Established Award

Al Balqa’s journey began in 2014 in Jordan, with a tree for every child campaign, alongside working with the farmers’ market movement to sell small-scale farmers’ products, particularly those of women to offer financial independence.

Since then, the project has:

• Expanded to reach eight villages;
• Expanded its tree planting campaigns to 10 trees for every household in Bayoundha village, reaching 6200 fruit and native species tree and 15,000 medicinal plants, working with women empowered from each neighbourhood in the targeted community;
• Started a permaculture training center;
• Reestablished the local farmers’ cooperative;
• Hosted a creative club with 45 children, providing hot meals;
• Planned two food forests and native species nursery to regenerate the ecology of Al-Artha municipality.

The project is entirely led and managed by women, demonstrating female-led innovation and shifting the picture of rural Muslim women in the community.

The project has seen many farmers, youth and women becoming part of a green economy that depends on restoring biodiversity, water harvesting, agricultural tourism and adventure tourism, and continues to renew the resources of nature.

CoRenewal has been at the forefront of developing innovative ecological solutions for over a decade, from supporting Indigenous communities impacted by oil spills in the Amazon, to catalyzing post-fire watershed defense mobilizations in California.

A nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving biodiversity and addressing the impacts of natural disasters and environmental pollution on both community and ecosystem health, they are bringing together grassroots bioremediation, rigorous scientific research and community skill-building.

By allying with fungi and other biological entities, their programs facilitate innovative research and implementation of community-led, nature-based remediation technologies.

For example, CoRenewal works with local community leaders to: document the impact of oil contamination on microbial communities and ecosystem functioning in order to support Indigenous communities and habitats in the Ecuadorian Amazon facing a toxic legacy left by Chevron/Texaco; and iteratively inform the development of bioremediation methods in the Amazon.

They likewise collaborate to examine the ability of native fungi and microbes to facilitate post-fire ecosystem regeneration via native microbial amendments.

Dajopen Waste Management Project is a Community Based Organization formed by members of Kitale, Kenya. Their mission is to help clean the town environment through reuse and recycling of municipal solid waste for the benefit of its slum dwellers and small scale farmers, as well as enhancing food security by making and supplying value-added organic fertilizer to farmers.

They have trained more than 165,000 people on waste management and organic farming, and eight community groups on producing a range of recycled products. The project’s activities include: composting of organic biodegradable waste, making briquettes from dry tree leaves and pulp papers, making simple maize shellers from scrap metals, to assist the small scale farmers and especially women who handle most of the domestic chores in the family. They support members in innovating to take advantage of the high rate of waste generation to create viable enterprises.

Uganda (Kenya’s neighbouring country) has sent civic leaders to learn about waste management from the project.

Instituto Mesoamericano de Permacultura (IMAP) started in 2000 in San Lucas Tolimán, on the shores of Lake Atitlán in the Mayan highlands of Guatemala.

It was created by a group of Maya Kakchiquel folk with the desire to use native seeds, permaculture, traditional Indigenous knowledge and education to create social healing after 36 years of internal armed conflict that wiped out hundreds of communities and displaced millions from their land and disrupted the transfer of their culture and ancestral knowledge.

IMAP was established to comprehensively address the poverty and malnutrition suffered by indigenous communities in the lake basin as well as throughout the Mesoamerican region, who were disportionately violated during the war and left largely dispossessed following the signing of peace. IMAP’s work revolves around providing communities with access to land, seeds, and excellent permaculture education.

IMAP has trained more than 10,000 smallholder farmers in basic principles of agroecology and seed conservation, increasing the capacity of communities to adapt to climate variability and combating malnutrition by promoting food sovereignty and strengthening the local market.

Malawi Schools Permaculture Clubs (MSPC) trains teachers in northern Malawi to run after-school student permaculture clubs. Through the clubs, students learn permaculture concepts and skills and apply them directly on their school grounds & create polyculture garden patches to grow indigenous foodcrops.

Now in their 6th year, MSPC has expanded to work with 22 schools, reached over 2,000 participants and trained 120 teachers. They have developed session packs and training for teachers, and provided basic inputs like tools and seeds to get schools started, whilst increasing the input of community members in the project.

They are now preparing to launch a partner programme, to support NGOs in other regions to establish permaculture clubs and teacher support networks. They are also a pilot project for the Permaculture Evaluation Toolkit (PET), helping to test-run a model for assessment of impact for grassroots permaculture programmes, to increase the rigour of their impact analysis and accessible tools in the wider permaculture movement.

Empowering people through community-driven permaculture projects since 2001, Permatil recognised the urgent need to regenerate Timor-Leste’s natural environment and create sustainable livelihoods and resilient communities, while strengthening culture and traditional knowledge.

Their work includes:

• Planning and implementing permaculture projects with communities across Timor-Leste
• Training of future trainers – including NGO and government staff, community leaders and local farmers – in water and soil conservation, agro-ecology, agro-forestry, aquaculture and organic farming
• Establishing a national farmer’s food sovereignty network
• Water restoration and preservation projects to rehabilitate springs and store water in the ground in 174 communities
• Producing Timorese educational resources including illustrated readers, films, posters and the Permaculture Guidebook from Timor-Leste, 2008
• Producing the Tropical Permaculture Guidebook, 2018, accessed online on a ‘pay-what-you-can’ basis
• Incorporating a permaculture school gardens program in the national primary school curriculum, a global first.
• Advocating with government, private sector and communities for permaculture-based change

Permatil would like to build more awareness of their work in the region, to help and inspire other groups to see the benefits of, and get involved in permaculture, through school gardens, water conservation, tree planting and youth ‘in action’ projects and start collaborating with similar organisations on future projects.

Reviveolution exists to preserve and expand ancestral wisdom in a way that awakens the full spectrum of human potential so that individuals, communities, and ecosystems thrive in health, through intercultural education, land-based ecological stewardship, and network weaving.

Since 2013, they have worked in deep partnership with the Q’ero Nation, participating in four major global gatherings, three inter-tribal councils, and over three dozen international events, and hosting more than 20 retreats and 50 intercultural workshops and ceremonies.

In 2017, they sponsored the purchase of a family-sized farm in the Sacred Valley of Peru. Consisting of a model regenerative farm, a botanical sanctuary, an intercultural meeting and learning space, and a sacred site for ceremony, it is positioned to become one of various indigenous-led eco-hubs across the region and world.

Now called the Medicine Mother or “Hampi Mama” Botanical Sanctuary, this land aims to be a beacon of regenerative practices led by Quechua medicine women and their aspiration to spread flourishing health throughout their community and landscapes.

During the coronavirus pandemic, they were called upon as “cultural interpreters” between the local indigenous farming communities and the foreigner population to create a closed-loop system to deliver emergency food baskets via horseback to over 300 families at 15,000 feet, and coordinated over 20 meetings and mutual learning sessions on regenerative farming.

Reviveolution believes that our deep interconnection with the web of life is a roadmap to apply ancestral principles to modern problems, and that through inner and outer regeneration, people, landscapes and systems are transformed.

The Jupago Kreká Collective was created in 2005 for the construction of their Life Plan by the principles of Lymolaygo Toype (Xukuru Well-Living). After the reconquest of their ancestral land, they committed to break away from the land exploitation system left by the predatory model of cattle ranching that damages biodiversity, and jeopardises their practices and knowledge of Sacred Agriculture, which destabilize the Xukuru Way of Life.

The Collective promotes the recovery of agrobiodiversity in degraded areas, and the valorization of practices and ancient knowledge of a sacred agriculture that structures a Way of Life connected to the ancestral world; pursuing harmony between biodiversity and spiritual-diversity, which lives in the environment. They have also established the sacred complex Caxo da Boa Vista, as a reference for traditional agriculture, with the help of Xukuru youth and women’s collectives.

They understand health as a universal result of their work, which demands healing actions for humans, plants, animals, the spirits and the mother earth. The medicine-women are the guardians from the ancestral healing knowledge, and they guide them with care for the health of a body-mind-spirit whole.

Women’s Initiative Gambia (WIG) helps disadvantaged people in The Gambia improve their income and their standard of living whilst actively improving the environment.

Empowerment of local constituents is integral: projects are established through local women, youth, and disabled groups in rural villages to give them a voice in their own development and support improved investment planning and decision-making skills to become effective economic agents in their communities.

WIG has successfully implemented over 70 environmental and waste management projects across the country. They provide skills training on environmental clean-ups, turning plastic waste into plastic craft and the commercialization of recycled plastic waste products.

They train people in creating alternative cooking fuels from discarded groundnut and coconut shells, and other organic waste to replace traditional charcoal, which causes deforestation and air pollution.

They have a wide variety of other programs, including school gardening, food and nutrition, agroforestry, Permaculture and bee-keeping, improving food security and degraded land for increasing production of saleable goods.