Jessy Servi

Courses completed with RDI:

• Regenerative Design & Nature Awareness (RNDA), first and second year, 2006 - 2008
  
• Art of Mentoring, 2006-7
  
• Four Seasons Permaculture Design, 2006-07
• Geoff Lawton’s Advanced Permaculture, 2007
  
• Natural Building Workshop, 2007
  

Before coming to the Regenerative Design Institute I knew little about Permaculture or Nature Awareness. With a B.S. degree in Interior Design I studied and utilized the design process, though found my creativity to be limited and my profession disconnected from earth stewardship.  Feeling unfulfilled, I set out in search, traveling internationally for three years before landing at Commonweal garden in August of 2006.  Through living and working in the garden and through classes at RDI, I was shown solutions to move through life engaged, connected and making positive changes to my health and happiness, to my community, and to our planet!

RDI has given me tools to step onto my life path; helping me to become an assured mentor, a leader in my community, and an advocate for the change I believe in.  (As well as the follow through needed to make the change happen!) I have taken the permaculture principles and ethics as a way of life and have grown my skills as a designer and a gardener. I am now successfully building and maintaining relationships with the understanding that nature is my greatest teacher. I also now have tools to tend my own “inner garden;” and know what it feels like to be moving from creativity and walking lightly with integrity.

Presently, I live in Bolinas where I am actively building community.  I am part of the Bolinas Community Planning Group, researching viable solutions to implement for building a strong and resilient community. One of my focus areas is alternative housing options and I am also working with the Bolinas Community Land Trust (BCLT), a non profit organization dedicated to creating and sustaining affordable housing in Bolinas. (http://www.bolinaslandtrust.org/) I am passionate about the cohousing model and transforming the concept of neighborhood to be a viable community environment where people are continually building relationships with each other and with their environment. In my ideal model the “neighborhood” or community would be grounded in Permaculture ethics and principles and would seek to fulfill its needs (ie, energy, food, water, economics, transportation, etc.) in the most regenerative ways possible.

In the summer of ’07, inspired by Geoff Lawton, Dustin Kahn and I called together a meeting of Marin county based “permies.” Since then the creation of Permaculture Marin was formed, a local group that is collaborating with local communities to teach and apply the principles and practices of permaculture as a means of furthering the development of regenerative ecologies, economies and communities. I am on the steering committee of Permaculture Marin and you can sign up for our news letter on our website www.permaculturemarin.org (the site is still under construction though)

I have also started a Regenerative Living Designs business, consulting and designing for home scale permaculture. I am working with West Marin Commons on a “Community Permaculture and Food Forest Garden” in the heart of Point Reyes Station and coordinate fundraising events, such as Barn Dances.

It is my dream and vision to bridge the interior world with the exterior world through applying permaculture design systems to community, creating vibrant sustainable living centers where we as a species are living harmoniously, thriving and connected to the earth, to it’s resources, to our food sources and to each other. Please feel free to contact me with any insights, inspirations or thoughts you are called to share. jessyservi@gmail.com