The Chaikuni Institure of Permaculture (
http://chaikuni.org/education/internship/) is now seeking individuals to join our dedicated team so that we can fully implement our comprehensive permaculture designed masterplan. Our goal is to be fully self-sufficient in all our needs: short-term goals include self-sufficiency in all food and medicines by 2018; longer term goals include self sufficiency in building material production to be harvested on-site. Having all our self sufficiency needs met, we aim to restore some of our land and its surroundings to pristine rainforest by allowing these to be wild areas.
We are offering this Internship program at NO COST, for the ‘right’ people to join us in continuing to develop and grow. The minimum commitment is 6 months of your time. Our commitment to you is the opportunity to learn and contribute to the development of an amazing project as we guide you along your permaculture path, and give you an incredible home and invaluable experience in the Peruvian Amazon. In this initial 6 month period, we would assess, with you, your personal and technical suitability for our project, and we would offer the right Interns the option to stay on longer. Our primary motive for all of our work is to obtain surplus in our own system that will allow us to share knowledge and resources with the surrounding communities through knowledge-based, supportive, social outreach programs.
Program description
We believe that practical learning experiences lead to better understandings of ourselves and our knowledge of the surrounding world. This will be a large component of your experience here. You will be actively taking on varying on-site responsibilities for us to carry on our work here.
These areas could be:-
Nursery management
Harvest management
Germplasm sourcing
Horticultural propagation
Forestry management
Soil systems and integrated fertility management
Infrastructure – Natural Building
Field data management
Site maintenance
We would expect you, with our guidance, to take these responsibilities on and reiterate the permaculture designs we use here into more functional situations. The learning process involves learning from your own mistakes and successes. For this practical work to be successful we would expect all team members to attend weekly technical and sharing meetings so that decisions and ideas can be discussed and disseminated between everyone.
There will also be guided workshop spaces, hosted by Nick Boyce, and anyone else that wishes and feels ready to share their knowledge with rest of the team. These will be holistically facilitated sharing spaces for all to be actively engaged.
COSTS AND REQUIREMENTS
We offer this opportunity to participate in Chaikuni’s permaculture program as an Intern at no cost to those that join us. We require a minimum of having completed a recognized Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course or equivalent level of experience, and for you to commit to 6 months here. Any costs getting to and from here, and outside of our site are incurred to the Intern.
Program includes:
Private room in shared accommodation
3 catered meals a day (vegetarian/vegan options provided)
Scheduled transportation to/from port of Santa Clara in Iquitos
Program schedule:
36 hours of work per week
6-10 hours of facilitated education workshops/technical design sharing meetings per week
6 days off a month: every Sunday + 2 additional days as agreed by your coordinator
Optional additional activities:
Traditional Amazonian plant medicine ceremonies twice a month
Meditation and Yoga classes
Fieldtrips (at additional cost)
All suitable candidates who are able to make longer time commitments will have the option to stay on, at no additional cost, in order to support the Chaikuni permaculture program over a longer term.
Please send a resume and letter of introduction detailing all relevant experience, reasons for interest, personal motivation and areas of expertise etc. and we will contact you further with our application procedure. Please only apply if you have relevant permaculture experience/PDC.
For more information or to apply please contact
info@chaikuni.org.
