Sustainable living Internship, including PDC, North Thailand

Sustainability Internship: Natural Building, Permaculture and Community Living

Dates: November 7 – December 16, 2009

Hosted at the Panya Project in Northern Thailand
[url="https://www.panyaproject.org"]www.panyaproject.org[/url]


This five week program is designed to give interns:

1) An integrated experience living at an intentional community

2) Experience in natural building

3) A certificate in permaculture design

Interns will take part in all the activities of daily life, from cooking to composting, as well as work on specific projects such as the construction of an adobe sauna. The five weeks will be broken into two distinct parts, natural building in the first three weeks and a Permaculture Design Course in the last two weeks. We hope that participants go away from this course understanding not only the basics of adobe building and permaculture design, but also understanding some of the nuances of what it takes to be a successful intentional community.

We hope that all interns are interested in both parts of this internship, but we are also offering to host interns for just the building part of the course (Nov 7 - Nov 27), and offering the Permaculture Design Course separately as well (Dec 1 - Dec 16).

Community Living: At the Panya Project we involve all present in the daily activities that keep a community rolling, from cooking and cleaning to feeding the animals and watering the garden. We value the opportunity to share what skills we have and to learn from anyone present. We also know the importance of a balanced and healthy life, and we encourage each person to join us in the activities which keep our own human systems in balance. During this five-week internship, we will offer morning meditation and yoga, a healthy and balanced diet (90% vegetarian), intellectual stimulation, plenty of physical work, and time each evening to socialize, play music or take time for one’s self. The schedule includes five an a half days of activity per week and each day includes a morning work session, followed by lunch and a mid-day siesta and an afternoon work session. Three vegetarian meals will be provided (with the occasional meat dish on the side). The evenings are an opportunity for us to socialize, watch a video, have a potluck with neighboring communities, or squeeze in another lesson.

Natural Building: This is one of the topics that we are most passionate about, and interns will get plenty of experience working with adobe bricks, carpentry, mud plasters and natural paints. JPG We have two main projects that we will be working on during this time. The first project, and the focus of our time will be to build a series of small earthen bungalows. These bungalows will serve as housing for future courses and internships. We are very excited to make each bungalow a beautiful unique creation, with as much artistic nuance as interns would like to give them The second is to work on the finishing touches of a number of buildings that have gone up in the last year. We should work to add those finishing touches that really make earthen building come alive.

Permaculture Design: The Panya Project has been greatly influenced by the design principals of Permaculture. We started our project two years ago by hosting a Permaculture Design Course, which concluded with an integrated permaculture design for our property. Since then we have been working toward achieving the aims of that design, including all the earthen buildings, an edible food forest, a large kitchen garden and a broad acreage of fruit crops. We have also put in an extensive water harvesting swale system to help us return water to the watershed. Starting December 1 we will dive full on into a 72-hour certified Permaculture Design Course. This course is an intensive blast of information helping us to become informed and knowledgeable designers, ready to design broad acre farms or our own small back yard. Interns will go away knowing the basics of permaculture design and have experiential understanding of the underlying principals.

Please do read more about the Permaculture course here:

Permaculture Design Course, December 1: https://www.panyaproject.org/spip.php?article45

Organic Gardening: We also have a large kitchen garden which we are working on expanding. Our hope is to continue to produce a higher percentage of food that our community consumes out of this garden each year. Interns will have the opportunity to take part in every aspect of garden management, including planting into seed trays, making potting mix, transplanting, trellising and harvesting when the time is right.

In addition to all of these things, we have an adobe pizza oven, abundant fruit crops for eating and wine-making, a swimming lake an easy 15 minute walk away, a beautiful forest around us, and two more wonderful communities next door, including a Thai cooking school and cafe that serves the best fruit shakes in Thailand!

Come and join us for this month, with the possibility of staying on for an additional three weeks as one of the community members!

We are excited to be able to offer these courses well below the cost for similar courses around the world. And we are dedicated to offering the Permaculture Design Course at a huge discount to people working with NGO and non-profit organizations, as we truly believe in the good it can do. Thanks for your great work in this world.

Costs:

Five week internship: Nov. 7 – Dec. 16, 2009________US$1100 (38,200 baht)

NGO Price _______________________________________ $700 (21,500 Baht)

Includes three weeks of natural building and a two week Permaculture Design Course


or take part in just one section of this internship:

Three Week Natural Building Course Nov 7 - 27________$500 (17,500 Baht)

Two week Permaculture Design Course Dec 1 - 16_____$700 (21,500 Baht)

NGO Price_________________________________________$300 (10,500)

We ask all participants to pay a US$200 (7,000 Baht) deposit to secure your place. Contact us to register.

*Please note that the costs of this course are in Thai Baht, so the US$ price may change.

These courses filled quickly this last year, so please sign up early to reserve your space.

CONTACT US NOW to register:

Christian Shearer

[email protected]