Integration Through Permaculture

Greetings from the Sporos Garden of Friends!

We are very happy to announce that as of this week, we are once again delivering face-to-face courses at the farm! Thursday marked the beginning of our first Permaculture Design Certificate course of 2021. This is the first of four PDCs to be offered over the coming months to aspiring permaculturists on Lesvos, bringing the asylum seeking, international volunteer, and local Greek communities together on the farm to learn and work side by side. Each course will be delivered in English and/or Greek with translation in Farsi, Arabic, or French to maximize student understanding and engagement. We are humbled and excited to finally be able to host students in our new classroom facilities and are incredibly grateful to those who have made these courses possible: the Emergence Foundation, and YOU, our GlobalGiving donors! Thank you!

In addition to this exciting new development, we have seen a flurry of summer activity at both the Sporos farm and the EcoHub garden. Further easing of pandemic restrictions has allowed our team to grow; we’ve welcomed a number of new and returning volunteers, as well as our EcoHub project manager back on site. Our previous intern, Fara, left for a job on the mainland and was replaced by a familiar face: one of our former EcoHub team members from 2019, Beni! We were delighted to welcome them all and have loved seeing so much life on the farm once again. The crops are flourishing; we harvested hundreds of kilos of potatoes, onions, zucchini, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, watermelon, corn, several varieties of pumpkins and squash, plums, mulberries, pears, figs, many varieties of herbs, and more. Much remains on the vine alongside many beautiful flowers, and we’ve begun planting the beds with our fall and winter crops. Our hydroponic garden towers overflowed with fresh greens and herbs, which, alongside many other food items in partnership with local nonprofit organizations, were donated to refugees and local families in need.

We hosted two Permablitz days, where teams of volunteers came for a farm tour before descending upon various projects, including garden maintenance, preparing hydroponic towers for their next crops, readying the greenhouse and classroom domes for incoming students, harvesting firewood for outdoor stove for the winter, assisting with infrastructure improvements, and much more.

The EcoHub garden was also once again alive with activity this summer. In June, we began welcoming a team of dedicated volunteers from the adjacent Mavrovouni camp. This team, currently comprised of people from Afghanistan, Uganda, and Congo, has worked tirelessly alongside short-term visiting volunteers to grow myriad bountiful crops, create comfortable seating areas for visitors and beautify the grounds of the broader One Happy Family community center with flowers and herbs. They have gained valuable knowledge of permaculture principles and practical applications both at EcoHub and during periodic visits to the farm and are improving their English every day with dedicated classes for garden team members under the olive trees in the garden.

Finally, through collaboration with a couple of key partners, we were able to serve new populations this summer. In partnership with Refugee 4 Refugees, we supplied plants and soil for the planter boxes that were distributed to Mavrovouni camp residents and assisted with the design of an upcoming garden installation. At EcoHub, our greenhouse classroom has hosted participants of Medical Volunteers International’s psychosocial support program for children for many months. In July, EcoHub’s project manager delivered ecotherapy programming for these children, inviting them to engage with the garden and its surroundings and experience the healing power of nature with a variety of therapeutic activities. 

It is nearly fall, and school has started once again. As we settle into the new rhythms of our educational offerings—PDCs, forest school for children, and other upcoming permaculture courses—we reflect on the activity of last three months with immense gratitude. Around us, we have seen gardens grow. Gardens that have fed many people, physically, emotionally and spiritually. But perhaps more importantly, we have seen gardeners grow. A community of people from completely different corners of the world who have worked, learned, failed and succeeded together, who have come to understand each other without always having a common language, and who have helped our beautiful and eclectic garden family grow.

As our supporters, you are part of this family as well, and we are deeply thankful for your continued contributions. If you’d like to share our project with a friend, this is a fantastic time to do so, as the Little by Little campaign runs from September 13-17. During these 5 days, all donations up to $50 per unique donor will be matched at 50% by GlobalGiving. Thank you for helping each donation go a little further!

With warm September greetings from Lesvos,

Sporos

Spring greetings from Sporos!

The growing season is upon us, and our Garden of Friends is buzzing with activity. We have recently begun welcoming international volunteers back to the farm and they and our intern, Fara, have been busy preparing for the season. We have new raised beds around the farmhouse made from reclaimed materials, loads of fresh compost, and seedlings in the ground that will soon produce hundreds of kilos of food for many people in need. Current crops include potatoes, onions, garlic, tomatoes, many varieties of herbs, aubergines, courgettes, watermelon, melon, pumpkins, and many different flowers. Due to popular demand, we will once again distribute seedlings this year to our partners and friends, including permaculture students, local farmers that we encourage and teach to save their own seeds, and other organizations and individuals in need.

Over the last few months, as lockdowns and restrictions have increased with each new COVID surge, we have been reminded time and time again of the crucial role that nature plays in keeping our minds and bodies healthy. We are very excited to be able to restart our educational activities and welcome visitors to the garden again. As restrictions begin to ease for the summer season, we’re hopeful this day will come very soon. In the meantime, our large dome classroom is ready for classes, now complete with a new wooden floor. In addition, our rooftop rainwater harvesting system on the farmhouse is complete, and we’ve begun developing a natural pond on site.

With the planting of many different fruit and nut trees, we have also completed the first phase of our olive grove regeneration project, which will turn the grove into a demonstration food forest.

We have also embarked on a new partnership with the University of the Aegean Department of Environmental Studies, which seeks to develop a new local circular economy by transforming olive tree prunings (which are normally discarded as waste) into fuel for pellet stoves. Working with farmers to divert this traditional waste stream will provide layered environmental benefits and act as a boon to the local economy.

As always, we are eternally grateful for your support. Together, we are building a more regenerative future on Lesvos—for the island itself, and for the people who call it home. Thank you for helping make this work possible.