Grow Permaculture co-created a project at Pine Ridge reservation with the Oglala-Lakota Cultural and Economic Revitalization Initiative (OLCERI) in 2006, and we have made ongoing projects there available as an apprentice opportunity for graduates of our PDCs ever since. More than a dozen students have made it to Pine Ridge in the summer to work on natural building, installing gardens and other projects for OLCERI and other organizations on the reservation. Megan took the opportunity to the next level, wanting to use her community organizing skills and social capital to bring even more energy to the project and the reservation. As a result, the project has blossomed to the next level. We love being able to provide those types of opportunities to our graduates, and love seeing them spread their wings and flourish.

Megan Szrom graduated with her PDC with Grow Permaculture in 2009. She is fascinated with restoring the environment through ecological remediation and cultivating the inner social-emotional landscape through Kundalini yoga and Deep Ecology.

Since her graduation, she has participated in or spearheaded a number of projects from guerilla gardening to mycoremediation, community building, festivals, and community projects, bringing permaculture ethos to schools, activist organizations and festivals.

Megan is a full-time Gardening and Regenerative Ecology teacher at Alta Vista Elementary School in San Francisco, California where she is facilitating the innate connection to the Earth for the next generation of activists.

She is the founding organizer of the Indigenous Wisdom and Permaculture Skills Convergence, an eco-infrastructure build and hands-on learning camp on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Her work with IWPS Convergence was inspired and deeply encouraged through the support of Koreen Brennan and is a continuation of the relationships and projects that Koreen began during her time working with partners on Pine Ridge. This convergence has now become a yearly event and has created significant support, energy and resources for permaculture projects on the reservation.

To read more about Megan's work, visit www.iwpsconvergence.com