Continuing Work As a woman-led project in remote rural India, we constantly encounter entrenched patriarchy. Swayyam’s mission to build capacities for resilient communities includes supporting the role of women with the establishment of shared home kitchen gardens for landless women, village medicinal gardens, a nursery for tree saplings, seed saving, seed sharing and home-based enterprises. We work with women to reinvent value-added traditional foods to enhance their economic security, ensure the revival of traditional crops while building their health.

We recently started working on designs at Public Residential Schools on an integrated approach towards closed loop systems of growing their own food, composting kitchen waste, managing black and grey water and transforming the landscapes into productive, sustainable school forest gardens that will encourage the children to connect with their environment.

We seek to address the migration of rural youth to the cities by providing opportunities for them and engaging them in home-scale enterprises such as seed banks, forest and fruit tree nurseries, mushroom cultivation, bee keeping, blacksmithing and natural building techniques.

At the root of our work is an effort to preserve and share practices that highlight the best of humanity and allow for the natural productivity of the Earth. Using permaculture and agroecology strategies, increasing the diversity of tree systems and food sources helps build resilient systems which nurture both humans and the Earth, creating a shared abundance.

Malvikaa Solanki is a certified permaculture designer, consultant and an educator, yoga therapist, cook and FarmHer. She lives and works on the Open Shell Farm and is the chief designer for the 1000 Tree Project. For more information on Swayaam, visit: https://swayyam.org i l a n k

S o i k a a l v

M a

©

16  |

Diversity is the key to building resilience. A variety of crops, such as grains, oilseeds,

legumes and spices, ensure nutrition of the soil and the people