Thursday, January 13th 2005

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Pramod Parajuli. I am a professor at Portland State University and I also serve as the Director of the Portland International Initiative for Leadership in Ecology, Culture, and Learning (please visit www.piiecl.pdx.edu). I am writing to express my wholehearted support for the Try/on Life Community Farm. On a recent tour of the Farm I gained a deep appreciation for this land, the community, and the partnership between the two. I specialize in teaching students about the intricate relationship between cultural and biological sustainability, and the role agroecology plays in this vision. The members of the Try/on Farm demonstrate the profound potential for sustainable, healthy living that arises when a community comes together and works with each other and the land.

This is no small task; yet, the members of the farm have created a haven within the city limits. I am very excited to use Try/on Life Community Farm as a hands-on learning site for my students. One thing my program desperately needs is urban farmland to gain practical experience in areas of permaculture, sustainable building, and building a functioning bio-cultural sustainable community. Try/on Life Community Farm can provide this and I sincerely hope that this rare opportunity continues to be available for my students and for many other students in such need across the city.

While innovating in the emerging field of sustainability education and preparing future teachers and leaders for that, I am also highly active in the sustainability education movement in the city of Portland. We have vibrant experiential and ecological curricula in many school programs including the Food based Ecological Education Design Project (FEED) through which we are working with about a dozen schools in the City of Portland. I see that Try/on Life Community Farm could provide necessary hands-on component that is essential to the PIIECL curricula and our research programs. Without direct experience with natural landscapes, growing our own food, walking through the woods, and building sustainable and Permaculture design such as earthen structures, our students will never come to understand the true meaning of a culture that sustains itself in a healthy manner for both human and ecological entities. I believe the well being of our human community is dependent upon our ability to interact with our place in a meaningful and healthy manner. It is rare to find such a land in the heart of our homeland.

Given Portland's dedications to being the most livable city in the Nation, it would be entirely senseless to let this land become yet another faceless development that offers no real value to the community at large. Instead, I want to see Portland take a national and global leadership in how to use land in the most sustainable ways. Indeed, the time is ripe that Portland has begun to witness thousands points of light to make it a showcase of a truly sustainable city.

The gifts that Try/on Life Community Farm offers our city are invaluable and should be treated with care, respect, and dignity. If available, I will be first one of fruitful use it offers hands-on experience for my students, teachers in the community and other community partners we work with.

Thank you so much for your kind consideration. Please do not hesitate to contact me for any further questions about the program or the ways we want to get involved in the Try/on Life Community Farm.

Sincerely Yours,

Pramod Parajuli, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Executive Director
Portland International Initiative for Leadership in Ecology, Culture, and Learning (PIIECL),
Graduate School of Education and
Hatfield School of Government
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon 97207
503-725-9406
503-725-3200 (fax)
Pramodp@pdx.edu
www.piiecl.pdx.edu