Online Training
Social Permaculture Online - October 22, 2025 to March 4, 2026
A certified training organised by Alfred Decker, hosted by the Permaculture Association of Britain, and facilitated by 13 inspiring people, the Social Permaculture Online (SPO) training explores permaculture as a tool for designing communities, organisations, and your own life. It will help you to understand things in terms of connection – between people, economies, and governing structures – and how to create the conditions for humans to flourish.
While the discipline originated as an ecological method for designing sustainable full-featured human settlements, more recently the design principles have been applied in urban, social and group contexts to organise, communicate and cooperate more effectively, rethinking existing social and economic structures – we call this Social Permaculture.
The ethics and principles of permaculture present a strong critique of current forms of social organisation and economic relationships. If we take seriously the idea of learning from natural systems, we are encouraged to reimagine economic and social systems as embedded in these, supporting the resilience of the system as a whole. Learning about ecological principles and patterns can help us to transform our human interactions and organisations to be dynamic, responsive to change and a means of flourishing for everyone involved.
Permaculturalists place a high priority on developing resilience – the capacity to withstand shocks and disruptions – and we will look at connections between designing for resilience on a community and a personal level.
Why this training?
Learning will take place through a varied blend of online meetings, group work & interaction, presentations and self-study. Through an engaging mix of interactive activities and guest expert sessions, you’ll walk away with ecologically-informed tools to:
- Facilitate meetings and processes
- Work effectively in groups
- Design organisational structures that work and last
- Make decisions efficiently
- Communicate in ways that build confidence
- Apply Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects & Active Hope to your life and your work
- Transform conflict
- Plan change-making campaigns
- Design regenerative economic models
- And much more
Course participants will consider how each individual functions in society; what are our social and ecological impacts; and how everyone can find their own role in responding to the “polycrisis” we are living.
When
The SPO will be offered as a training certified by Alfred Decker/12P Permaculture Design in three different formats:
* The current extensive format that includes seven live sessions over six months starting on Wednesday, October 22, 2025, and ending on Wednesday, March 4, 2026. Participants must attend 75% of the live sessions in order to obtain a certificate, but they can start at any time and missed sessions can also be made up during future courses.
Live Session dates
Wednesday, October 22, 2025; Wednesday, November 19, 2025; Wednesday, December 10, 2025; Intermezzo Session – Sunday, January 18, 2026; Wednesday, January 21, 2026; Wednesday, February 11, 2026; Wednesday, March 4, 2026.
Live Session Times
The live sessions take place at:
16:30–19:30 UK Time (GMT) / 17:30–20:30 Central European Time (CET)
North America (Eastern Standard Time): 11:30 –14:30
If you’re in other time zones, please adjust accordingly to join us!
* An intensive format that includes seven live sessions over six weeks. Dates to be announced.
* The SPO is also available as a self-guided, non-certified training in which you can start at any time and work your way through material at your own pace, with permanent access to the material. If you want to obtain certification at a later date, you can sign up to attend live sessions on a future course for a fair price. Course launch to be announced.
What Makes This Training Unique?
No other training combines training and sharing from some of the permaculture’s most inspirational change-makers from across the globe; connections and community-building among participants; and cutting-edge, non-formal online education based on best practices.
The training organiser and host, Alfred Decker, has designed the SPO using his experience as a leading voice in Social Permaculture and one of Europe’s innovative permaculture educators, having facilitated dozens of courses including over 20 permaculture teacher trainings.
In addition, Alfred has designed the SPO in communication with the PAB for it to be a certified module that can form a part of a modular Permaculture Design Course offered by the PAB in the future.
What is included in the course?
- 7 x live 3 hour interactive online classes
- Course platform for self study including live class recordings, videos, text, and images
- Course community forum
- Membership in the Permaculture Association of Britain
- Certification for what can be a module in a future Permaculture Design Course
Community
You will be part of an international community during this training. Previous participants testify to the value of learning and practicing in a supportive group; making global connections and even finding people to do things with! Our community forum is located inside the course platform to make it easy to connect with your colleagues.
By joining the PTT, you will also become a member of the Permaculture Association of Britain and gain access to their permaculture Community Hub, which actively supports a worldwide movement.
SPO Facilitators (In Alphabetical Order)
Adam Brock
Adam Brock (he/him) is a facilitator, author and organizational ecologist based in his hometown of Denver, Colorado. For nearly two decades, he has applied the principles of permaculture design to create the conditions for regenerative relationships among individuals, grassroots initiatives, and institutions throughout the USA.
As co-founder of food justice nonprofit The GrowHaus, Adam led the transformation of an abandoned half-acre greenhouse into an award-winning hub for healthy food and urban agriculture. While at GrowHaus, Adam co-chaired Denver’s Sustainable Food Policy Council, spoke at TEDxMileHigh, and was named one of “Colorado’s Top Thinkers” by the Denver Post.
A trained permaculture designer since 2008, Adam has led over a dozen Permaculture Design Courses and is a national leader in the field of social permaculture. In 2017, Adam published Change Here Now: Permaculture Strategies for Personal And Community Transformation, a recipe book for social change inspired by the more-than-human world. Since 2019, Adam has served as co-director at Regenerate Change, a national consulting and education group focused on regenerative social design.
Alfred Decker
Alfred Decker is an award-winning permaculture designer; the Education Coordinator of Permaculture For Refugees; a certified educator with the Permaculture Association of Britain; a leading voice in Social Permaculture; and one of Europe’s innovative permaculture educators. His journey into ecological design began in 1998 when he completed his first Permaculture Design Course in California. Since then, Alfred has been involved with social movements and projects across many borders. He is the founder of the 12P Permaculture Design consultancy, Permacultura Barcelona and the Forest Gardens project at Can Masdeu; is a co-founder of the Spanish Permaculture Academy (Academia de Permacultura Íbera); and was a member of the European Permaculture Teachers Partnership and the Permaculture Council of Europe. Alfred holds a post graduate diploma in sustainable architecture and renewable energy (Centre for Alternative Technology).
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After taking a PTT course with Rosemary Morrow in 2011, he undertook a two year mentorship and later co-facilitated six courses as her assistant, ultimately earning a Diploma in Permaculture Education & Community Development in 2013 through the Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute (Australia). Committed to furthering the PTT course that Rosemary developed in over four decades of teaching experience around the world, Alfred facilitated over 20 PTT courses as lead facilitator and co-edited all three versions of the PTT manual. Rosemary has asked him to organise the PTT trainings in Europe, and he has developed an online version of the course on the Permaculture Association of Britain’s online educational platform.
In 2024 Alfred joined the Global Council of Permaculture For Refugees. He is passionate about how permaculture can be useful to refugees and migrants, and how permaculture education can be designed for them as learners…and how they in turn can best share their valuable knowledge and experience with others.
Alfred lives in the old town centre of Berga, Catalunya (Spanish Territory).
Yau Fan
Yau is a permaculture designer and facilitator. He did his first PDC in 2017 and afterwards took courses with Lesley Martin, Hugo Oliveira, Mirka Faya Hlavacova, Patricia Pereira, Helder Valente, Geoff Lawton, Daniel Halsey, Gerard Ducerf, and Elaine Ingham. Since taking a teacher training with Alfred Decker, he has taught 2 PDC and other permaculture courses for refugees in Brussels.
Andreas Jonsson
Andreas entered the Permaculture mindset in the early 2000’s. He finished his Diploma work in Applied Permaculture Design in 2017 and has organized and facilitated many PDCs in a variety of formats during the last decade, and lately a few Permaculture Teacher Trainings with Alfred Decker and Cat Dolleris. Andreas was elected leader of Holma Folkhögskola in 2017, an adult school in Sweden with 20 staff members, based on the Permaculture ethics and organized Sociocratically. Holma has connected thousands of people to Permaculture thinking, doing and teaching, over the last 20 years. Apart from facilitating Permaculture, he is also an internationally certified trainer and consultant in Sociocracy, working daily in facilitating learning and joining the collaborative community forces of Permaculture and Sociocracy. Since 2017 he has been working with SociocracyForAll, where he is currently leading the work in aligning Sociocracy trainings globally. In 2020 he co-founded the Nordic Permaculture Academy (NPA) which is also organized through Sociocracy. NPA is a home for around 70 Permaculture apprentices, mentors
Patty Love
Patty Love (she/her/ki) remembers her first childhood plot in the family’s massive food garden where she planted seeds of her own choosing: peas, herbs, and flowers. In 2000, just as she first heard the term “permaculture,” patty started a family and a home-based business as a Virtual Business Manager, which has evolved into Barefoot Business Consulting and Systems Design. In 2009, a decade long dream came true when she finally completed her first Permaculture Design Certification (PDC) course with teacher, Dave Feasey, and then commuted to the Hudson Valley to study Edible Forest Gardening with Ethan Roland, Mark Krawczyk, Dina Falconi and others before returning home to launch Barefoot Edible Landscape and Permaculture and found Genesee Valley/Rochester Permaculture and Resilience Network.
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More dreams came true when she completed a second PDC with Earth Activist Training in 2011 and student-taught in 2018. Later that same year, she became a certified Permaculture Teacher through E.A.T. and worked with Starhawk to develop and launch Regenerative Business Design as the ongoing instructor. Patty saw that RBD course graduates were seeking support and applied her Professional Business Coaching Certification to develop Maven Makers, a regeneratively-designed small business coaching group. Now, with nearly 40 years of experience in business and 15 years in permaculture, patty practices and teaches regenerative design, permaculture, food forest gardening, suburban homesteading and social permaculture in her community and to a global audience from her home along Red Creek in occupied Hodinöšyö:nih
Rosemary Morrow
Rosemary is known and loved worldwide as a permaculture teacher, practitioner, and activist. She has travelled the globe for four decades, often in countries shattered by war and disasters, sharing her passion for permaculture and social justice. Her belief is that access to useful knowledge is a basic human right. Her pragmatic and effective approach working with and being lead by local people has created community-scale permaculture projects and outcomes across a broad range of environments. The knowledge and experience she brings to creating abundance, food security and successful sustainable farming models is unparalleled in permaculture education today. She is the author of the Earth Restorer’s Guide to Permaculture, the Earth User’s Guide to Teaching Permaculture, The Family Seedsaving Book, and A Good Home Forever.
Sarah Queblatin
Sarah Queblatin is the Founder of Green Releaf Initiative in the Philippines working in disasters, displacement, and development. She holds a merit diploma in permaculture from the Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute where she also studied Permaculture in Development particularly in precarious places. In 2021, Sarah drafted the beginnings of a proposal for Permaculture Principle 0, to honor the local wisdom and traditional ecological knowledge and stewardship of a place before the first principle of “observing and interacting.”
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She is currently drafting Principle 13 to integrate practices for designing for resilience and regeneration in times of increasing vulnerability from the polycrisis. Her life work is in restoring and restoring and re-storying narratives of place and belonging and is now weaving her love for the arts and culture with place based regeneration through her passion project, Living Story Landscapes.
She finished her Advanced Certificate Course in Permaculture at Aranya Agriculture Alternatives with Guilda Permaculture. She completed her PDC from Green Warrior Permaculture and the Philippine Permaculture Association. Sarah is a founding member of Permaculture for Refugees, a Global Ecovillage Network Ambassador, and member of Re-Alliance.
Sonita Mbah
Sonita Mbah is a passionate food grower, facilitator and Applied Permaculture Designer – Certified by German Permakultur Akademie. She has led Permaculture courses in Cameroon, Germany and Kenya. For over 10 years, she was the Administrator of Better World Cameroon and co-initiator of Bafut Ecovillage, an off-grid learning center North West of Cameroon. As Executive Secretary of the Global Ecovillage Network Africa, she brings regenerative community and social enterprise development to several African communities. Sonita received the Gender Just Climate Solutions Award by the Women and Gender Constituency for empowering women on the earthen cook stove technology and the One World Award for her work with the Global Ecovillage Network.
Starhawk
Starhawk (she/her) is the co-founder and executive director of Earth Activist Training. One of the foremost voices in Earth-based spirituality, Starhawk is an author, activist, and permaculture teacher and designer. Her 13 books include such beloved reads as The Spiral Dance, The Earth Path, and The Fifth Sacred Thing. Starhawk drew from 30 years of living collectively to write The Empowerment Manual, which is the basis for her social permaculture course, Empowering Collaborative Groups. Starhawk has been recognized by the Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA) as a leading figure in permaculture and has been awarded dual diplomas for excellence in education and permaculture site design. As a teacher of magical activism and permaculture education, Starhawk’s life work takes her across the globe.
Habiba Youssef Abdel Aal
Habiba holds a degree in Economics and Sustainable Development, and has worked in international development focusing on the regenerative and sustainable use of natural resources for income generating activities aimed for the reduction of poverty in rural areas. She is the co-founder of La Bolina, an Andalusia-based association working on land regeneration, capacity and awareness building and socio-economical integration of migrants and refugees. Habiba is an expert in agroecology market gardens.
Sabrina Furrer
Sabrina is a social worker / educator, permaculture designer and organic veggie farmer. She is starting up a community based urban farm in Switzerland; does permaculture consulting through Im Haselhein; and is passionate about complimenting permaculture systems thinking with The Work That Reconnects.
Jas Tribe
With a background in Environmental Science, Jas is a facilitator and event designer with experience in conservation, campaigning, community outreach, land work, and yoga. They have worked with businesses, farmers, refugees, NHS staff, and educators, using a holistic, embodied, and justice-focused approach.
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Jas’s work is rooted in impact and reconnection—to self, community, and the wider web of life—to cultivate “active hope.” Jas says, “Active Hope is a practice, something we do rather than have; it’s about becoming active participants in creating the future we hope for.”
While campaigning full-time, Jas discovered “The Work That Reconnects” and felt a profound sense of “coming home.” This framework has since transformed their life and work, bringing deep joy and purpose in sharing and facilitating the process both online and in person.
Certification requirements
This course teaches PAB-certified content from a certified teacher, covering the social permaculture aspects of the official certified PDC curriculum.
Later this year this course will make up a portion of a modular PDC, allowing learners to build their PDC through smaller more accessible courses (whether face to face or online), focusing on their areas of design interest. Therefore this course can be used for future certification with the PAB.
To receive certification, students are required to:
- Attend at least five of the seven live class sessions (these can be made up at a later date
- Complete the course content
What do others say about the facilitators?
“I am the first Lesotho national to get a PDC and had no permaculture network or opportunities in my country. Through this course I made amazing friends and connections for life! Thanks to this new international network, I am now able to apply for international opportunities and feel hopeful to gain funding for my permaculture projects. Thank you for this wonderful program.”
“Your expertise, dedication, and facilitation skills create an engaging and transformative learning environment. You bring a wealth of knowledge and practical experience to your teaching, ensuring that participants not only gain theoretical insights but also develop the skills necessary for real-world application.”
“The permaculture teachers training with Alfred, Habiba, Sonita, and Yau was an incredibly transformative experience. Their guidance and facilitation empowered us to bring out the best in ourselves, explore new teaching methods, and practice innovative techniques with confidence. Their energy, knowledge, and encouragement made learning deeply engaging and truly inspiring.”
Prices & Registration
We offer a sliding scale for this course, and ask participants to offer what they can pay for this engaging, professional, and certified training. Those who can afford to pay more on the higher end of the scale will help those who can only pay less.
The sliding scale recognises the differences in economic reality depending on what country a participant comes from, as well as their individual circumstances, so this is a practical way that people with more resources can act in solidarity.
This course includes a discounted one year membership in the Permaculture Association Britain (PAB).
If you are already a PAB member, you will be discounted the membership fee of £24.
Unsure if you are a member? Please try to log in HERE to check.
£205 Standard Price
This price reflects the real cost of running the course. Choose this price if you cannot pay the Abundance price.
£235 Abundance Price
Please choose this price if you are able to afford it. By doing so you are supporting opportunities for low income students and refugees to participate in the course. Thank you!
£175 Resilient Price
You are welcome to choose this price if you have a low income or are unemployed, receive public assistance, do not have access to funds, etc.
Scholarships
We also have some pay-what-you-can scholarships for members of marginalised communities and people of color working in environmental and social justice movements. That is part of our way of supporting reparations and of bringing in more diversity to our permaculture movement. If you are a member of a marginalised community, BIPOC or a refugee/migrant and interested in one of these scholarships, please fill in a scholarship application form HERE
FAQs
What "tech" is required to participate?
This training is online and you will need stable internet and a computer, tablet or mobile phone with a functioning microphone and camera to be able to participate. The classes will be held on Zoom so you will need to make sure this is working for you before we start. We keep the tech as simple and inclusive as possible!
Is this course suitable if I’m not a native English speaker?
Yes! The participants will come from many different countries, some of which do not have English as a first language (fortunately for that! We love language diversity 🙂 ) .
You're a part of something bigger!
By joining the SPO, you will also become a member of the PAB’s Permaculture Community Hub, our overarching community. You’ll be able to keep up with the SPO activities as well as with what’s happening in permaculture education in the main Permaculture Community Hub Activity Feed (think of it as our own permaculture social media newsfeed with SPO and other activities all in one place). If you are not already a member of the PAB, your course fee will include a discounted 1 year membership. The Permaculture Association of Britain is working to radically and positively change the way we live in the UK and actively supports a worldwide movement. Our aim is to help educate, network, support and redesign all aspects of our daily lives to transform ourselves, our communities and our landscapes according to the ethics of Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share.