Standalone non-PEP badges... how do they fit in?

hurt my hand please excuse poor typing one handed

in the various discusions about getting people involved in doing BBs there has been a sentiment thrown around more than once
"if you don't like PEP write your own version"

I am no well rounded proficient guru ho could knowledgably construct a complete course - even cribbing from existing BBs. I could potentially create a set of badges for  narrow field, and i imagine others might feel the same for other fields. If i construct a full set of badges for eg woodland care in my climate, how would that fit in with PEP? does choosing my badge over pauls mean someone can't use it towards their PEP 1/2/3 etc.

PEP feels like it is strictly pauls badges, but what if 20 people create 20 different badges and want to mix and match in some way. what are they able to get at the end?

Thanks for getting my brain going in a new direction Michael!  I had always assumed there would be PEP badges and PEA badges and PEW badges (Walter's badge system).  I hadn't considered someone just creating a single badge for their area, say "Northern European Woodland Care".

I could imagine Paul looking over a few dozen badges and deciding half of them fit the rigor of PEP and the ethics of his brand of permaculture and then accepting them as "transfer credits" or equivalents to the PEP badges.

So maybe someone could complete 12 PEP badges and 4 non PEP but pre-approved equivalent badges for their region and then getting PEP1 certified.

Interesting...  I'm sure everyone else had figured this out but not me  

Maybe start a thread with a semi-thorough description of each BB your Woodland Care badge would have and we'll see how it looks?

All I know is I made up seperate badges to be used for PEXes (you can see them all here: https://permies.com/t/128957/skills-inherit-property/PEXes-PEXs-Support-PEX-badges). So, we're set up to be able to give them out, but I don't know when or how to get a PEX instituted here on permies.

Nice looking badges :)

Continuing my train of thought about stand alone badges...

Are people making badges obliged to keep the same badge structure as PEP? If I see a gap for a missing badge, or potentially want to restructure in such a way that there may be overlap with existing badges can I do that?

Eg Paul’s woodland care badge could in my situation be split into “woodland care” and “woodland crafts”. One focuses on improving and maintaining woodlands, the other trade skills for making things from the woodland material.

I would presume there would need to be some kind of restriction on mixing related badges - lien you can’t do my woodland crafts badge and Paul’s woodland care badge if elements overlap.

I think when we were looking into the PEA and PEP overlap, some of them like the Textiles and Nest badge were staying the same. So PEA wasn't going to have it's own textiles or Nest badge--they'd just use the same as PEP.

And, I think Paul talked about if he gave his stamp-of-approval to a PEX, then some of those PEX badges could apply to the PEP1 certification. Usually the PEP1 certification requires 16 Badges. But, maybe it could be 20 badges if some of them came from PEA. I can't remember the details.

Eg Paul’s woodland care badge could in my situation be split into “woodland care” and “woodland crafts”. One focuses on improving and maintaining woodlands, the other trade skills for making things from the woodland material.

The hard thing with this is that the woodland crafts fits into the PEP Textile and Roundwood badges, largely. And, I don't know if I can make other PEX badge images. The ones we have are the lightened, lower-contrast versions of the PEP badges. So, I don't know how other types of badges would be supported by the forum software...

I think it would be easiest to get a PEX badge approved as an alternate to a PEP badge if it covered the same subject (Earthworks, Gardening, etc).  Once they stop matching up (say a Wild Animal Care and a Domestic Animal Care badge) I think the likelihood of Paul approving them decreases.  

That's where they'd probably be better as a whole PEX program.  State what your 22 badges would be, copy some from PEP and build the rest however you want.  On the whole, if they're rigorous enough to match PEP I'm thinking they may count towards PEP1 or PEP2.  

Or another way of saying it...  Paul would grant you PEP1 for doing 16 PEP badges.  He might approve two of Michael Cox's badges as substitutes (Textiles and Foraging?).  So if you do 14 PEP badges and for those two disciplines you use the PEM badges, you get PEP1.  There might be a few dozen badges that are good matches for a PEP badge where he might approve it as an equivalent.  I'm throwing in plenty of "mights" because I'm not Paul...

Good stuff here. Thanks all.

I’m concerned about acronym bloat. We have PEX/PEP/PEA which are already confusing to the uninitiated. I don’t think it makes sense to have a new acronym for each single badge that may be made in isolation. Feels like their should be a single umbrella acronym, where many different people can craft their badge to fit the framework. There might be eg 5 different woodland badges tailored to different bio regions all under the single umbrella.

PEF - PE... Flexible?

The message is coming through loud and clear from Paul that he doesn’t want to open PEP up more broadly, but there are many people interested in badges crafted to their circumstances and who may be happy to do individual badges, but not rebuild the entire frame work from scratch. People who want to contribute individual bricks,  but not be responsible for a whole house.

And this possibly ends up with a better finished product anyway - experts create rich resources in their niche, rather than spend effort on lots of duplicated lower value stuff in badges they lack expertise in.

I agree the acronyms take some getting used to, which is a problem for initiation.  Maybe they'll get streamlined at some point.

If you did want to do a woodland one for your area, feel free to call it whatever you want as a place holder.  The name/acronym can always be changed later.  Be sure to state clearly that it's a proposal and currently not approved for PEP so that people don't get confused and unintentionally do that instead of the PEP one.