Volunteering opportunity: Permaculture Project Coordinator at Pha Tad Ke Botanical Garden in Laos

Volunteering opportunity: Permaculture Project Coordinator at Pha Tad Ke Botanical Garden in Laos

Application Deadline: 11/30/2017

Description

We are looking for a volunteer who is interested to work with Pha Tad Ke Botanical Garden in Luang Prabang, Laos (www.pha-tad.ke.com ), on a new permaculture project for a six month period. This role would start in January 2018 and run until the end of July 2018.

We are looking for someone to help us coordinate and organise this project. This person would be the point of contact for the organisations involved (both local and international) and would coordinate and manage the project. They would work with our local staff to focus their time and efforts on building the farm and doing the training. We will be working with IDEP (Bali) and their existing permaculture manual for this project,.

Our ideal candidate would have some knowledge and experience with permaculture, and experience working in Laos or South East Asia would be an advantage. This is a voluntary role and we would provide room and a small compensation.

More information about the project is below, but anyone who is interested should contact the Director of PTK, Mr Rik Gadella ([email protected] ), and the General Manager, Mr Sith Nitaphone ([email protected] ), via email.

A summary of the permaculture project:

This project will involve the development and installation of a permaculture demonstration/research farm in PTK with a training program for local farmers, government staff and NGO’s. As part of this program we will teach and showcase sustainable practices and how to improve livelihoods for poor upland farming communities on permaculture principles. The main goal is to improve farming yields through permaculture, resulting in less stress on forest biodiversity, and better livelihoods for the farmers through climate-smart innovative agro-ecology.

The Friends of Pha Tad Ke Botanical Garden will supervise and implement this project in close collaboration with the staff of PTK and prepare the permaculture and demonstration farm with the technical expertise and practical guidance of IDEP. IDEP Foundation, Bali, Indonesia was founded in 1999, develops and delivers trainings, community programs and media programs related to sustainable development through Permaculture & Community based Disaster Management. IDEP will implement, with the PTK team, the farm design and training modules as well as provide the manual to be used as a basis for the Lao language manual. IDEP will train the PTK trainers to provide the trainings to local farmers and international tourists. PTK will run the trainings independently afterwards, as well as research best suitable plants and techniques to be used in the demo farm and future trainings. Pha Tad Ke Botanical Garden is highly suitable to run these trainings because of our holistic view of education and biodiversity and ecological conservation programs. The permaculture demonstration farm will also be open to the general public who visit our gardens and thus contribute to better information on the Lao farmer communities and their hardships.

People:

· 20 project staff, local university and college teachers will be involved in the concept phase and TOT by IDEP and learn how to design and implement a permaculture farm;

· 90 farmer trainees will be trained in permaculture and get free manuals (in Lao) to share learned practices with other farmers in their communities;

Long-term sustainability of the trainings is assured through tourists participating in our “One day introduction to permaculture” program, with each tourist’s financial contribution going directly towards paying for more Lao farmers to be trained in permaculture.

Benefits

Stipend Provided

Training Provided

Housing Available

We welcome

International Volunteers

How To Apply