The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

Grandson of a Maltese farmer who arrived in Melbourne in the 50's, I always thought it was natural to use the land around the house to feed yourself but never made the link to how it could allay my increasing fear about the state of the systems that support us.

That all changed after watching the youtube video 'Greening the Desert' which was so inspiring I cancelled an upcoming trip and travelled to Jordan instead, seeing the site and completing a PDC. More inspired, I saved up, said goodbye to the office for a while and completed the first PRI internship.

Here in the 1st world our affluence clouds the urgency of what's really going on. For example storms take out our food bowl, the price of fresh food triples and it barely puts a dent in many people's budget. So how do we communicate with these people when there's no clearly apparent reason for them to be concerned?

I'm particularly interested in building community capacity and empowering the grassroots movement to be more able to engage with the mainstream.

I've found when I talk about my veggies most people say "Oh I'd love to grow veggies but I just wouldn't know what to do, I kill everything I touch…" so I recently started a pilot not-for-profit project in partnership with Sustainability Victoria called Grow It! It's a behavioural change program designed to get these people over those initial barriers with ease and ready for change.

They buy online, we turn up, do a site check, build the box, fill with soil, add seedlings, water and then train them over 12 months. We sold 49 boxes in the first 30 days - 3 times the local community garden's membership and most were non gardeners! Check out growit.org.au for more info.