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March 2020 PINA Newsletter

Issue #8

Serving our members with news and information for the professional permaculture practitioner. Every issue brings a feature article, the latest news from our Executive Director, and a technical information piece, as well as a personal story from one of our members.

PINA members receive our newsletters as well as other benefits. All others are receiving this issue as a sample.

Featured Story

PINA 2019 Design Contest Winners

Salina Duncan, representing Garden of Hope in Jocotenango, Guatemala has been awarded the prize in Community Development. Backed by a team that includes two local women: Francisca Maxima Perez, a native and medicinal plants expert, and Maria Jose Gomez Lima, an artist and human rights activist, Salina will oversee expansion of the garden to include new herb and medicinal plant beds near the visitor pavilion, greater accessibility for wheelchairs and those with limited mobility, improved soil fertility, adding a seed and herb workspace with room to store teacher supplies, and the improvement of a covered outdoor working space for classes by adding two walls against wind and rain, along with a raised wooden floor.

Duncan is a PINA diploma candidate in Community Development with home connections in the mid-Atlantic region of the US. Jocotenango is part of the urban complex around Antigua in the central Highlands region of southern Guatemala. See and read about their design here.

In addition to the award in Community Development, PINA granted four prizes in Media and Communications to two promising video producers for short films.

North American Leadership Summit, August 2020

PINA is convening a North American Leadership Summit (NALS), August 20-23, 2020, a co-creative learning process culminating in a unique event that will define the next steps in our evolution as continental leaders of Turtle Island. We aim to build a great people’s movement that can regenerate climate, land, and communities across the continent.

The planetary emergency asks all of us, and especially those with the capacity for leadership, to step into a new realm of heartfulness, understanding, solidarity, teaching, and effectiveness.

PINA Update: Report from the Executive Director

PINA is evaluating constraints and opportunities during this historic period of economic contraction and pandemic illness. Paradigms are shifting as the mystique, power, and inevitability of capitalism crumble more with each news bulletin.

While we are deeply unsettled by the pace of change, and saddened for the loss of so many lives so quickly, we are glad that more people are waking from denial or paralysis to realize that the purpose of the economy, a word with its Greek roots in “the household,” is to meet real human needs, something the market is showing itself incapable of doing without strong government direction

2020 Northeast Permaculture Convergence

The Permaculture Association of the Northeast (PAN), a PINA Regional Hub, is organizing a 2020 NE Permaculture Convergence! We will converge Friday July 24 – Sunday July 26, 2020 at D Acres Permaculture Farm and Educational Homestead in Dorchester, NH. The slogan and theme for the event is “2020: Where Hindsight Meets Foresight.”