Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
 Permaculture Around the World Series
"From the Mara Soil" film screening
Permaculture & Abundant Living in Rural East Africa
Tanzania
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Thursday, Dec 9, 7pm-9pm 2010, Donation $5
Santa Barbara Central Library, Faulkner Gallery
     Join Santa Barbara Permaculture Network as it continues its Permaculture Around the World series, highlighting the path of Permaculture  around the globe, this time in Tanzania, East Africa.

        What if global hunger, poverty and disease could be solved with the natural and abundant resources already at our disposal?  From the Mara Soil, a stunning film directed by Steve Schrenzel, transports you to a community in rural Tanzania trying to answer this question with a novel approach to solving humanity's greatest challenges---with simple, natural, and affordable solutions, many inspired by Permaculture.

        The Mara region of Tanzania is one of the poorest in Africa.  Nestled between beautiful Lake Victoria and the famous Serengeti Plain, it is home to approximately 1.3 million residents, with a per capita income for most households of less than fifty cents per day.  As one community member states in the opening of the film  "In Tanzania, we don't have war, we don't have dictator, we only have poverty".  This abject poverty creates untold stresses and challenges for both the people and the environment.

        Global Resource Alliance (GRA) based in Ojai, CA, is an organization dedicated to bringing hope, joy and abundance to the world's most impoverished regions, and has a Center located in Musoma, a small city in the Mara region of Tanzania.  Their work includes assistance to AIDS orphans, malaria prevention, primary rock water resource development, alternative energy strategies, solar cooking, micro-finance, and currently a permaculture focus on nearby Kinesi, a village of 5000 on the banks of Lake Victoria, where the film takes place. 

        Attending the "Permaculture & Sustainable Aid for the 21st Century" three day conference hosted by Santa Barbara Permaculture Network in 2006 with permaculture teacher Geoff Lawton from Australia, GRA co-founders Lyn Hebenstreit and Tara Blasco were inspired to host a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) with Geoff in Musoma the following year. This design course resulted in many local PDC graduates and a permaculture plot at the Musoma GRA Center, already evolving into a lush model for the surrounding area.

        In 2009, members of the Musoma GRA Center traveled to Malawi Africa to attend the 9th International Permaculture Convergence (IPC9), where wonderful connections with others practicing permaculture in Africa took place.  Julious Piti and Alias Mlambo, long time permaculturists from the Chikukwa Ecological Land Use Community Trust, Chimanimani district Zimbabwe, were hired to assist with the design of Kinesi Village.  Being aware that Tanzania is in the center of Africa, the hope is these positive strategies and models will radiate out to the rest of the continent, leaving poverty and despair behind. 

        Please join Santa Barbara Permaculture Network as we share the dedicated and enlightened work of Global Resource Alliance co-founders, Lyn Hebenstreit and Tara Blasco.  Film-maker Steve Schrenzel will also be in attendance.  Santa Barbara Permaculture Network was honored to have visited the GRA Center in Tanzania last year on the way to Malawi for the International Permaculture Convergence (to read more about this visit go to http://www.sbpermaculture.org/talkstory.html).

        The event takes place on Thursday, December 9, 7-9 pm at the downtown Santa Barbara Public Library, 40 East Anapamu St, Santa Barbara, CA. Donation $5, no reservations needed.  For more information visit our website at www.sbpermaculture.org


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More Info:

From the Mara Soil -- Film Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJMaY8ZanD8

FROM THE MARA SOIL takes you to a stunning but impoverished region in Tanzania, where a handful of activists are fighting food scarcity, water shortage, disease, health problems, and deforestation by teaching their people to use Mother Nature to lift themselves out of poverty.
Produced by Global Resource Alliance.  Directed by Steve Schrenzel.

Global Resource Alliance (GRA) makes a commitment to help reach the United Nations Millennium Development goal to reduce by half, the number of people suffering from abject poverty, hunger and lack of access to clean water and basic sanitation by the year 2015.  To learn more: www.globalresourcealliance.org


For more information about International Permaculture Convergences (IPC) visit: www.ipcon.org. The next IPC will be in the Middle East in Jordan, the Fall of 2011.  The theme will be water.   www.ipcon.org

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