Supporting

Help create community, restore ecosystems, and support the creation of strong local economies – without leaving home. We understand that many people who “get it” and want to help can’t just pick up and come to Panama. Here are some ways you can support us from afar.

Maybe you can provide funds to support volunteers, a stipend for interns, or a scholarship for Permaculture learners. Or perhaps you want to help us buy seeds, seedlings, tools, or other materials, or help with operational costs.

Financial Support

Sponsor an Intern or Volunteer

Sponsoring an internship allows someone to participate in a three-month practical permaculture design internship program. $2,600 covers the full Permaculture Design Course (PDC), lodging and a stipend for three months.

We can attract people with amazing skills who might not otherwise be able to come when you sponsor a volunteer for a month. $450 covers their stay and a small stipend.

Sponsor a Permaculture Student

There are many willing learners – local people and others from the global south – who lack the financial resources to pay for a PDC. We would love to offer PDCs for free to everyone – but we don’t yet live in a world where we can do that. You can help us move in that direction by providing a PDC scholarship at $1175. The PDC is an intensive two-week course including room and board. We’ll also include a small stipend for successful completion.

Project and Operational Support

It costs money to keep our initiative going. We need seeds, seedlings, and tools and we need to pay the bills (electricity and internet) and our local helpers. We need attractive, basic infrastructure for receiving volunteers and learners. And we need to keep experimenting and innovating so that we can become the creative, cooperative, largely self-sufficient community that we aim to become. Local help runs $600/month, internet $60, electricity $30. Seeds and tools vary – anything helps.

Subsidize a Share

Subsidizing someone who wants to become a full member of the community but doesn’t have the funds for a share is a great way to ensure that someone who has gone through the membership process can become a member more quickly. A share costs $20,000 and can be subsidized partially, in increments of $2,000.

Here’s our donation form – let us know how you can help.

In-kind support

Do you have stuff you don’t need any longer? Or do you have access to surplus or returned items that might be of use here? Possibly you have expertise that you can share with us by helping to handle our social media, website, or marketing. Or maybe you have mad permaculture, electrical, homesteading, or other skills and can provide advice when we need it.

Stuff

We need and can use everything from hand tools to power tools, solar panels to wind turbines, seeds, seedlings, construction materials, shipping containers and a utility ATV. We can also direct things we don’t need immediately to local people who do, through our non-profit community-based organization, the local council, school, church, and other charitable organizations.

Expertise

We could use advisors in areas such as alternative energy sources (solar, wind, hydro – mechanical and electrical), potable water systems, food production, processing, and preservation, small animal husbandry, and general homesteading and broadscale permaculture design (developing maps).  Another way to help from afar is with back-office stuff like maintaining and improving the website, handling social media, being an ambassador (making connections for us), and spreading the word.

Click here and let us know about the in-kind support you can provide.