The Social PEAS (Social Permaculture: Empowering an Active Society) project is focused on creating permaculture training for professionals working with vulnerable adults, such as people suffering from mental health issues, people with physical and intellectual disabilities and former drug or alcohol users.

• Support adult educators to increase their knowledge and gain expertise in regenerative social permaculture and the creation of permaculture gardens.
• Empower vulnerable adults to increase their knowledge and competencies to be able to use tools from social permaculture and nature therapy for improvement of their well-being and social resilience, while taking care of the environment!

The Social PEAS project is led by Friends of the Earth Cyprus, in collaboration with Friends of the Earth Malta, Fundación Intras (Spain), Conscious Ageing – Hekate Foundation (the Netherlands), Promimpresa (Italy) and ICEP, the Institute of European Certification of Personnel (Slovakia).

About the project

Environmental and social challenges are deeply connected and to tackle these we need an equally interconnected approach. The Social PEAS project derived from the identified need to tackle social exclusion and climate and environmental challenges through the use of permaculture to create resilient and sustainable communities.

The project was designed to support adult educators and hence vulnerable adults that are: suffering from mental health issues – both diagnosed with chronic conditions and those that have been affected through the COVID19 pandemic; homeless people and people with housing deprivations; former drug or alcohol user; people with physical and intellectual disabilities; and elderly people, together making up 20% of the European population.

Working in a group, planning together how to create a garden, seeing plants and food grow, tending to plants, being outdoors as a community – these are all exercises that have an abundant benefit on the participants mental well-being. Such activities provide life-skills in the aspects of planning, co-designing, executing a communal plan, and bringing together people from diverse backgrounds. Additionally, permaculture gardens are a gateway for nature learning and nature care, create food resilience and security, provide green havens for pollinators and other species and are alternatives to the linear extractive economies and mind-sets that most people are exposed to.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.