Noyemberyan's Permaculture Teaching Greenhouse

Join our Facebook group to see our progress with this project! https://www.facebook.com/groups/1216019322221278/permalink/1225356121287598/

We are a group of 15-year old students from Noyemberyan High School in Armenia.  When we discovered Permaculture during the Climate Uturn Future Leaders Program (climateuturn.am) we also discovered that most people in our community and across the country had never heard about it. This is why we decided to revive our old and abandoned school greenhouse using permaculture principles and turn it into Armenia's first Permaculture Teaching Lab. By educating people of all ages and backgrounds across the country,  we aim to help make the production of food more sustainable. At the same time, the greenhouse will supply our community with healthy and nutritious food.

When was the greenhouse built?
Our greenhouse was built in 2011 thanks to Susan Prentice, a former Peace Corps volunteer. She envisioned it to be a teaching greenhouse for the school after noticing that students were taught primarily by lectures in conventional classrooms and had few opportunities for learning in any other environment. She was able to receive funding through USAID to make the initial vision of the teaching greenhouse a reality and this is what it looked like.



However, after Susan left the plastic covering of the greenhouse started to degrade and slowly the greenhouse fell into disrepair and was no longer used.


That was until last year, when we formed our team of students aimed at giving our old greenhouse a new and long-term purpose that would not only benefit the students at our school, but all of Noyemberyan, its surrounding villages, and eventually, the entire country!
To serve this long-term purpose, we will no longer be using a plastic cover but will be converting it into a glasshouse. This will be more expensive but glasshouses have a life of over 60 years and are easier to maintain, which will give us more time and energy to focus on year-round permaculture education and awareness-raising!


In April 2022 we invited Permaculture expert Zach Mermel from the USA to help with the permaculture design of our greenhouse. Here are some pictures from the two productive days that he was with us!




We thank Susan as she has helped by pouring the foundations of our greenhouse 11 years ago. Thanks to Susan's efforts, besides being the first Permaculture educational greenhouse in Armenia (and one of its kind in the world!), our greenhouse will have some special features. Susan made sure that the greenhouse was built next to the school's boiler house (used for generating heat to heat the school's buildings) so that excess steam could be used to heat the greenhouse! This will allow us to continue to use the greenhouse for teaching and growing year-round! It is also a good example for teaching the importance of using waste as a valuable resource, which is one of the main principles of permaculture!

During the past 4 months, we have managed to raise a large portion of the money required to repair the greenhouse. 
A grant from The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation worth 3630$
EVZ Foundation MEET UP! Micro Project Grant worth 1050$
Cambridge University Tizard Fund: 700$
The Awesome Foundation (Nature Branch): 520 $
School community fundraising: 100$
We have also applied for some other grants that we are waiting to hear back from. 
Through this GoFundMe page, we are trying to raise the remaining funds needed to do a complete repair of our greenhouse.  


Here is the detailed budget we need for remodeling 75 sqm of the 200sqm greenhouse.



What work have we been doing in the greenhouse so far?
Although our greenhouse is still in poor condition, we have been using it to experiment with permaculture principles, including sheet mulching, hugelculture and vermicompisting. 
In cooperation with Farmer to Farmer Armenia, Zach Mermel, an experienced professional permaculturist from the USA stayed in Noyemberyan for 2 days (30th to 31st of March) and advised and assisted us with our greenhouse's permaculture design!

We have some exciting things happening this month, including vermiculture workshops at our greenhouse run by Smart Farms Spitak. We will receive our compost worms and produce our own worm castings out of all the organic waste our school produces, including paper waste!
We are also getting our compost bin from ISSD Armenia!
The Agrarian University of Armenia is helping by providing the expertise of their greenhouse specialist Naira Gasparyan and their Advisor on Environmental Curricula Emil Gevorgian.


We have also already embarked on this mission of raising awareness on permaculture through the creation of the first Armenian Permaculture Facebook group, where we share our progress. You are very welcome to join our group and post anything permaculture-related there! We are excited about this group being in Armenian as there is almost no Permaculture literature or videos available in Armenian, so those that do not know foreign languages have not had the opportunity to discover and study Permaculture on their own. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1216019322221278/permalink/1225356121287598/

Our team has devised a 3-year plan for our permaculture teaching headquarters (the greenhouse). Here it is:
https://www.facebook.com/zhanna.eganyan/videos/946069036307114

We also plan on developing the First Armenian Permaculture Design Course and hosting the First Armenian Seed Swap in our new teaching greenhouse to bring the concept of routinely sharing seeds to Armenia to increase the biodiversity and resilience each person is able to achieve on their land. 

We are also interested in other aspects of sustainability. Here is a photo of us at the premiere of the documentary “Wild Plant Harvest in Armenia”, where we were able to talk about our project and make connections with others that care about the conservation of the planet. The documentary was about how to make the harvest of wild plants by businesses sustainable. 


We will make sure to post any updates on the progress of this project here!

If you would like to support us in accomplishing this mission we would really appreciate any donation from the bottom of our hearts! If you cannot donate, even just joining our Facebook group and giving us encouragement and advice will help a lot!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1216019322221278/permalink/1225356121287598/