Steve Cran is a sustainable community development specialist. With 15 years of constant field project experience Steve enjoys the challenge of assisting people living on the edge of survival to rebuild their communities.

“There is a lot written about so called community development but in the field it doesn't work or it doesn't last” says Steve. “ Permaculture gets real results by helping the people restore their community using local resources”.

Steve focuses on training the trainer from whatever community he's working with. Local people training local people by building working models to inspire the rest of the community bring solid results. “The worlds problems grow at an exponential rate so I design projects that solve problems at an exponential rate”.

Steve worked for 5 years with rural Aboriginal communities in outback Australia. In 1999 Steve went to East Timor and formed a Permaculture training network which he developed over 5 years. This network continues to grow.

Steve returned home to Maleny, Queensland, Australia in November 2004 for a well earned rest. A month later the tsunami wiped out over 200,000 people in several countries.

Steve’s field experience was called upon to set up a project in Aceh, Indonesia. “This is a tricky project as we have earthquakes every week, possible further tsunamis as well as a protracted guerilla war in our area, not to mention the poverty that was here before the tsunami. The deck is really stacked against these poor people here”, says Steve from Lamsujen, 45 kms Southwest of Banda Ache.

Steve has joined IDEP to build an “Greenhand Field School” in Ache, on of the worst affected areas hit by the tsunami. The Greenhand Field School will be a training centre to train trainers in sustainable community development best practice. The Greenhand Field School will focus on food security, organic farming, community agro-forestry, appropriate technology, and local solutions for the tsunami survivors. The trainers being trained are mainly Achenese and the Greenhand Field School

is designed so the best trainers will run this facility within 2 years.