testimonial

The Oregon State University Permaculture Design Course is an expertly organized course of instruction that appropriately leverages an online learning environment, and along with dedicated and professional instructors, conveys an important body of knowledge in a relatively short period of time. The course materials (videos, text, and supplementary content) coupled with the weekly assignments allows students to quickly put concepts into practice. Doing peer reviews in large groups exposes you to your classmates, a variety of locations, and varying methods for implementing the course content. Peer reviews add an additional dimension to learning the course material while allowing you the space to make your personal journey. I took the OSU Permaculture Design Course to improve my family’s access to food which is frequently impacted by natural disasters. I left the course with the tools I need to be successful in designing my own site, but I also gained a deeper appreciation of nature as well as curiosity that will push me to seek additional knowledge. I emphatically recommend this course to anyone who is interested in Permaculture, desires to gain a better understanding of the natural world or is simply interested in being more involved with their food.

Oh my goodness Javan- just watched your film. What a magnificent job you did on a really difficult subject. Our fire department has such a difficult time selling the idea of prescribed fire in the community – you’ve done a great job helping provide a different point of view.

We were in a very tough life-changing decision-making position and had 3 days, due to work requirements, to make that decision. Out of panic we reached out to Javan and he made himself available at a moment’s notice. His guidance and process helped us make a tough decision, one that we weren’t able to make on our own. We are incredibly thankful for his time and are comfortable and happy with the decision outcome! We would recommend Javan to anyone looking for guidance on how to tackle a big life transition.

I wish we could make it mandatory for all municipal governments to watch. Great job on the film!

Implementing a holistic framework with my wife (newly wed) over the last years has been both instrumental and revolutionary, but also difficult, slow going, and iterative in our attempts – in so many ways. From the basic ability to communicate a vision and how to achieve it, to the more intricate reality of the day to day process of managing who are we? where are we? and where are we going? and how are we getting there?

For me, I like to be explicit about all of this and examine my life, and so Holistic Management and Javan Kerby Bernakevitch have given me invaluable tools to create my life’s journey, I really only regret not having learned this in kindergarten.

I’ve realized that we never learned how to think deeper.

I can find more answers then I use to.

The communication between Bart and me is much better, most of the time we can discuss calmly. We can talk about almost everything. Also the daily communication with the children is much better and we set up the daily schedule, that’s an improvement.

I’ve learned to look in a different way at myself and others. The “part of me” tool of sovereignty is a real help.

The spot check tool is also very helpful. Every week we evaluate ourselves and we need to do this just to work on ourselves.

I was amazed when we made the inventory for ourselves, we have/can more than we realize.

I had my doubts of starting this ‘journey’ but I’m glad we did it together as a couple for us and our family, not just Bart. So thank you for your excellent guidance Javan!

We knew Holistic Management would be an important improvement for managing our lives and family and started using what we learned from books but we didn’t have the positive effects from it until we committed to working with an objective outside professional. We could not have the same results by ourselves. We learned to get to the cause of problems more effectively. We learned to communicate better as a family and will continue on this path. 

We have been able to use the principles of Holistic Management much more effectively through working with Javan and his refined system of using the Holistic Context and decision making.

The addition of spot checks was really helpful in using and working with our Context more proactively instead of just using it when a decision needs to be made. This alone fast tracks the process so much.

The decision forms, especially the longform, are helpful in fleshing out and fine tuning the proposed actions.

I loved seeing the already holistic process made even more holistic.

Thanks you.

With the spot checks we are forced to talk to each other and dive deeper. It’s in a format that doesn’t feel awkward. Before this I couldn’t talk about my feelings. I used to say “it’s not my thing” talking about feelings. Through your process it became easier and natural. It’s a step by step system to discuss what’s important to us. – Bart

We’re finally on the same page!

For me and for us as a couple it’s amazing in how few weeks we look at ourselves and others in a different way. It’s a big positive experience with our communication with each other. We’ve been with each other for 18 years, how is it our communication is so much better? It’s a lot better than it used to be. Thank you. – Evy

This was my first experience with online learning and I was quite amazed how good it worked for me. I found the examples and the material prepared to help me understand the topics, easy to digest and helpful with the sometimes challenging tasks for every week. The comments I received from our instructor Javan gave new insights and let to improve the final result.