Hello fellow Permies,
I’m looking for some real-world advice and connections from folks who have been down this road before. How do you get a grassroots, boots-on-the-ground permaculture project in front of the right backers, storytellers, and hands-on volunteers when you’re just a small team out in the bush doing the work rather than a big-name organization with a marketing budget?
For context, my dog Bonny 🐾 and I are building God’s Gift – Permaculture Institute of Obongi (PIOU) on 25 acres right along the Kochi River in Northern Uganda. We aren't talking about theory here—we are laying down textbook, hands-on bioregional permaculture straight out of the manual, and it’s already taking off.
What Real Permaculture Looks Like on Our 25 Acres (1 Month In)
Our layout is anchored by the Kochi River at our southern 202-meter boundary, stretching a full 500 meters north away from the river toward Mecca. Across that modular grid, we’ve already started building a living sanctuary:
Water & Earthworks: Catching the tropical rains off our shelter roofs into distribution storage, and setting up our multi-strata guilds along the river corridor.
No-Till & Syntropic Systems: Transforming giant local anthills straight into rich, biological market garden beds. We’ve turned our pathway network into four massive overhead trellises for vertical passion fruit production. Everything—from our bananas (planted at 1,000 UGX a sucker in clean, productive rows) to our fresh fruit trees—is heavily mulched meter-by-meter using strict syntropic principles.
Closed-Loop Animal Integration: Moving beyond mobile setups into a permanent, heavy-duty "chicken tractor on steroids" complete with active composting piles, alongside our livestock stables and our very first chicks hatching on the farm.
The Living Reality: With the night rains kicking in, our maize and beans are already pushing up through the soil, and the entire site is actively waking up with fresh leaves and new growth.
The Community Reality & Why Scaling Matters Now
Out here in Obongi, where refugees outnumber the host community by 2 to 1 and formal work is scarce, we aren't just growing food—we’re building a blueprint for local dignity.
Operating on a fair 15,000 UGX daily wage, we've already pumped over 5.8 million UGX straight back into local hands across more than 300 total work days—with major push days bringing out 25 to 30 local workers at a time—alongside our 5-year land lease paid completely in advance thanks to our very first donor/investor.
We have a long waiting list of local workers ready to go. Realistically, if we had the right financial partners and backers behind us, we could have this entire 25-acre tract planted, growing, and feeding people by this time next year.
What we are creating here feels like a living reflection of the "gardens for the righteous" described in both the Bible and the Quran: an oasis of food in abundance, healing the soil, honoring the water, and uplifting the community around us.
Who We Are Hoping to Reach (And Where I'd Love Your Advice)
Philanthropists, Impact Investors & the "Big Guns": We need financial partners to help scale our critical infrastructure (like our upcoming solar borehole and major earthworks) and unlock employment for everyone waiting on our list.
Traveling YouTubers, Podcasters & Magazine Writers: Come visit us right here at the very beginning. You don't need a polished corporate showcase or a famous name to tell a true story—we are out here doing the raw work on the ground, and we want you to see the real "before and after" as this 25-acre wilderness transforms into food sovereignty.
Volunteers & Travelers: If you are looking for a community that truly needs your hands-on help, our doors are open. Come get your hands in the soil, live simply, and put real sweat into a grassroots project from the ground up.
If anyone here has advice on where to post, who to reach out to, or how to connect with people looking to back or document real permaculture in action, I’m all ears.
You can see our daily walk-and-talks, the raw progress, and what we're building day by day over on Instagram:
👉
https://www.instagram.com/permacultureobongi
If you want to visit, volunteer, connect, or support what we're doing here in Obongi, drop a comment or reach out directly. Let's make true abundance a reality.
Blessings from the river,
Colin & Bonny 🐾
God’s Gift – Permaculture Institute of Obongi, Uganda (PIOU)
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