Leaf of Life Community: Introduction
Leaf of Life is focused on education and awareness about Permaculture solutions for the environment and poverty across the world.
We work directly with non for profit individuals and groups actively practicing Permaculture methods, advising and assisting with social media representation, promotion, fundraising and content.
Permaculture
Permaculture is proven to create self regenerating food systems that require very little input yet gives out in abundance, and it holds the potential to regenerate deserts and restore the natural environment quickly.
Permaculture is a tangible, realistic solution for food security and to re-green the planet.
It is the way to self sufficiency and the way to solve the environmental crisis.
This is why we are dedicated to raising awareness about permacuture and education to increase its effect.
Our Journey
Leaf of Life began in March 2020 to document the unique permaculture farms we had visited and the fascinating, inspiring people who created them. Starting a youtube channel and facebook page to promote it, instagram etc
Since then our activities have grown as we continued our connection with the farms we filmed by giving advice and support to them on social media and content strategies.
At the same time we reached out to other projects and individuals online to collaborate and advise them with their content, online strategy and to generally offer support.
Lockdown
Lockdown and the lack of traveling has forced everyone to rethink their operations while enduring a time of greatly reduced income.
Its become very hard for someone with a permaculture farm to rely on volunteers or paying guests for the foreseeable future.
Therefore we have been keen to assist them with new strategies and remodeling their practices by using the internet and developing their platforms, providing better more useful content, raising money, selling products online and doing courses. We have assisted several projects with their fundraising campaigns, and overall, developing unique relationships with each person or project trying to understand their different objectives and circumstances.
PROJECTS:
Indigenous Ecosystems – Kenya, Uganda, Congo, Malawi
(Maurice Obuya)
In Kenya we have been working closely with Maurice Ouma and his Indigenous Regenerative Ecosystems network of permaculture teachers in Kenya, Congo, Uganda and Malawi. Maurice is organizer of a growing collective of display farms with trainers who install permaculture food systems with training courses, seed banks and nurseries in rural and deprived areas and recently for refugees of the flooding around Lake Victoria, in Kenya and Uganda.
We have contributed with copy writing for social media and fundraising campaigns and messages to promote free courses, together we devised several fundraiser campaigns,we redesigned the website with donation packages and so far have helped to raise over $800 towards courses and food system installation to help continue and expand their work establishing permaculture in Kenya.
You can check out Indigenous Ecosystems website here
Permaculture courses and food system installations in Kenya
Solitude farm, Auroville – India ( Krishna Mckenzie )
We worked closely with Krishna on his social media and strategy during lockdown to promote permaculutre grows for food security in Auroville.
In response to lockdown and food shortages in India we devised a plan with Krishna to start a permaculture food security initiative throughout Auroville. With an exstensive campaign of videos and posts on youtube and facebook, several Whatsapp groups were created and one by one over 18 communities have began food security permaculture gardens in Auroville, seed banks and nurseries have been started. krishna Mckenzie has been making instructional content on circle gardens and permaculture hedges
We also advised on fundraising for an edible weeds book and raw vegan initiatives.
Circles gardens being created by communities in Auroville, supervised by Krishna during lockdown 2020
Plant Trees for Peace – Pakistan ( Kaiser King )
This is a small team of avid tree planters in Pakistan.
For the last 5 years during their free time they have been planting trees in poor urban areas and actively caring for the trees once they have been planted, which is extremely crucial as many newly planted trees do not survive. We have been working with them on social media with their content strategy, copy writing, editing, promotion, and fundraising. They have plans to reforest degraded land with fruit trees, which we are supporting, and a Fruit Forest Project in a Karachi Orphanage they began earlier this year.
Regenerative Tree Planting project - Malawi - ( Lowanni Msiska )
1 million tree planting project in northern malawi, for the improving the environment in communities project. Lowanni is caretaker of the initiative, running groups with schools and local communities. He has planted a vast number of trees and has a lot of experienced at regenerating large areas of land.
We have been supporting Lowani with his Internet strategy, copy writing, social media and promotion. We have began the steps of introducing him onto the Hive platform. His journey is really a positive and affirming one.
S.H.A.R.E. & Permaculture for Children - Kenya ( Yongo Otieno Wycliffe )
Yongo is a 26 year old running an educational permaculture farm in Kenya. He has over 7 years experience teaching permaculture, he created S.H.A.R.E and Permaculture for children.
During lockdown he has been struggling as there are no volunteer courses for him to teach, so we have provided financial support to build a chicken house and buy chickens to create an income on his farm.
We are in the process of helping him with the steps to creating an account on Hive, he has some technical difficulties which need to be overcome.
Permaculture Farmer Skills Center - Kenya ( George Ouma )
Active for 8 years, running regular training courses for local adults and schools, George has become a victim of his own success, the local village has become very reliant on their produce, they donate food to children and the elderly and he needs support expanding the farm and its facilities.
George is in the process of constructing a library, classrooms, and expanding the farm to cater for more educational activities
We assisted in creating created a Fundraising campaign for the Permaculture Centre for Children which raised money for a new laptop, building and roofing materials
George has had a lot of technical difficulties with his devices. We very much hope to help him get on Hive.
Meme and Poster Campaigns
Our work assisting with content and promotion strategies evolved into making content for meme and poster campaigns to raise awareness for fundraising, websites, free courses, videos and general awareness about Permaculture.
So far we have created content for the World Permaculture Association, Indigenous Ecosystems in Kenya, Krishna McKenzie in Auroville, India, Rob Cruz in Hawaii, Derek the Druid in Corfu and Zangano Farm in Tenerife. Some gained considerable reach on Facebook and Instagram through extensive sharing.
We can see from the engagement data how memes are a useful tool to rise awareness for issues and get engagement for projects and effective for promotion
Paid Facebook Ads for Plastic Pollution Awarness Campaigns in Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh
This is an experiment to test using facebook ads for environmental campaigns, the idea is to explore using ads to raise awareness for urgent environmental issues.
Two pages have been created focusing on plastic pollution in Indonesia and Malaysia. So fare less than £10 has been spent on each page, and only one post has had over £2 spent on it. The exact data and costs will be provided in future posts. The results were very confirming, with much higher engagement than expected for such low sums of money.
The objective is to show that this is a principal that can be repeated in different countries for different causes.
Here are the pages :
Saya Suku Alam (I love Nature)
Support Program
As we have grown to understand the situations of people we are working with, its become more and more clear how far small amounts of funding can go to make long lasting effective change in real peoples lives.
Permaculture works, it provides food for the poor and restores the natural environment, the costs for both of these things are very minimal while the impact is hugely significant.
Therefore it seemed logical to begin a financial support and mentoring program to help Permaculture action be more effective, especially as all the people we are working with are under resourced in one way or another
Raising money from within our team we reached out to our audiences offering money for plants, seeds, tools and related materials. We communicated at length with the people who responded and some we were already working with. So far we have sent money to four projects, in Kenya, India and Pakistan. Its paid for 100 trees in Pakistan and is providing specific support for the other three, including plants, seeds and tools.
We want to use the internet to find supporters online to help with basic costs, and needs of the people we are supporting to help them expand their projects.
There are often restrictions with internet access, devices, bank accounts, paypal restrictions in certain countries. We are excited to expand onto the Hive blockchain to be able to better assist those we are supporting.
We are considering making a specific community on Hive for leaf of Life and would appreciate feedback.
Our activities have been snowballing and its difficult to keep track of everything so this is a minimal introduction, if you have any further questions please comment below.
You can find out more about us here:
