Subject: Permaculture and Paper Making at Beijing Women's Conference

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 00:36:18 +1000

Here's the third letter from Pam Gray at the Beijing Women's Conference:

Message 272 (53 lines)
From: [email-masked] (Pam Gray)
Date: Mon, 04 Sep 1995 09:08, Arrived Aust: Mon Sep  4 11:15 1995
To: [email-masked]

thanks a million everybody for your greetings and for having a launch and 
doing all your good things. 

To-day I can see blue sky and many things are working
better than earlier (I know it will take me quite some time to unwind from
this experience-cum-personal journey).

I've built a kitchen garden in a make shift cardboard contraption on a table
- growing pak choy, shallots, coriander, pursulane, zucchini and something
else, don't know what. The permaculture banner that Debbie in Perth made has
received great attention and is constantly photographed so that word is
spreading. I've got a neat little handout that gives a very clear and simple
message of permaculture with lifted diagrams from permaculture books. I also
have a global directory that gives addresses of Permaculture 
organisations for lots of countries.

I do a papermaking demonstration each afternoon - yesterday I made an
anouncement in the adjacent wimmins bookshop saying "in 5 minutes there'll
be a demonstration of..." Everyone stopped and looked at me! "Oh no not that
sort of demonstration - you'll see paper being made from waste paper and you
can do it yourself". The first day several Papuans really got into
papermaking and then they taught everyone else! including several young
Chinese wimmin working with UNESCO. The Chinese really love it too and they
keeep coming back for more. They know the issues of environmental
degradation etc... so my great hope is increasing daily as wimmin see the
possibilities of low-tech stuff as well as the talk about the issues
affecting us. We're selling the paper we make and I've got several T-shirts
with Women ARE Demanding on one side and "Clean air, clean water, good food,
domestic peace, work that engages our hearts and our minds on the back".
(That's apersonal fund-raiser for myself to pay off my loan!)

I reckon I'll be able to bring home some paper we make.... Anyone want some?
and I have my little printing press with me so we can do some special art
work. I'll need to do some fund-raising dinners when I get home....Please
ask me to entertain you with my slides, photos and info..   better go and do
some work. Congrats on your good work isn't this amazing fun!

...........love and greetings

....Pam Gray, Huairou, Beijing.

PS Vandhana Shiva, the wonderful Vandhana Shiva of Chipco fame has a
campaign working well in India that is keeping Kentucky Fried Chicken out of
Bangalore!
You should hear her stuff about genetic engineering, biodiversity,
transnational institutions, global food issues etc.
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