This design process has grown out of the work done by John Wilson, Walter Nyika and colleagues over the last 20 years. His biography explains the origins of ILUD.
John was born and grew up in Zimbabwe. He spent a number of years in the 70s in exile in Europe, away from the war and compulsory army call up. Returning to Zimbabwe soon after Independence in 1980 he continued to cultivate an interest in organic/sustainable farming and for a time ran a smallholding while helping to establish a new rural day school. In 1987 he attended Bill Mollison’s first Permaculture Design Course in Africa in Botswana and then, with others, set up Fambidzanai Permaculture Centre, which became a pioneer in promoting Permaculture and sustainable agriculture in Zimbabwe and southern Africa.
It became apparent at this time that Permaculture with its particular focus
and strengths (functional land use design) needed to link with other approaches
to community development and resource management. To this end John worked from
1992 to 1995 with others to establish the PELUM Association (Participatory Ecological
Land Use Management). The PELUM Association is now nearly fifteen years old
and has 10 country working groups with over 200 organisational members in east
and southern Africa.
John and colleagues also saw an opening for Permaculture within the burgeoning
school system in Zimbabwe which at that time, still fresh with Independence
spirit, was open to new ways of thinking. Thus the ILUD (Integrated Land Use
Design) process was born in the mid-90s and became the basis of the SCOPE (Schools
and Colleges Permaculture) programme. The ILUD process also pursued the theme
of linking Permaculture with other approaches. SCOPE is now spreading into east
and southern Africa via a regional programme - ReSCOPE.
For the last nine years, John has been working as a freerange facilitator with
organizations across east and southern Africa and in Ghana, in a variety of
ways including carrying out ILUD processes with groups, mentoring services,
facilitation of sharing and learning events, and evaluation exercises.
For a taste of ILUD 's origins have a look at a description of it (now ten years old) by the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction, a rural development organization with 80 years experience working in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This has an African slant and does not emphasise the group dynamics as much as it could, but it is an independent analysis. Our intention bringing John to Ragmans Lane Farm is to now apply this substantial groundwork and experience, to build a new interpretation that is wholly relevant to the UK.