You could also extend that permaculture ethic to include fair share being prioritising the needs of not only our own community but other communities, whether that’s at a local level, a national level or a global level.
10:22
So that’s what permaculture is.
We have these kind of three key or core ethics of permaculture.
And then it was David Holmgren, one of his publications which first put forward the 12 principles of permaculture.
10:39
So the the 12 principles kind of came in that final of the three stages of kind of like the development of permaculture as a school of thought or a body of knowledge.
So there are 12 principles and throughout the year throughout 2024, I’m going to be diving into each of those 12 principles and how they help us not only in permaculture design but just more generally in our social change efforts.
11:04
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11:21
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So the first principle we’re going to be looking at today is observe and interact.
11:42
So observe and interact, It kind of forms the foundational cornerstone of permaculture design and philosophy.
At its core, it’s really just about emphasizing the importance of being patient, of taking time to actually be thoughtful and observe the natural environment around us or the system that we might find ourselves in before we initiate any design or intervention.
12:08
In permaculture, you’re really encouraged to actually spend time immersed in the landscape.
So not just kind of observing from afar, but actually like getting involved and seeing yourself and interacting with that landscape and observing any patterns, interactions and kind of the nuances of the ecosystem or the system that you find yourself working in.
12:33
Now this prioritization of deliberately observing kind of allows for us to not only understand kind of like the ecological dynamics of things like climate and soil and the relationship between animals and plants and things within an ecosystem.
12:51
But this idea of interacting, I think also kind of emphasizes that as humans, we are always going to be a part of our environment, a part of our ecosystem.
And it’s really about understanding that we’re always going to have an effect on it.
13:10
So we should be doing it intentionally.
And in order to do that, the first step is to kind of say, OK, like how do our actions actually affect the system?
What is the cause and effect relationship, the causal relationship between us and our environment when we do certain things.
13:28
And you know, rather than, I think, imposing any kind of like preconceived ideas about the system or potential solutions, what permaculture design really encourages us to do with this first principle is to adapt any of our strategies or our interventions based on the insights that we gain through our initial interaction.
13:52
So when we embody this principle, practitioners of permaculture really can, I think, cultivate A profound connection to our landscapes.
It allows us to foster designs that are not only sustainable but harmonious with the natural processes happening around us in our environment.
14:11
And I think the thing I love about this is it really reminds me of indigenous approaches to not only knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge, but also design in Aboriginal communities.
They when they design, they design very intentionally with country.
14:32
They design with the surroundings and kind of in the system as opposed to the approach that a lot of Western practitioners might have where we kind of design on something.
If you think of like a dwelling, you think of like a house or something in the suburbs, it’s very much this thing that has been designed outside of the context of where we find it.
14:58
It’s like we’ve come up with this concept of a house and we’ve just put it on the landscape.
Whereas if you look at dwellings and things that were designed by Aboriginal people throughout history, they designed with country.
Their designs were made from the materials around them.
15:17
It was designed to, I guess, create like a positive interaction.
It was designed to help the system continue the natural processes that it would have been doing without them there.
So that’s just something I think is important to note.
15:35
And just more generally, when we are kind of talking about permaculture or thinking about these principles, it’s important to acknowledge that, you know, these principles that are put forth in permaculture aren’t necessarily like new ideas.
15:50
And we’re not saying that, you know, David Holmgren and Bill Mollison were the first people to come up with these ideas.
It’s nothing like that at all.
It’s just they were the ones that kind of put these ideas into a framework that has become popularized and mainstream in the permaculture community.
16:10
But a lot of these ideas and, you know, systems thinking and design thinking more generally, can be traced back to indigenous ways of knowing and being and designing.
So that’s an important thing to note.
16:25
And even this concept I think of permaculture being permanent culture.
And if we think about what that means for me, when I think about what we’re trying to achieve through our permaculture and the permaculture, things that we might be doing, the work we might be doing, the way we might be living.
16:45
I guess like the kind of quintessential example you could come up with is indigenous communities and the way that indigenous communities survived for so long and the way that they continued to evolve and adapt to a changing environment and a changing landscape, It’s that’s what we’re aiming to do with permaculture.
17:06
So I think that we can’t ignore the role of indigenous wisdom and knowledge and I think we need to make sure that our permaculture is acknowledging that these ideas are not original.
When we think about, I guess, change and what that means, it’s a continual process.
17:33
It’s an evolutionary process.
And so our observations and the way we’re interacting with our system also needs to be a continual process.
It’s not a one off event.
You don’t just like begin your permaculture journey or begin any kind of change making intervention with observation and then never coming back and observing again.
17:54
That’s not how it works.
It is a continual iterative process.
And when we kind of, I think recognize this as being an integral part of change processes, we can see the comprehensive observation and interaction play a really crucial role in fostering social change for a number of reasons.
18:19
And there are a lot of benefits to observation and interaction in our interventions regardless of the space that you might be working in.
So just to go over a couple of these, first of all, I think it helps us to understand the root causes of problems.
18:35
We’re never going to be able to I guess understand or get a deeper understanding of the root causes of a lot of the issues that we’re tackling.
If we’re not observing, we’re always going to be relying on those kind of surface level symptoms and reacting to those symptoms and we’re never going to be able to really identify the underlying factors that might be contributing to the problems unless we are observing both causes and effects.
19:07
It helps us to make more informed decisions.
So observation really provides that necessary information that we need to make informed decisions about our interventions or any strategies that we might take.
It ensures that our efforts are going to be properly targeted and effective and address the actual needs of the system or the community.
19:29
It can also help us to build trust, interaction, and this idea of engaging in some way with the broader system is really integral to develop empathy and engage with individuals or community and understand their experiences and their needs and their aspirations.
19:50
In the same way that you can’t just observe an ecosystem, you need to kind of interact with it to see and understand these patterns and things like that when we’re working with other people, particularly people who might come from a different background or a different culture.
20:06
You don’t just observe them, you need to interact with them.
That would be like if I had gone to India and only observed the people that I was working with, the participants for my research, rather than actually interacting with them.
20:22
It would have never worked.
It was essential for me to actually converse with these people as best I could.
Obviously that was through a translator, but I wasn’t just going and observing women in garment factories or women who were working as agricultural labourers.
I was going into their houses, I was drinking Chai with them.
20:41
I was sharing a little bit about my background and myself and I was interacting with them and building like a genuine relationship.
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21:07
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21:32
Continuous observation also allows us to be adaptable and flexible.
Like I mentioned, systems, particularly social systems but also ecosystems, are dynamic.
They’re constantly changing and evolving, and in order for us to be able to adapt to these changes and be flexible in our approach, we need to be observing it and making observations.
21:56
It can also help us to have a more holistic understanding of the system.
I think that comprehensive observation and interaction is really that kind of like first step that we need to understand these complex social systems we might be working within and understanding and recognizing kind of the interconnections between different elements within that system and creating a more integrated and sustainable solutions.
22:23
Observation and interaction also helps with things like cultural sensitivity, being able to kind of maximize the efficiency of our resources.
A big one is being able to measure impact.
You know, what gets measured, gets managed.
22:40
And if we aren’t observing things, we can’t measure our impact.
And I’ve spoken about this in previous episodes.
I spoke about this when discussing the Sustainable Development Goals and that episode.
I talked about how one of the biggest, I think, challenges with my biggest critiques of the Sustainable Development Goal framework is that a lot of the targets that have been set, sorry, not the targets, the indicators.
23:10
So there’s targets for each goal, and then there’s indicators, but a lot of those indicators aren’t actually effective ways of measuring that target.
And if we can’t monitor and evaluate the outcomes of our interventions or our interventions themselves in an effective way, we’re not going to be able to make adjustments and actually approve our effectiveness or be held accountable.
23:34
And then we’re just going to end up stuck in this cycle where we’re continuing to waste resources, waste time.
So that’s why observation and interaction is so critical for our social change efforts.
23:51
Now in the context of systems thinking, I want to talk a little bit about what observation and interaction means from a systems thinking perspective, and then we’ll also look at it from a design thinking perspective.
If you are unfamiliar with systems thinking or why it’s so important in social change, definitely check out our previous episode which looked at what is systems thinking and when you might need to use it.
24:20
Systems thinking is essential for social change.
It’s not the only approach that we can take or that we should take, but it is an essential approach that some of our efforts and some people working in this space need to take.
So systems thinking itself, I think, could be considered a framework or an approach for observation and interaction, particularly within social systems.
24:45
Systems thinking begins often with systems mapping.
It’s where we identify the key components within the system and any kind of interrelationships between those different components.
And then we look at how these might kind of causally affect one another with things like causal loop diagrams.
25:01
We look at the role of feedback and things like that and how they kind of create a stable system.
So that all begins with, I think, observation and interaction.
That really kind of is the starting point.
And this works at both small and larger scales.
25:20
I did this in my own garden.
I took a, you know, I did a systems mapping exercise when I first began my permaculture journey, and that began with just observing and interacting with different parts of my garden.
And I also did this at a much larger scale with my PhD field work, actually using systems thinking to understand the rural development contexts that I was working in and developing maps for each of those systems.
25:47
Now aside from system mapping, which is a great systems thinking tool that I think anybody utilising systems thinking or beginning kind of an observation and interaction exercise can use, another great tool that I want to mention that really helped me, particularly when I was first beginning my permaculture journey was a SWOT analysis.
26:12
A SWOT analysis stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
It’s a tool that can be used in the initial stages of any observation and interaction with a system because it provides a really structured framework for actually assessing both the internal and the external factors that can influence changes in the system.
26:34
Now I’ll walk through kind of each of these four aspects of the SWOT analysis.
So we have the identification of the internal factors, which are the strengths and weaknesses.
So with the strengths, you essentially begin by identifying the strengths of the system.
26:53
So as an observer, you want to look out for what’s currently working particularly well in the system.
So this could include any kind of internal resources that the system has, any kind of capabilities or positive aspects of the system that are contributing to its effectiveness.
27:13
The weaknesses are the things that we might observe that can help us understand where the system might either be vulnerable or in need of improvement.
So this could involve any kind of internal challenges, any limitations of the system or aspects that might hinder optimal performance.
27:31
Then we look at the external factors.
So these are the opportunities and the threats.
Opportunities are anything we observe that involves I guess recognizing what we might consider to be favourable conditions, any trends or potential avenues for improvement in the external environment of the system.
27:54
Then we have the threats which are the things we observe and identify externally to the system.
So any risks or potential obstacles that could negatively impact the system.
So this awareness is crucial for developing any strategies that we might need to actually mitigate or navigate through these threats.
28:17
So once we’ve observed our system and we’ve conducted our SWOT analysis, we can then actually use that to inform the initial stages of any kind of interaction we might have with that system.
So the strengths can be leverages, leveraged, the weaknesses can be addressed, our opportunities can be pursued and threats can be mitigated.
28:40
So once we’ve done this, we can also engage with other stakeholders.
So a SWOT analysis can be a great communication tool, a way of communicating kind of your observations with other people that might be interested.
It might also be a way for you to kind of invite other stakeholders to work with you by saying like, hey, what do you think from your perspective within this system are some strengths and weaknesses?
29:04
Or as somebody outside of this system, what do you see as some potential opportunities or threats we might deal with?
So the SWOT analysis can kind of help you to turn your observations into like baseline information or like a baseline analysis.
29:20
And then from there that helps to guide any further investigation.
It helps to align any observations you’ve made with some strategic goals and maybe balancing those internal and external factors through any interventions that you might have or any ways that you might interact with that system.
29:40
So that is, I guess, the role of observation, particularly through the lens of systems thinking.
Now I want to turn to design thinking and look at the role of observation and interaction, which I think again, observation and interaction is kind of at the core of design thinking.
30:00
Design thinking, if you are unfamiliar with it, is a human centred approach to problem solving.
It emphasizes things like empathy, collaboration, iteration, prototyping, and it’s an approach to solving problems for really complex challenges.
30:16
So it originated in the field of design, but it’s since been kind of widely adopted in different industries and disciplines.
Now I like to think of systems thinking as the approach that we take to really kind of observe and identify and understand a system.
30:32
And then once we can kind of do that and we identify some problems, some, you know, weaknesses and threats within the system, design thinking is the approach that we take to kind of start designing solutions to those problems.
So I think that they work really well together.
30:52
Systems thinking helps us to understand the system.
Design thinking helps us to solve problems within that system.
Now some key principles or stages in the design thinking process, it begins with empathy, which is about understanding the needs, perspective and experiences of end users.
31:11
So end users are maybe not the people that we are actually working with.
It’s the beneficiaries.
So for example, if you are maybe working on an advocacy campaign and you are working you’re trying to change a particular law and you’re working with a particular local council, they’re not the end users.
31:33
The end users are actually the people that are affected by changing that law or that policy.
So it’s important to just make that distinction.
You want to empathize with the end users and really immerse yourself in their environment and gain a deeper understanding of what their challenges and their aspirations are.
31:52
Then we define, we clearly define the problem.
In the same way that in system thinking we have to have a clearly defined but somewhat flexible boundary for our system.
In design thinking, we want to clearly define the problem that we are trying to solve.
32:09
So design think has worked to kind of reframe and articulate the problem in a way that’s going to inspire innovative solutions.
Then we have the ideation stage, which is about generating a really wide range of ideas without judgement.
It’s not about coming up with the best idea or the best solution.
32:30
It really is about coming up with, I guess, quantity, not quality, Because this is where you’ll find that brainstorming and other kind of creative techniques really encourage out-of-the-box thinking, and they encourage creativity.
And sometimes it’s the combination of two different ideas that will lead to the best solution.
32:53
Or it might be a matter of you know you can’t actually get to the best solution unless you’ve gone through some really terrible ones in the process.
So that’s what the ideation stage is all about.
Then we have prototyping that’s developing some kind of tangible representation of ideas.
33:09
It’s going to allow for quick testing and iteration.
So prototypes can be anything like an MVP to a simple sketch that can help you redefine a concept or an idea.
And we test.
So we need iterative testing to gather feedback on prototypes from our end users.
33:28
And this feedback loop kind of allows for us to further refine and improve the design based on our real world observations and insights.
And then we iterate.
So this is kind of like a cyclical process and we continually refine and test and feedback and observe and empathize and define the problem even more until we reach, I guess the best solution for a changing world and changing needs.
33:56
So design thinking isn’t linear, we can kind of move back and forth between these different stages, but generally it kind of follows this cyclical cycle.
So observation and interaction of obviously play pivotal roles in this approach.
34:12
And you might be thinking how how do we actually, I guess use observation in these stages.
It’s probably clear that throughout each of those stages, empathy, defining the problem, iterating, testing, prototyping, everything involves observation and an interaction.
34:33
So I want to instead look at some tangible, I guess, activities or tools that we could use to do that.
So an example of a qualitative approach might be to conduct user interviews.
So when we conduct in depth interviews with people, our either end users or other stakeholders, community members, and we really understand their perspectives and needs and experiences, we can use open-ended questions and that can be a way to actually observe what’s happening in the system, what people’s needs and values are, but also to actually interact with them and ask them questions.
35:12
We can use something like empathy mapping.
This is a way to kind of visually represent the thoughts and feelings and actions and pain points of end users.
We can use tools like persona creation.
This is where you create kind of like a persona based on observed characteristics and behaviours of the people that you interact with.
35:33
They’re kind of like a fictional avatar or character that represents different user segments, and they kind of take all of the needs and motivations that people might have and kind of humanize them into like a story format.
We can journey map so we can map out the user’s journey from start to finish, looking at each of the touch points that they might have.
35:55
And you know, obviously we can conduct on site observations to witness how people kind of navigate these or navigate their environments more broadly.
Other exercises include things like a day in the life exercise.
36:10
So this is where you ask users to document a typical day, or ask them to document how they do a particular thing.
If you’re looking to design a solution for a particular problem, you know, maybe the problem that you want to solve for is a children.
36:29
You want to help children’s lunches stay cold when they’re walking, you know, 45 minutes to school with their parents or something.
You want to design something.
So you actually want to go through their whole day and that whole journey from when the food is made to when they actually get to school and eat the lunch.
36:46
And it’s important to actually kind of observe what happens because people will only share the details that they think are important to them.
But as an observer and as you interact with them, you might be able to pull out things that they didn’t think were particularly important because it’s so normal.
37:05
It’s just such a like a normal part of their everyday life.
So day in the life exercises or how I do this activities are really useful.
There are so many different things.
Surveys and questionnaires are kind of like a common tool we might use.
37:21
I would always encourage more kind of, I guess, immersive approaches.
Another great usability test when we’re testing prototypes and things like that is to have a think aloud test.
This is where people actually voice in real time their thoughts of like what they think about the particular prototype.
37:44
Often when we are just filling out a questionnaire or a survey or we’re reflecting back, we, like I said, don’t really think that certain details that might actually be really important to the designers are as important.
So we tend to leave them out.
37:59
But if we can actually walk somebody through that process that we’re going through similarly to a day in the life exercise, they can kind of see I guess the users expectations and the usability of it in real time.
So there are so many different I guess tangible approaches to actually practising observation and interaction in the systems that we’re working in.
38:24
So I hope that gives you a bit of a clearer idea of not only why observation and interaction is so important in the context of permaculture, but also just more generally if we are taking a systems thinking or a design thinking approach to our work in the social change space.
38:44
I really encourage you to ask any questions that you have about this particular permaculture principle, about observation and interaction, about permaculture more generally, or anything social change related.
I am always keen to answer your questions.
39:02
That’s why the podcasts exist.
We wouldn’t have it if we didn’t have our incredible community members like you guys to ask questions.
I will be recording an episode next month about the next permaculture principle.
So hopefully by the end of 2024 you will have an understanding of the 12 permaculture principles, how you can apply them in your own permaculture projects potentially, or just in your work across the social change space.
39:30
More generally, if you want to kind of see more of the behind the scenes of my personal permaculture journey or learn about permaculture in a little bit more detail, definitely check out our initiative Fixing Food.
It is a free resource library all about permaculture design based on the tools and frameworks that I have used.
39:53
As a systems thinking practitioner, you can head to fixingfood.humanitarianchangemakers.net.
All of the resources on there are completely free.
I am always adding new things.
I am looking to really build that library throughout 2024.
40:09
I’m going to be releasing with this podcast episode some tangible tools and frameworks that you can use worksheets and things like that to actually implement each of the permaculture principles.
So if you head to the Fixing Food website with our educational resources, there will be a free online course.
40:31
It’ll be a 12 month course that you can take and I really encourage you each month as I release these podcast episodes and release content on my YouTube channel to follow along and focus on one permaculture principle every month.
By the end of the year you will be amazed at how much you learn not only about systems thinking and design thinking, but just about your environment, your community, the food that you can grow, the animals that live around you.
41:00
I’ve learnt so much in a little over 12 months since beginning my permaculture journey.
It’s it actually blows my mind.
Sometimes I’ll have little moments where I’m talking to my partner, Like the other day I was telling him about the six different species of native bees that we have in our house.
41:21
And he was like, how do you, like, know that?
Like, how do you even know what these native bee species are?
And I was like, you know what?
12 months ago I hadn’t, I could not tell you the difference between a native Australian bee and a regular American or sorry, Asian or European honey bee.
And now I can identify different types of native Australian bees.
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We have a stingless beehive.
And that’s all because I really just began my permaculture journey with observation and interaction.
I had a little notebook, and I kept note of things I would continue to learn from that.
I bought books.
41:55
I used all the free resources.
So I really encourage you to begin whatever project it might be, whatever thing you’ve wanted to kind of learn about as a change maker, begin your journey with some observation and interaction.
Other than that, I look forward to answering your next questions in our upcoming episodes.
