George Christofis, founder, Circle Permaculture.

I have been passionate about nature for as long as I can remember, having spent uncountable days in the subtropical forests which blanket most of Hong Kong. I come from a city with a huge, growing environmental movement. My personal contribution to the city was playing a small role to protect the country parks and campaigning to ban shark finning in the early 2000s.

In 2012 I attended my first Permaculture Design Certificate Course (PDC) after reading A Designers Manual, Bill Mollison’s defining work and the basis for all permaculture design courses worldwide. Permaculture provides a brilliant framework for environmental action from a shared ethical foundation, and my life has been for the most part defined by it since. Permaculture is my way to engage with the growth of the sustainability movement, through the environmental bootcamp that is the PDC, and through implementation on numerous projects personally and professionally, be it an urban vermicompost system, supporting my local CSA, an upcycling project, an educational pursuit or tree planting with youngsters on the outskirts of city sprawl.

In 2013, I started working with a charity in Mysore, India to plant forest gardens, the idea being that over time the garden would provide a great variety of products for the children living there. The project has since started to bear fruit, and I am currently in the process of founding an organisation to replicate this project in other children's charities.

In 2014 I started the teaching group Circle Permaculture with the objective to partner with farms and ecological education sites to run well-organised PDC’s that frame permaculture in an appropriate context. I am on the Certifying Teachers Register of the Permaculture Association UK. I have taught in four countries to date.

I am also a graduate in economics, a practitioner of ashtanga yoga, a occasional poet/ songwriter, a keen cycle-tourer, a non-stop traveller, slackliner and an avid hiker.