The experience of Gabriel at the Water Management training course in Portugal

We sent Gabriel to Quinta das Relvas in Portugal for the Erasmus+ training course ‘Build Up Your Life – Water Series’ in May 2023.

This is his testimony!

On the 16th of June 2023, Matias and me, Gabriel, came back from Branca (Portugal), where we participated in a Training Course on the topic of Water Management in behalf of Associazione Kora.

The “Build Up Your Life Water Series” presents itself as a project that provides meaningful insights about how to regenerate and manage water in different conditions/climate. We used permaculture as main methodology to explore different ways to harvest and store water in the landscape. We analysed catasthropic scenarios like droughts or floods and how to become resilient under these.

The project took place in Quinta das Relvas, a farm dedicated to non-formal education activities in Sustainability which integrates ecological processes orientated by Permaculture framework and way of thinking to create a harmonious and self-sustaining ecosystem.

During the training course we did several theoretical and practical activities about water in the landscape, water design & strategies, waste water bio-filters, water design, contour lines, food forest, water harvesting, etc.

This project was exceptional experience for working with people of different cultures and backgrounds, we met people from Portugal, Italy, Netherlands and Romania. It was also an occasion through teambuilding activities to destroy stereotypes, prejudices and cultural barriers through the search of a common approach and understanding among the group of participants.

We learn a lot during these days and not only from the trainer but also from other participants that we were surprised of how much knowledge and experience they had. It was a really nice project and we are looking forward to apply many of the things that we learned.

In this sense we wrote an article with our humble knowledge about Contour Lines for Water Management: please find it below, free for download.

Gabriel

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