Strawberry Fields Eco-Lodge, Ethiopia

Location: Konso Special Wareda, Ethiopia
Project Start Date: August 2007
Expected Completion Date: January 2009 (beginning of business operation – lifetime is 25 years)

Project Concept

Strawberry Fields Eco-Lodge (SFEL) integrates a lodge, farm, organic restaurant, and Permaculture design training facility. It is located in Konso Special Wareda in Southern Ethiopia. SFEL aims to generate funds through providing Eco Tourism services and offering Permaculture Design Certificate courses (PDCs) to customers. Cultural trekking tours will take in community based activities around Konso - renowned for its unique culture and sophisticated agricultural system. Profits will be directed into promoting local community development, through giving Permaculture design training and follow up services, to local community and stake-holders. Locals are trained alongside guest participants, the latter paying fees to facilitate training for the former.

Detailed Project Description

Project Objectives

• To benefit the project stakeholders directly and indirectly while demonstrating a model for successful community oriented development in the tourism sector, applicable elsewhere in Ethiopia.
• To benefit local community both directly and indirectly, by promoting, facilitating and implementing responsible community based tourism activities in the project area.
• To demonstrate and offer training in Permaculture on the project site to locals and outsiders.

The project location is Konso special Wareda in the SNNP Regional State, chosen due to the potential displayed by the area for tourism development (as previously recognized by the UNWTO which established the Konso community tourism project in 2007, funded by the ST-EP initiative - "Sustainable Tourism - Eliminating Poverty") and also due to the character of the local people, whose industrious farming culture is also renowned and has been recognized internationally. These features made Konso the ideal location to establish this project with its broad based concept of linking tourism sector development with local community development.

The Eco Lodge

The lodge is a cultural style hotel constructed using local techniques, labour and materials to insure a low eco-logical impact and appropriate reflection of the local culture and architecture in their appearance and structure. It will provide quality tourism facilities which are currently lacking in Konso. As a long term asset of the Konso people, it is important that they have been involved in its design and construction, giving them a chance to display their cultural heritage and artesian skills to those who visit Konso.

Responsible Tourism

Tourism has a great potential to infuse wealth into the locality and generate employment in the area, drawing as it does on economic reserves which come from outside and are far less limited than those available locally. Konso is well positioned to reap economic benefits from the tourism industry, boasting, as it does, a fascinating culture and a world renowned agricultural system, set amid the splendour of the Great Rift Valley. Positioned at a junction between routes to Arba Minch, The Omo Valley and the road to Moyale (Kenya) via Yabello, Konso already has a large flow of visitors passing by. Konso was named as one of the six first recipient destinations for projects aimed specifically at helping to reduce poverty, to be supported by the ST-EP Foundation. ST-EP, an initiative of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) launched in 2002 at the Johannesburg Summit.

However key to success in utilising tourism to tackle poverty and promote community development is to insure the flow of funds into the appropriate hands: visitors and the local people, which will encourage further growth in the tourism industry in the area.

Permaculture

Permaculture is a design system for sustainable land management developed in Australia in the 1950s. It addresses the issues of agricultural productivity and environmental stability simultaneously, so offers a solution to the problems of food insecurity and land degradation in Africa. Konso has repeatedly suffered from food insecurity in the past. The UNDP’s Rapid Assessment Report: Konso Special Wareda, SNNPR (1999) states that; “since the 1950s, drought induced famines have hit Konso and the immediate area almost once every ten years.” “Konso was devastated by the droughts in 1973/74 and 1983/84”.

SFEL incorporates a model permaculture farm, which demonstrates permaculture principals, strategies and techniques to the local community and to guests of the lodge. It is planned to bring experienced permaculturalists from around the world to SFEL, to work together with local farmers in developing an effective permaculture system for the local conditions, using the famous local agricultural system as a starting point, and introducing new techniques which have not been employed in the area till now, due to lack of information and capital.

Project Duration & Schedule

Construction Phase

SFEL is officially a business, currently under soul ownership, but will later be transferred to the ownership of a PLC to be formed with local partners. An investment capital of 6,000,000 Birr (US$60,000) needs to be realised and demonstrated before it can officially open for business.

Project Needs

Skills – we are currently searching for the operational team that will run the lodge and other eco-tourism components from the beginning of operations.

Funds - We are in the process of raising funds for completion of project construction and beginning the operation of the business and intending to raise US$25-40,000 to do so. Potential sources of funding have been identified, but the funds have not yet been secured.

Volunteers - We are keen to take on and facilitate volunteers to perform a range of activities in Konso, including WWOOFing, participation in community training schemes for Permaculture and Income Generating Activities (IGA), as well as for other roles including teaching and medical assistance for the Konso community.

October 2009: Update on the past year in Konso at Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge

Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge in Konso, Ethiopia, was established with the dual aims of promoting food security through training and implementation of Permaculture, and promoting alternative livelihoods in Konso by increasing community participation in the tourism industry, which has been widely criticised for excluding (even exploiting) indigenous communities in the south of Ethiopia. One milestone in the development of the project which came in November 2008, was the arrival of our resident trainer and farm manager from Zimbabwe, Mr Tichafa Makovere Shumba, an experienced Permaculturalist, veteran educationalist and head-master, who was at the forefront of the development of Permaculture in Zimbabwe; a trainer for the Fimbadzanai Permaculture Project, and a lead trainer for the SCOPE Program, an initiative implementing Permaculture in schools, colleges and communities in Zimbabwe. SCOPE has more recently expanded into the regional Re-SCOPE which is now active in Malawi, Zambia, Namibia and has even begun activities in Uganda.

Tichafa’s arrival in Konso immediately preceded our grand opening of the lodge in December 2008, which was announced with a Konso cultural music festival, heavily attended by over 1,000 locals keen to show off their cultural dancing and participate in a competition between the five surrounding villages. (VIDEOS: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=131035640716 and http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=130935495716)

With the lodge now functioning (to a limited extent) we could proceed to promote Permaculture in Konso, training both local stake-holders and, it was then hoped, foreigners who’s fees would go towards funding local participants. However our appeal as an international PC training centre came under threat at this point from the unwillingness of Tigari to recognise our certificate, on the basis that as an African project our system would be inapplicable to the rest of the world. Ali Sharif, one of the organisers of the IPC9 in Malawi, supposedly someone seeking to promote Permaculture in Africa, accused us of being “bioregional”, implicitly calling into question Tichafa’s (and indeed Africans in general) standards as a PC trainer. We were subsequently unable to attract foreigners onto our courses for the rest of 2009. Tichafa will be actively seeking a resolution to this issue at the IPC9, and those who have hampered our efforts to fill the bellies of children in Southern Ethiopia had better prepare to explain them-selves at the convergence.

However we were initially fortunate enough to have the support of two private philanthropists (Yoko Furusaki from Japan, and Sarah Davis from the USA) who funded us to train local community members on our first two PDCs which we ran in December and January. Following this we began developing relationships with NGOs active in Konso and began a joint initiative with Save the Childeren Finland, much along the lines of the SCOPE program, called the Permaculture in Konso Schools Project (PKSP).

The strengths of focussing on schools when introducing PC into indigenous communities are numerous: Firstly children are more open to new ideas than adults, who often stick to received wisdom without questioning what the “way we do it”; School children are also better able to take on concepts since they are getting educated, where as their parents may not have gone to school and are more likely to be illiterate, making technical concepts such as those which form the basis of Permaculture inaccessible to them; But the real beauty of using the school as a model is that the parents can also be involved in the development of the PC model as well as the children. The school is a community focal point hence we can influence the coming generation without excluding those still in the driving seat of the society.

When implementing in a school we begin by training two or more teachers. During the PDC they use their schools for their design exercises, so we come out with initial designs for the schools. These are developed further with input from Tichafa, acting as consultant, and a follow-up program is devised in which implementation is begun with both the parents and kids getting their hands dirty. PC topics will then be included on the school curriculum and a series of open days, exchange visits between participating schools, competitions and for the best implementation and other activities will be planned out to encourage continuing follow-up. (For more information see: http://arc.peacecorpsconnect.org/view/397/introduction-of-permaculture-to-schools-and-communities-in-southern-ethiopia)

In 2009 we have begun implementation in 3 Konso schools and the PKSP is planned to expand to 5 schools in 2010. We are also now planning to begin another cooperation with the Catholic Church’s Food Security Promotion Project near Chencha, a highland town area about 100km from Konso in a radically different environment - high wet-montane known in Amharic as dega where we will be working with a community nursery and re-forestation scheme.

We are also planning to run a PDC for foreigners in February, with a special focus on food security development for indigenous communities, which is of particular relevance to those wanting to apply PC to rural development in the rural developing world. We focus on appropriate technology, soil conservation and water harvesting, indigenous knowledge systems and Permaculture in schools. (see LINK for more info)

Another welcome development on the tourism side of the project is that we have been awarded the a scholarship to attend the ATTA’s Adventure Travel World Summit (http://www.adventuretravelworldsummit.com/ http://www.adventuretravelworldsummit.com/press_releases/09/atws_pr_092409.pdf ) a chance to showcase our trekking and community based activities to the international industry and get more people coming on our treks, to see Konso, provide community income at the grass roots and assist SFEL in its objectives.

For more info on Strawberry Fields see our website: www.permalodge.org
For more info on our PDC in February 2010: http://www.permalodge.org/what-is-permaculture/our-pdcs/permaculture-design-courses-at-sfel
For pictures of the project and our implementation in Konso schools: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=317545&id=587265716&l=73340fef1c
and here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=296472&id=587265716&l=ffec626540
and : http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=297774&id=587265716&l=1d5b76cc97