I am David Albert, Founder and Board Chair of The Permagardens Foundation. I have worked in the Equatorial regions of the world – India and Africa – for almost 50 years, and have witnessed an overwhelming amount of trauma. War, rape, sexual assault, child kidnapping, epidemics, floods, droughts, landslides, and more. But I discovered that the trauma that is always on top – the one which left unaddressed makes it impossible to address the others – is mothers being unable to feed their own children. And as climate change worsens, this becomes ever more common.
The Permagardens Foundation teaches people – 90% of them women – to grow all the vegetables they need for their families in a four-meter-by-four-meter square, close to their homes. In doing so, they are no longer reliant on the market, on agribusiness, on charities, on NGOs, on governments, on the World Bank. And we can end hunger and malnutrition, one family and one community at a time. I am extremely proud to be part of this effort.
I hold degrees from Williams College, Oxford University, and the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago. In 2021, I joined Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela as a winner of the Jamnalal Bajaj International Award for promoting Gandhian values outside India. I am an active Quaker