Mostadam Permaculture Academy

Mostadam Permaculture Academy grows out of more than ten years of permaculture work in Palestine. Through Mostadam Eco Design, I have worked with schools, kindergartens, cultural spaces, community gardens, and urban sites, teaching people how to care for soil, water, plants, food systems, and the living spaces around them.

This work has revealed a clear need: practical ecological education rooted in local reality is still scarce. Many people want to live more sustainably, but existing permaculture knowledge is often in English, based on imported examples, or disconnected from the lived conditions of Arabic-speaking communities.

In Palestine, land is not only an environmental subject. It is connected to memory, identity, resilience, food, community, and healing. Learning how to care for land here also means learning how to stay connected, creative, and active in difficult conditions.

The academy responds to this need by creating an accessible, land-based learning pathway for Arabic-speaking communities. Participants will practice site reading, soil building, composting, rainwater harvesting, water-wise Mediterranean gardening, rooftop and courtyard food growing, olive grove care, native and culturally significant plants, and ecological approaches to restoring neglected or damaged spaces.

The goal is not only to teach techniques. The goal is to help people become ecological thinkers and active caretakers of the places they live in.

This first phase will develop the academy as a clear public program. Funding will help organize the curriculum, create Arabic learning materials, run pilot workshops, document the learning process, and build a stronger foundation for future courses. It will also support simple digital learning and documentation tools that allow the academy to share knowledge across different sites and reach communities beyond one physical location.

The pilot sessions will combine indoor learning, outdoor observation, hands-on ecological practice, and reflection. Participants will explore how permaculture can be applied in real local conditions: dry summers, limited land, fragmented access to green spaces, water challenges, waste issues, and the emotional weight of living in a wounded landscape.

We will track impact through the number of sessions held, participants trained, Arabic resources created, demonstration systems built or improved, photos and videos from the process, participant feedback, and follow-up stories of people applying what they learned in their homes, schools, gardens, or community spaces.

With support from Ma Earth, Mostadam Permaculture Academy can become a practical step toward restoring the relationship between people and land — through learning, care, design, and action.