Support PINA
We need your support to continue our important work. Please donate today.
Become a Member!
Learn more about all the benefits of becoming a PINA member
PINA Sponsored Events
Building Water Harvesting Earthworks. One day workshop installing the winning Contest design. July 7, Oregon.
Mutual Aid Webinar. 4 sessions with Zev Friedman on this social and economic organizing strategy. Continuing Education credit for PINA diplomates. Sept. 19 – Oct. 24, 2019
See the archive of previous newsletters.
June 2019 PINA Newsletter – Issue #5
Serving our members with news and information for the professional permaculture practitioner. Every issue you will find 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 all our newsletters as well as other benefits. All others are receiving this issue of the newsletter as a sample and encouragement to join.
Featured Story
Regional Mutual Aid Networks
A bi0cultural pattern for PINA hubs with real impact
by Zev Friedman
I’m proposing the ancient cultural pattern of mutual aid as a potential strategy for growing our movement up so it can have the transformative impact that it’s been dreaming of since inception. I see PINA’s ambitious framework as a powerful servant of this mission, and I think that mutual aid might just be the special sauce that could help PINA really start to take hold and gather momentum.
In my opinion, wealthy-nation permaculture attempts are mostly missing an essential organ, and mostly having limited impact and limited success for that reason. This organ is a thing found in almost all traditional societies: a unique cultural-economic connective tissue that makes economies relational instead of just transactional, and grows long-term trust and community capacity. “Mutual aid” is an English language attempt to describe that organ.
We’ve now got a regional mutual aid network called Co-operate WNC (www.co-operatewnc.org) operating at toddler stage and growing in the mountains of western North Carolina, and we’re beginning to learn enough that Peter Bane and Koreen Brennan asked me to share our vision, through this article and through a novel 4- part PINA Webinar we’re developing, to debut in September of this year.
PINA Update: Report from the Executive Director
We are grateful to our members for their passionate involvement in the 2018 NatureWise Design Contest, which concluded on April 1st with the awarding of $5,000 to back the entry by Tao Orion to construct integrated Water Harvesting Earthworks at Aprovecho Institute, a venerable permaculture establishment in Cottage Grove, Oregon. The first of two workshops supporting the project installation was held on June 14th, and a second session to finish the earthworks will be held July 7th. The project, which PINA’s members have supported, was awarded a nearly unprecedented new water right by the Oregon State Water Master, for its innovative design and multiple benefits.
Forest Bathing
Shinrin Yoku or “forest bathing” took its name from a recreational practice that many Japanese found to be spiritually and psychologically nourishing. It has quickly gained popularity. Many permaculturists have direct familiarity with the benefits of spending time in the food forest, through the first principle of permaculture: Observe and Interact.
A review by the National Institutes of Health of studies done in Japan
Why I Joined PINA
Click here to read about the story of Marisha Auerbach and why she joined
PINA Events Calendar
Click here to see all the latest PINA-endorsed regional and continental events on our Events Calendar!
2018/2019 NatureWise Permaculture Design Contest
42 amazing designs were submitted for the contest and its $5,000 implementation award. Click here to view the winning entry and all the designs which have been featured on the website.