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In collaboration with Mycorama  (Greece) and Unidos  (Uganda), Re-Alliance has been supporting Minak in a transformative mushroom growing project aimed at cultivating sustainable livelihoods in the Nakivale refugee settlement. This initiative, deeply rooted in permaculture principles, empowers women by teaching them to grow nutritious mushrooms in reusable containers, a practice that not only provides food security but also fosters community and economic independence. Why Mushrooms Matter Mushrooms are more than just a food—they are a symbol of regeneration. For those who have been displaced, or have limited land on which to grow food, mushrooms offer a way to address several pressing needs at once. They provide a reliable source of protein, vitamins, and minerals, helping to combat malnutrition. They can be grown using local waste materials, reducing the need for costly inputs, and they turn what would otherwise be discarded into something valuable that can be used or sold in the local market.  The Nakivale refugee settlement, one of the largest in Uganda, is home to thousands of displaced individuals, many of whom are women and children. By training groups of women in mushroom cultivation the project contributes towards combating malnutrition, particularly among children, introducing a reliable source of protein, vitamins, and minerals. The process is simple yet impactful: enabling communities to enhance food security, generate income, and improve local environments, thus aligning perfectly with permaculture’s ethics of earth care, people care, and fair share. It’s about creating abundance in harmony with nature, using resources wisely, and ensuring that the benefits are shared by all.  Integrating mushroom cultivation into the local ecosystem provides immediate food and income while contributing to the long-term ecological health of the area. By growing in reusable containers with organic waste materials the method minimises environmental impact while maximising social and economic benefits. A Model for Regenerative Livelihoods The project is part of Re-Alliance’s wider Camps and Settlements Guidelines research, through which Re-Alliance is capturing learnings from regenerative practices applied in displacement contexts and developing a range of accessible learning materials.  We invite you to learn more about the process of growing mushrooms in reusable containers and explore how you can apply these methods in your own community. The Minak process has been compiled into a short instructional booklet as part of Re-Alliance’s ongoing research and learning initiatives. Download the illustrated booklet (with beautiful illustrations by Inga Orsi) for free from the Re-Alliance publications page. Try it out, and share your experience with us, we’d love your feedback—let’s grow resilience together. Download the illustrated guide below, and view our other resources on our publications page . This guide is currently being translated into a range of languages. If you would like this guide to be made available in a specific language please get in touch at contact@re-alliance.org  to request this and we will see what we can do.

Re-Alliance have been working with School of the Earth Nea Guinea on the ‘Wind Mobile’ project, an action research project aiming to develop low-cost, locally manufactured micro wind turbines. The turbines can be used for cost-effective mobile phone charging services for refugees and IDPs within camps and settlements.  We are looking for interested groups within the Re-Alliance network to create, together with our designer, a micro wind turbine design for their local context. This will involve having several online calls to get feedback on where the group works and what it does and to assess what materials, tools and skills are available locally. Following the calls, an initial small wind turbine design will be produced by our designer, which will be shared with the group to review. In the longer term, we can look into the possibility of building the system locally if this seems feasible.  If you would like to work with our designer to create a micro wind turbine design, please email Kostas at School of the Earth: info@neaguinea.org . Please include in your email the name and location of your organisation and tell us a bit about your work and why you are interested in micro wind turbines.  Locally manufactured wind-electric systems can empower communities to produce their own electricity. By emphasizing the use of local resources, both in terms of materials and tools and skills and expertise, both people and place are empowered. Turbines can be built by recycling and up-cycling waste materials and by collaborating with international technological and manufacturing networks, based on open-source knowledge exchanges. In this context, the ‘Wind Mobile’ project aims to develop a set of micro wind turbine designs for wind-electric mobile phone charging solutions within camps and settlements.  Micro wind turbine designs have being developed as part of the ‘Wind Mobile’ project in collaboration with KOC Bridges to Peace https://www.bridgestopeace.org/  in Côte d'Ivoire, with Fablab Winam https://www.fablabwinam.org/  in Kenya, with Community Creativity For Development - CC4D https://cc4d.tech/  in the Rhino Refugee Camp in Uganda, and with the Habibi.Works https://habibi.works/  makerspace near the Katsikas refugee camp in Ioannina, Greece. The ‘Wind Mobile’’ project is supported by Re-Alliance  and is developed within the School of the Earth Nea Guinea  ‘Energy for a Common Future’ project, with the scientific support of the Rural Electrification Research Group ( RurERG ) of SmartRue (Smart Grids Research Unit ECE NTUA ), and in collaboration with IEEE Greece Section SIGHT .

Many of our newer Re-Alliance members and followers will not know of Paul Mellett, who died ten years ago last Sunday. Paul, or Paulo as he was known more recently to friends, was responsible for much of the inspiration behind Re-Alliance and in some way for its foundation. After contracting Leukaemia at the age of 19 in 1998,  he vowed while in hospital that if he recovered he would do something useful with his life. Thankfully he did and in the 14 years that followed he became a strong climate activist, a campaigner for the rights of minorities, and passionately concerned about the state of the planet and its soils. He married Ruth Andrade, chair of trustees of Re-Alliance, and through her became a strong influence on the work of LUSH and its support for farmers.  It is a tragedy that during his work with them he contracted Malaria in Ghana in 2014 and died in Brazil from complications that followed. At his funeral his friends, many of them also innovators and activists, formed the Blueprint network, to further regenerative thinking in humanitarian response. As a network of friends and colleagues much of this was realised in their own practice, and some years later it was felt that if the network was to grow and make a significant difference, it was necessary to formalise it into an NGO. Re-Alliance was dreamt up at a meeting at the LUSH offices following a Spring Prize event in 2018 and founded as an NGO in 2019 with a small grant from LUSH to get it off the ground. Many of the Blueprint group were among its first members.  I sadly never met Paulo, but in early 2018 while I was working for The Lemon Tree Trust on refugee gardens I came across a video of him and Ruth talking about their work and felt strongly that it was these values and principles, rather than those of LTT that I wanted to represent. On Sunday, in his memory, Re-Alliance hosted a small gathering of friends, family members and those who have been taught or influenced by Paulo to share stories of what he inspired in them, and the things they have been doing since.  While the event was of course tinged with sadness, it was also warm and humorous. Individuals shared stories of someone who was tenacious and committed, full of joy, jokes and energy, and who lived out his values of Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share – the permaculture principles that also underpin Re-Alliance. Others who couldn’t be there sent in tributes or poems, including the one below from Hieroglyphic Stairway by Drew Dellinger which I feel I’d like to pass on. This, along with our newsletter this month, and the stories of the work we have been doing with you all, are dedicated to Paulo’s memory.  "it’s 3:23 in the morning and I’m awake because my great great grandchildren won’t let me sleep my great great grandchildren ask me in dreams what did you do while the planet was plundered? what did you do when the earth was unravelling? surely you did something when the seasons started failing? as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying? did you fill the streets with protest when democracy was stolen? what did you do once you knew?" Hieroglyphic Stairway by Drew Dellinger

< Back Gardening with Grey and Rain Water in Camps An illustrated guide of how to save and use grey water and rain water for food growing in refugee camps and settlements, made in partnership with SOILS Permaculture Association - Lebanon, and Malteser International. Donate to Re-Alliance Stay updated with our newsletter Download for free: English عربي Turkish ​ ​ ​

< Back Growing Mushrooms in Reusable Containers How do you grow nutritious, edible mushrooms in reusable containers? This guide explores one method of using upcycled plastic containers to grow mushrooms for food. Donate to Re-Alliance Stay updated with our newsletter Download for free: English Español Português عربي Swahili Français

< Back Ecosans: Toilets in a Barrel This illustrated guide explores how to build and maintain a urine-diversion composting toilet called an Ecosan, which captures nutrient-rich urine for plant fertiliser, and human manure for use in farming. Donate to Re-Alliance Stay updated with our newsletter Download for free: English Español Français عربي Swahili ​