Hello!

I have done a lot of moving around but most of my time has been spent on the coast and in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Currently I am serving as an Agriculture and Environment Peace Corps Volunteer in the northern Oromia region in Ethiopa. I am currently engaged in Environmental Education with high school students, collaboration and capacity building with local Farmers' Training Centers and household-level food security in my teeny rural town of Fital. I was fortunate enough to receive the opportunity of taking my PDC and becoming certified by a Peace Corps Volunteer Leader and Permaculturist, Ryan King, during service with the hopes of informing my food security work in Ethiopia with Permaculture methods. I was also trained in permagardening by Peter Jensen, a food security specialist, and have since trained other Peace Corps Volunteers and Ethiopian counterparts in household level, bio-intensive permagardening.

I have been interested in Permaculture for a couple of years now, since living in Western North Carolina and absorbing the organic farming and homesteading lifestyle. I was a WWOOFer on Earth Sky Time Community Farm in Manchester, VT. I have also done smaller, day-long volunteering on organic farms in western North Carolina and other farms in Vermont. I also was employed at the Buffalo Cove Outdoor Education Center as a camp counselor, working primarily with foster children from inner-city Miami in the capacity of outdoor education, wilderness therapy and wilderness and homesteading skills. I believe Permaculture has informed all of these endeavors and will inform all of my endeavors in the future.

I am extremely interested in how Permaculture can influence developing countries and, potentially, how we perceive 'aid work'. I would love to engage in more international work and partnerships in the interest of teaching Permaculture and empowering others to utilize it. I hope to find more ways to utilize Permaculture in my Peace Corps service and in the future I am hoping to continue my education, perhaps gain more designing and international experience, and eventually develop my own PRI that has an interest in international development.