Elsie James through Ecological Treks puts together treks to Nepal. All profits go towards community development in Dhading Nepal. Elsie and Ramesh worked with us on our Seed Words Nepal project.

Annapurna mountain in Sanskirt means Goddess of the Harvests. It was around this mountain that Sharon and Elsie James first met and discussed forming the Seed Words Nepal project.

"When one works in Nepal and then comes back to North America a part of one's soul stays in Nepal, a country of spiritual richness. We can only hope to bring that rich spiritual link back in North America through projects that link culture, food, land and spirituality."

written by Sharon Rempel

Namaste.

Seed Words

The Garden Institute of Alberta sponsored a project in 1998 in Edmonton to link traditional knowledge, traditional seed and story with newcomers and immigrants to Canada. BOB Building on Biodiversity was the result.

In 1998 training was provided by Shirley Nelson in doing 'participatory research' and documenting tradtional knowledge.

Seed Words Edmonton

Created in 1998 by Anne Marie Brose and Sharon Rempel, we worked with newcomers to Canada and a community garden sponsored by the Mennonite Center for Newcomers in Edmonton.

Traditional communities with story and knowledge must retain that knowledge; intellectual property rights (IP) is often 'taken' from cultures and repacked and sold or misused. This includes knowledge as well as seed.

We discovered that Seed and Gardening are part of a common langauge of growing food spoken throughout the world.  We designed and taught ESL (English as a Second Language) programs to teach newcomers organic gardening in Edmonton's climate.

We connected people to land through community gardens and helped them locate seeds of plants that are a part of their cultural foods. Anne Marie and her students created a book of stories.... visit their site and read their stories and poems.

Seed Words Nepal

Sharon Rempel developed a project to work In Nepal with Dalit farmers and their traditional wisdom with seed and land. ESL materials were created with the traditional stories and organic agriculture materials designed.

The project began in 2004. It combined ‘literacy’ of traditional knowledge about seeds with the Dalit (untouchable) people. We worked with USC Nepal and United Missions to Nepal designing the adult literacy materials. The project has spread through Nepal and into India with USC Canada’s guidance. Organic gardening teaching materials have been created in local language.

Funding from October Hill Foundation, Wild Rose Foundation and IDRC.

Project instigator and manager Sharon Rempel slrempel@shaw.ca