Earth Love LTD has worked in reforestation and community empowerment across Kenya for many years. Since 2019, they have been working on Lamu Island and have established a regenerative fruit and food forest on an informal dumpsite. Earth Love wishes to use this farm to demonstrate permaculture and regenerative farming practices during two practical permaculture design courses (PPDC).

Through training the local community in permaculture practices, the PPDC aims to increase food security, increase self-reliance, mitigate climate change, sequester carbon emissions and increase nutrition.

The course will be tailored to the specific needs, environmental factors and conditions of Lamu Island on the Earth Love demonstration farm in Shela village. The course will be taken in Kiswahili with a Kenyan permaculture trainer who has had 15-years of experience. There will be an emphasis on the practical aspects of permaculture practice to ensure the knowledge is accessible to Lamu residents.

Earth Love will recruit young landowners from across all of the villages on Lamu Island to take part. Participants will be taken through an application process to ensure participants are chosen on the basis of their willingness to learn and use their new skills.

Lamu Island is unique in its geology as most of the farming land is made up of sand dunes with little rich soil. For this reason, this PPDC will be focussed solely on Lamu Island due to the unique agricultural practices that are needed for farming on this kind of land. However, if the training is successful and there is a willingness to learn permaculture practices, the training can be expanded to the mainland and further up the archipelago.