I grew up in a small town on the highlands of Ecuador where there is a strong proces of soil erosion due to corn monocroping, when I was a teenager I went to a community in Venezuela´s Gran Sabana where I lived for two years ,is where I became interested in permaculture, there we started a project in agroforestry. When I went back to my hometown I started to become aware of the awfull situation of erosion created by the green revolution, this created a spark for beggining my own regenerative projects and share this new awareness with more people.
I bought a piece of land with native forest and I started to implement permaculture design.
My permaculture formation began with seed savers network of Ecuador (red de guardianes de semillas www,redsemillas.org) I went to their courses and after two years I became a teacher, Then I run the same course for two years and we still run this course ,Ecuador´s most complete course on agroecology and Permaculture (http://ecoversidad.redsemillas.org) Then I went to Aprovecho Educational center in Oregon where I completed a two month PDC.
Now I have my own bussines as a permaculture teacher and consultant , our focus is mainly in Permaculture Design, water design and waste water treatment with constructed wetlands and efficient systems for biomass combustion (rocket systems: stoves, ovens, mass heaters and water heaters).www.yakunina.com
We have a small urban property designed with permaculture, where we also teach workshops,
Our dream with my partner is to buy a bigger land and implement a nice and bountifull farm that can also inspire more people to live in a more regenerative and meaningfull lifestyle..
Facebook page : www.facebook.com/asesoriayakunina
New update:
Now we are acomplishing our dream: Yakunina farm where we are implementing a food forest and restoring degraded grasslands into productive forest with syntropic methods, analag forestry and other techniques. We coorganize courses and events in the farm with the ecuadorian Seed Savers Network, twice a year we run a PDC with 9 other teachers who at the same time have inspirational projects nearby.
Until This year 2021, we have organized 6 PDC courses in the farm , and we also run other yearly courses related to water managament, waste water treatment with constructed wetlands and vermifilters, rocket stoves, agroforestry, bioconstruction and more. We are finally becoming a ecocenter in the region, all this tools are really needed in the area, we live under the threat of open pit mining in nearby communities wich can severely damage our fragile ecosistem and water shed. We live in the Choco Andino biosphere reserve and all the permaculture tools are a handy complement for the dream of a extractivism free region.We receive long term volunteers and international students for our courses.