Rakesh "Rootsman Rak" - International Permacultre designer/teacher and Forest Garden specialist, computer consultant, yoga teacher, homeopath and reggae deejay. He has been growing food for 40 years, and has been designing and teaching edible landscaping, permaculture, forest gardening, etc for the past 5 years. While designing his eco village he realised the importance of community and social structures in creating successful projects, and has therefore immersed himself into exploring the best ways to create social structures. This includes collective visioning (i.e. dragon dreaming), collaborative decision making (i.e. sociocracy), conflict resolution, individual and communal growth, etc, etc. The result of which he now passionately shares.

Rakesh has designed and implemented permaculture and forest gardens from urban small-scale private gardens and schools, community gardens, communal nature gardens, to large scale rural farms and eco villages.

Rakesh is also passionate about sharing his journey of self empowerment (learning how to make all the things you need for yourself rather than relying on the system to provide for you), this includes eco architecture (low impact housing); capturing and storing energy (electricity, heat, lighting, etc); fuel efficient heating systems (rocket heaters and stoves); water capture, purification and recycling systems, natural bee keeping, food preservation and so on.

Rakes is a passionate traveller, and is always interested in seeing new places meeting interesting people. He has taught all over the world, including most countries in Europe, India, Indonesia, West Africa and the Caribbean (wherever he can justify travelling to).