After a workshop

In 2006, our Internship Programme was established. It was intended to encourage young people to join grassroots organisations, to practise and explore locally appropriate methods to promote Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), and to reflect, through practice, on ways to build a harmonious relationships: between human beings, and between human beings and nature. Over the last five years we have collaborated with partners in different places on various issues, and over 25 interns have been trained in the process. We are overjoyed that some interns have gone on to join their host organisations on completion of the internships, and deepened their learning in cities and rural areas by facilitating CSA activities and by putting their knowledge into practice. Some interns are helping urban communities to establish common purchase mechanisms. In this process they are spreading knowledge of eco-agriculture from rural areas to cities, and building bridges between farmers and urban consumers so they can practice sustainable living together.

Before the establishment of the Internship Programme, in collaboration with our partner, Han Hai Sha, we held two exchanges on CSA concepts and experience. In the first we invited Raweewan from Thailand, and Yang Baoxi and Zhu Peiqun from Hong Kong, to explain the concept of CSA and share their experience in promoting it. In May 2005, PCD invited staff and volunteers from Hong Kong’s Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden to Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, again to introduce the concept of CSA and to arouse discussion and reflection.

Related information: Report on the exchange of concepts and experience of Community Supported Agriculture, 2003–2005

Chronology of the Internship Programme