Volunteering at the Community Garden at Nova SBE: A living Laboratory for Regenerative Community

Registrations: Role To Play – Login

Our Vision: Permaculture as Community Design

In permaculture thinking, sustainable systems emerge when we align human activity with natural patterns of care, reciprocity, and regeneration. The three foundational ethics – care for the earth, care for people, and fair share – offer more than agricultural guidance; they provide a blueprint for creating communities that flourish through cooperation rather than control. Our Community Garden at Nova SBE emerges from this wisdom, transforming a simple growing space into a living demonstration of how academic institutions can nurture ecological and social resilience while fostering deep connections across generations and cultures. When we care for the earth through regenerative practices, we create abundance that can be shared equitably. When we design systems that care for people across their different needs and availabilities, we build trust and collective ownership. When we ensure fair share through transparent governance and open knowledge exchange, we create the conditions for true autonomy and collective flourishing. This approach recognizes that transformative education – one that integrates sustainability knowledge with social cohesion, intergenerational wisdom, and community resilience – reaches its fullest potential when students, neighbours, staff, and community members can witness and participate in systems that work. Not because they are managed from above, but because they are designed to be inherently regenerative. The garden becomes a space where theoretical knowledge about sustainability meets the practical wisdom of growing food, building community, and sharing resources in ways that strengthen rather than deplete the whole system. Biomimicry: Learning from Nature’s Collaboration Permaculture itself is a biomimicry innovation methodology, drawing inspiration from natural ecosystems to design human systems. In our volunteer program, we embrace this further by organizing our community around four organism archetypes, each reflecting essential functions found in thriving ecosystems. Just as forests maintain themselves through the diverse roles of different species – some build soil, others connect networks, some spread seeds, and others pollinate and cross-fertilize – our garden community thrives when each volunteer group embraces their unique contribution to the whole. The Four Volunteer Groups: Organisms in Our Garden Ecosystem We welcome a maximum of 6 volunteers per group to foster deep connections, meaningful collaboration, and personal growth within each team. Our tasks are designed not just to maintain the garden, but to develop interpersonal skills, strengthen community bonds, and deepen understanding of regenerative systems. Each group has specific tasks to complete over the 2-month volunteer period, requiring approximately 10 hours of individual commitment. With 6 volunteers per group sharing the workload collaboratively, this averages to less than 1 hour per week per person. Each volunteer gets 12 Role to Play points by the end of the semester.

Goals and Objectives of Each Working Group

The Builders – Care for the Earth ??
Organism Inspiration: Ants
Like ants who create the physical infrastructure that enables their entire colony to thrive, Builders focus on the tangible structures and systems that make our garden a resilient, productive space. You’ll work with soil, wood, tools, and plants, creating the foundation upon which all other garden activities depend. Your Role in the Living System: • Construct and maintain garden infrastructure (shelters, fencing, planting beds) • Develop and tend the experimental student planting zone • Ensure the physical systems support the garden’s growth and accessibility.

The Connectors – Care for People ??
Organism Inspiration: Owls
Owls symbolize wisdom, presence, and the ability to see the bigger picture in community life. As Connectors, you weave the social fabric that transforms individual participants into a genuine community, creating spaces where different generations, cultures, and perspectives can meet and learn from each other. Your Role in the Living System: • Design and facilitate community events and intergenerational activities • Bridge connections between students, seniors, children, and local neighbours • Create inclusive spaces where everyone feels welcomed and valued.

The Storytellers – Fair Share ??
Organism Inspiration: Butterflies
Like butterflies that pollinate by carrying life and beauty between flowers, Storytellers ensure that the garden’s knowledge, experiences, and abundance reach the wider community. You make the invisible visible, sharing the garden’s stories in ways that inspire others and attract resources and partnerships. Your Role in the Living System: • Capture and share garden stories through photos, videos, and written narratives • Design visual communication (signage, social media, documentation) • Create pathways for knowledge sharing and community engagement.

The Pollinators – Connecting All Systems ??
Organism Inspiration: Bees
Bees are essential for ecosystem health because they cross-pollinate, creating connections that enable entire systems to reproduce and evolve. As Pollinators, you move between all the other groups, facilitating collaboration, identifying synergies, and helping the garden ecosystem adapt and grow through strategic partnerships and knowledge exchange. Your Role in the Living System: • Facilitate collaboration between all volunteer groups • Research and develop strategic partnerships with local organizations • Support knowledge transfer between the garden and academic curricula • Identify opportunities for system-wide growth and evolution.

Semester Plan (October 3 – November 22):

Each role has its own way of contributing: building, connecting, sharing stories, cross-pollinating, but always working as part of the same ecosystem.

We will meet 5 times in person (1 next Friday and the others on Saturday mornings – October 11, October 25, November 15 and November 22 for a final sharing of the deliverables). These are our main workdays where you’ll collaborate with your group and the wider team.

You will also have a bank of hours to complete the 10h for tasks outside Saturdays (that you may end up using or not. If the deliverables are completed you will receive the 12 points anyway), which you can manage flexibly with your group.