The PERMIND Project is an innovative approach to agriculture, applying permaculture in the recovery process of people with mental illness. PERMIND is a two-year initiative financed by the ERASMUS+ programme to develop innovation in the adult education field. The project is a partnership between five European organizations; Fundación INTRAS (Spain), Asociación para el Desarrollo de la Permacultura (Spain), SENT (Slovenia), EKP&PSY (Greece), and Changemaker AB from Sweden
Permaculture is a very innovative kind of ecological agriculture much unknown in most of the countries. It is a type of agricultural movement and social design principles focused on simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems. That is to say, learn from our wise nature and try to imitate it to grow our food.
The aim with the PERMIND project is to create a permaculture training course for adults with psychic discomfort, hosted in an eLearning platform and supported by a didactic app that will be fed with photos, videos and tips by the own students.
The PERMIND training course will last a whole year, thus being able to know how to work the garden during spring, summer, autumn and winter. Moreover, PERMIND aims to promote the entrepreneurship spirit of the trainees by promoting the creation of ecological social cooperatives. The ecological vegetables grown will be sold by the students to their neighbors, thus giving a positive picture of mental illness and fighting against the stigma attached to it. Last, but not least, we want to provoke a mind change in the European society regarding mental health, environment and sustainability.
On 25 – 26th October 2017, the five organizations attended to a meeting in Tenerife, in the headquarters of Asociación para el Desarrollo de la Permacultura that works the land following the principles of permaculture. This meeting was the starting of the PERMIND project.
Read more at: www.permind.eu
Read interview with Changemaker’s Irene Poggi to learn more: Applying permaculture in the recovery process of people with mental illness