| Chris Evans Dip.Perm.Des. |
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Chris Evans has lived and worked in Nepal since 1985, co-founding the
Jajarkot Permaculture Project, which successfully spread new ideas in
line with existing cultural traditions. He ran the Nepal programmes for
Appropriate Technology Asia from 2002 to 2008. Chris started his career
as a VSO volunteer in a community forestry programme in Nepal after
graduating in Forestry in the UK.
Based in the remote western district
of Jajarkot, he quickly realised the shortfalls of international
development and so in 1988, when he came across the concept of
Permaculture, he embarked on an ambitious alternative. Starting with a
local friend, £500 and an acre of degraded farmland in the district
centre of Jajarkot he founded a demonstration and training centre which
grew organically into the Jajarkot Permaculture Programme (JPP), a
diverse array of projects spanning 4 districts, 65 villages, 8 resource
centres (working farms), 120 staff and volunteers, and a membership of
12,000 farmers.
He stayed with the JPP until 2001 when he started to
work with community groups which were spawned from the original
programme. In 2002 he started work with Appropriate Technology Asia's
Nepal programmes, working in the district of Humla, one of the remotest
and most challenging areas of the country. ATA's local partner in Nepal
is the Himalayan Permaculture Group (HPG), of which Chris is an
advisor. Beside his grass-roots experience in Nepal, Chris has taught
permaculture in UK, India, U.S.A. and Mexico.
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