The first Permaculture Design Course (PDC) in the US was taught by Bill Mollison back in the early 1980s; there are still a few students from that course around our region! Many iterations and formats for the PDC have evolved from there.
The Resilience Hub offered its first PDC in 2008 with Lisa Fernandes supporting Charles and Julie Yelton as the lead facilitators and teachers. Since then, we have organized and offered between one and three PDCs each year continuously until the present day.
Closing in on 20 completed PDCs and improving with every one…
For the most part, our focus has been on a “Weekend Format,” to spread out the 13 total teaching days, allow for deeper learning and self-study in between weekends, create access to the course for people who cannot take two weeks away from their lives and to ensure that the facilitators are fresh and energized for each course weekend!
In 2012 we began offering the PDC at MOFGA’s Common Ground Education Center in Unity, Maine and Jesse Watson of Midcoast Permaculture joined the core facilitation team.
In 2015 we began teaching the PDC in Boston (Lisa’s hometown and the same driving time from Portland as MOFGA) to serve that audience since no PDCs had occurred there in many years. We have co-sponsored the Boston PDC with the Boston Food Forest Coalition and others in order to grow the network and capacity of the permaculture community in New England’s biggest city. Recently we have begun collaborating with Hawthorne Youth and Community Center in Roxbury, basing our Boston PDC out of their renovated site located on open green space comprising several city blocks at the base of Fort HIll.
As of this writing, The Resilience Hub is scheduling it’s 18th Permaculture Design Course and just graduated its 5th Advanced Permaculture Design cohort!