I came back from Malawi in June with a lot to think about.  Conservation: the good, the bad and the ugly; I had also promised Remy and Charles I would try to raise some money for the permaculture project they wanted to get going at M’ndaka village, a trouble spot on the boundary of Kasungu National Park.

So I switched on my laptop and started searching and reading – reports, scientific articles, websites and books;  conservation, sustainability, political ecology, permaculture, agrocelogy, systems theory …. I found an awful lot of material, these are hot topics, and it took me a while to get a coherent picture, connect different disciplines and sectors and finally boil it all down to a proposal. The proposal was still long and bulky (far too much theoretical background) so I condensed it further and started looking for sponsors. Here is a brief summary: project summary

I could have saved myself all the research – in the end the sponsors I found where really mostly concerned with a good plan and budget and with the basic concept which they liked very much. Still I learned a lot so it wasn’t a waste at all. So now we have some money to get started and I am off to Malawi next week for the first steps.  How will this work? There is a plan but what will actually happen is another matter altogether. Look out for the next posts here!