Permaculture Design Certificate Course with Earth Activist Trainings
Permaculture Design Certificate Course
January 11th to 25th, 2025
Live In-Person Permaculture Design Course
Earth Activist Training’s (EAT) Permaculture Design Certificate course (PDC) is our longest-running and most-requested course– we’ve been teaching it for 20 years. This is our foundational permaculture course where you’re learning about resilient land management and climate adaptation begins.
We are so excited to welcome you home to Earth Activist Training!
ABOUT THIS COURSE
Explore resilient, living solutions to climate change,
and the strategies and tools to put them in place.
Artist’s Credit: Jessica Perlstein, designed for Starhawk’s book, The Fifth Sacred Thing. ..
Do you yearn for solutions to climate meltdown? This course is for you!
WHO IS THIS COURSE FOR?
Are you concerned about the environment, and want practical solutions? Are you an activist, organizer, policy maker, advocate?
Are you a farmer, homesteader, land manager, gardener, or want to be? Whether you have many acres, a suburban backyard or an urban balcony, learn how to generate abundance where you are.
Are you worried about fire, flood, drought, and the impacts of natural disasters? Learn how to design resilient systems that can mitigate some of the effects of climate-caused disasters.
Are you a teacher, parent, educator, caregiver, or mental health professional wanting to bring nature education into your work?
Are you a young person looking for a livelihood where you can make a difference? Or are you at a turning point in your life, wondering what the next phase should be?
We firmly believe that everyone can benefit from learning how to apply the tools and insights of permaculture toward the broad goal of earth regeneration. Permaculture has solutions not just for landscapes and agricultural systems, but also for social design, public policy, and survival strategies for these challenging times.
WHAT TO EXPECT
- This two-week intensive is an immersive permaculture experience.
- Spend two weeks in a stunningly beautiful natural environment, eating great food and learning a lot!
- Expect to work hard, but also to have lots of fun, meet great people on a similar journey to yours, and create lasting friendships.
- While our hands-on projects involve physical work, we plan them to accommodate many levels of physical ability. We welcome many sorts of diversity, including age and physical capacity. (Contact support@earthactivisttraining.org if you have questions.)
- Each day combines earth-centered spiritual practice, classroom theory, practical hands-on experience, and time to integrate, socialize and relax.
- The two weeks culminate with the creation of an integrated permaculture design.
- Upon completion of the course, participants will be invited to join Earth Activist Training’s private community and gain access to a wealth of online resources.
- Expect to have your assumptions challenged, your horizons broadened, and your connection to nature deepened.
PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES
In this course, you will learn how to design human systems that mimic natural systems using renewable resources. We will cover principles and practices that teach how to read the landscape, heal soil, cleanse and harvest water, drought-proof land, make compost and biochar, sequester carbon, bioremediate toxins, manage forests, design and create food forests, and apply these principles to human systems.
HANDS-ON LEARNING
Hands-on projects that you will practice during your learning journey include:
- Site mapping
- Water harvesting
- Graywater and roof catchment
- Creating compost
- Sheet mulching
- Seed starting and plant propagation
- Natural building (cob, straw-clay, and/or plastering)
- Creation of a collaborative design project
Course Content
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Permaculture is a system of ecological design that takes nature as our model, so we can meet human needs while regenerating the world around us.
–Starhawk
In this PDC, we will explore an internationally-recognized permaculture curriculum with a grounding in spirit and a focus on organizing and activism. Learn how to work with nature to heal land and water as we create real abundance and advocate for social justice. Each day begins with ritual and personal resilience tools. Mornings focus on theory, information, and examples of regenerative design. In the afternoon, we put theory into practice with hands-on activities. Evenings are interactive times to go deeper into social permaculture and global issues.
Course Information
- Location: Black Mountain Retreat Center, Cazadero, California
- Dates: January 11th – 25th (2 weeks)
- Lodging: A bed in shared mixed gender dorm is included in tuition, private and semiprivate spaces are available for an additional fee.
- Catering: Included in tuition, we provide organic, vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, and may offer gluten-free options.
- Certification: A PINA recognized certificate will be awarded upon successful completion of this course.
Typical Daily Schedule
This schedule is subject to change depending on the needs of the class. We ask that you stay flexible, and we will create a flow that we hope accomodates the group.
7:30-9:00—Breakfast
9:00-9:30—Morning circle
9:30-12:30—Morning session: Classroom instruction
12:30-1:30—Lunch
2:00-4:30—Afternoon session: Hands-on
4:30-6:30—Break
6:30-7:30—Dinner
7:30—9:30 Evening session
Tuition
- We offer sliding-scale tuition and payment plans to make our courses as accessible as possible.
- Abundant Tuition: $3,400
- Standard Tuition: $3,200
- Resilient Tuition: $3,000
- Work Trade Tuition $2,500 (limited spaces)
- Alumni Tuition: $2,500 to retake this course if you have already taken it before.
- All amounts are in US dollars.
- Discounts, Payment Plans and Diversity Scholarships available? Yes! Keep reading below.
WE ARE ALWAYS HERE TO HELP.
Please reach out to our Student Support Team at: support@earthactivisttraining.org.
MEET Your Teachers
Click here to learn more about your teachers
Food & Accomodations
Black Mountain Retreat Center
Refresh, regenerate, enjoy…
Black Mountain’s mission is to support all our guests in their spiritual, healing and environmental work and training programs, by providing a peaceful and nurturing space here in the quiet beauty of the coastal hills.
Click here to learn more
Culinary Magic
Food catered by Chef Carin McKay of Culinary Magic
Culinary Magic is a gourmet natural foods catering company that specializes in catering multiple day retreats and daylong events. Culinary Magic views food as central to weaving together community, health, history, culture, lineage, and the environment.
Click here to learn more
THE EARTH ACTIVIST TRAINING DIFFERENCE
– Grounded in spirit with a focus on organizing and activism –
– Climate solutions, strategies, and organizing tools to implement them –
– Abundant human systems through biomimicry that learn from natural systems –
– A courageous space for people who are/were exposed to any form of discrimination-
SOCIAL PERMACULTURE
Social Permaculture = RESILIENCE
Social permaculture is core to Earth Activist Training. It teaches us how to organize our human communities, resolve conflicts, make decisions, work together effectively, and support one another to renew hope and spirit.
As Starhawk often says, “The vegetables are the easy part–it’s people that are always the biggest challenge!” If we can improve the way we interact with one another, we can make all of our efforts more effective.
Funding Your Education
Payment Options
Diversity Scholarships
If you have any questions, we are always here to help: support@earthactivisttraining.org
REGISTER
Click Here to Register
International Certification
What is special about an Earth Activist Training Permaculture Design Certificate?
Earth Activist Training (EAT) approaches permaculture with a dedication to social justice and a grounding in spirit. An EAT Permaculture Design Certificate course (PDC) covers the standard content outlined in the internationally-recognized 72-hour curriculum, then adds sessions on social permaculture, power and privilege, tools for activists, community organizing, conflict mediation and ritual arts.
PINA
Earth Activist Training courses are acknowledged for their excellence by the Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA) . Permaculture Design Course graduates are registered with PINA as PINA certified graduates.
Graduation Requirements:
Students must attend all classes, complete assignments and a final design project.
Speakers
-
Starhawk
-
Charles Williams