Helder Valente

About me

Helder Valente was born in the rural countryside of Portugal and raised in a family of sustainably living farmers, times wen oil was not a part of the current culture, neither was television.

Already as a child he began observing the phenomenon of patterns in nature and the way elements relate and interact,.

The connection with the language of nature was present at a very early age.

Wille living in an urban situation and practicing his gardening knowledge at the same time, he was introduced to permaculture, by that time he was supporting the development of a social center near the Sintra mountains in Portugal and working as an artist. Since then he has been researching and implementing sustainable structures in different social and ecological situations.

Helder was exposed to Permaculture 20 years ago and has been teaching for the past 10 years with a solid experience on social and ecological challenges.
He has been learning and working with recognized elder permaculturists like the cocreator of permaculture Bill Mollison, and other pioneers of this movement like Geoff Lawton, Doug Bullock, Rosemary Morrow, Darren Doherty, Sepp Holzer, Ernst Gotsch, Jairo Restrepo and many traditional farmers and activists on the major world climatic regions. In this process Helder has been researching & implementing sustainability principles in a wide variety of environments ,from urban and rural plotting in the north and south of Europe tothe arid landscapes of Egypt and Turkey, and lately big scale areas of tropical jungles of Peru and Brazil, having the deep pleasure of sharing knowledge with tribal communities of the Andes and the Amazon jungle with the Quechua and Shipibo indigenous people.

Helder is part of the european permaculture teachers partnership that functions as a networking generator to create exchange of information around permaculture education and has also been lacturing at the EPC European Permaculture Convergence and at the IPC International Permaculture Congress.

He has been ever expanding his expertise in diverse social and ecological contexts and finished the permaculture diploma theses with the british permaculture association around the subject of non formal education in permaculture as a way to support the future generations and became a tutor for the permaculture diploma jouneymans.

In this maturing process he has been developing his own teaching style and created a nomadic educational program called “The New School Permaculture”, that is a mixture of many different pedagogic methods, and adding some spices of game therapy, its a form of education in wich he provides permaculture knowledge , totally based on the needs of the student, so by that ...learner centered…and with a big focus on the creation of connections between the right and left side of the brain, to support the development of the full potential of the learner... he calls that creative empowering education.

He presents a series of permaculture courses that are taught as an interactive design experience customized for any particular landscape or community and that is known to be deeply transformative

Through this experience Helder creates an intensive social interdependent network of ideas and creativity.
Indeed a great opportunity to learn with a teacher of the "new school" of permaculture.
After this you will never be the same…Guaranteed!!!