Recursos Educativos para la Capacitación de Adultos de Permagarden

The program aims to generate, capture, disseminate, and apply high-quality information, knowledge, and promising practices in food assistance programming to ensure that more communities and families benefit from U.S. government investment in the global fight against hunger. The TOPS program is directed by Save the Children and leverages the experience of its partners: CORE Group (knowledge management), Food for the Hungry (social and behavioral change), Mercy Corps (agriculture and natural resource management), and TANGO International (monitoring and evaluation). Save the Children brings its expertise and knowledge in basic product management, gender, nutrition, and food technology, as well as in administering this $20 million, five-year (2010-2015) award. The Permagarden Training Resources for Adult Education are a result of a need identified for a practical resource and training program that highlights the objective and science of permaculture and provides a detailed guide to implementing permaculture components in a development context. The content of these training materials and their extensive set of tools were adapted and developed under the Agricultural and Natural Resource Management component of the TOPS program. The program acknowledges the integration of adult learning resources LEGS into the permaculture training materials by Sylvie Robert. The adult learning methods and materials are modifications of the LEGS Training Materials (www.livestock-emergency.net). The LEGS Training Materials were produced by the LEGS Training Team (David Hadrill, Emma Jowett, Tim Leyland, Sylvie Robert, Ana Urgoiti, Polly Bodgener, Mike Wekesa) and the LEGS Coordinator, Cathy Watson, based on comments and evaluations from twelve instructor training courses and over sixty LEGS training courses. The Permagarden Training Resources for Adult Education are designed to be a resource for instructors on adult learning and participatory training. They offer methods and tools to adjust session plans to be suitable. Participatory training is a key component of this type of training, and group work is an essential part of the participatory process. Groups should contain between five and six members, if possible, to give a total of four or five groups. Unless the Guidelines indicate otherwise, group members should change at least every day, and it should be promoted that groups change the roles assigned to them. In large groups and plenary sessions, questions and answers should be used as much as possible to promote participation and help locate and contextualize the material, especially to contextualize the training. Promoting participants to share examples and experiences from their own work and region/area is important to help them apply the training in the local context. Inviting a local expert to make a brief presentation also helps to contextualize the training. This guide includes a list of group dynamics and activities that can be used between or during sessions to increase energy levels or provide a light break between topics. It also includes suggestions for summarizing participation and daily evaluation sessions. At the end of each training session, an evaluation should be conducted. Additional guides on planning and conducting a training course, including checklists for preparation, are available at no cost on the Sphere Project's website: www.sphereproject.org. The Permagarden Training Resources for Adult Education offer supplementary reference material to accompany the Adult Learning Sessions for ToT. The resources are designed to be a practical and useful guide for instructors and trainers working with adult learners in permaculture training. The four main learning styles described by Honey and Mumford (1992) are Activists, Thinkers, Theorists, and Pragmatists. Activists enjoy participating in new experiences, are open-minded, and enthusiastic about new ideas but get bored with implementation. They enjoy doing things and tend to act first and consider the implications later. Activists learn best when they participate in new experiences, problems, and opportunities, work with others in games, team tasks, and representing situations, are challenged with a difficult task, and lead meetings and discussions. Activists learn less when they listen to prolonged presentations or explanations, read, write, or think alone, absorb and understand data, and follow precise instructions to the letter. Thinkers prefer to take a step back and view the situation from different angles. They enjoy collecting information and considering it carefully before reaching a conclusion. Thinkers learn best when they observe individuals or groups doing something, act as a leader or represent situations in front of others, have the opportunity to review what has happened and think about what has been learned without time to prepare, produce analysis and reports, and complete tasks without tight deadlines. Thinkers learn less when they act as a leader or represent situations in front of others, do things without time to prepare, face difficult situations, and are rushed or concerned about deadlines. Theorists enjoy analyzing and understanding data and information. They enjoy thinking and reflecting on what has been learned and are