Permaculture erazmus+ portugal
Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs (EYE)
We are a host entrepreneur on the EU’s Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme. If you are starting a land-based business — a farm, a market garden, a food forest, a course centre, an agritourism project — you can spend between one and six months here working alongside us, funded by the EU.
This is not a volunteer placement and it is not a course. It is a business exchange between two entrepreneurs. This page explains how it works, what you would actually be learning, what it costs, and how to set it up.
What EYE actually is
The EU funds new entrepreneurs to spend time working with an established one in another country. The short version:
- You apply through a local contact point in your own country, called an Intermediary Organisation (IO). Application is free.
- You submit a CV, a motivation letter and a business plan.
- Once accepted, you search the programme catalogue and find a host. That is us.
- We agree the dates, the hours, the learning objectives and the tasks, and all of that goes into a Commitment Agreement.
- You come here for between one and six months.
- Your IO pays you a monthly grant while you are here.
The grant comes from your Intermediary Organisation, not from us. We receive nothing from the programme. What we contribute is our time, and what we get out of it is a good working relationship with someone building something similar somewhere else in Europe.
If you are an Intermediary Organisation, see the section for IOs near the bottom of this page.
Who can come
- Aspiring entrepreneurs with a business plan, or people who have been running a business for less than three years.
- Homestead, agriculture, gardening, permaculture consultancy, cooking or teaching permaculture
- Over 18. There is no upper age limit despite the name.
- Resident in a participating country — the 27 EU member states plus a number of others including the UK.
What you would actually do
The exchange is shaped around what you are building. We have hosted people at very different stages, and the people this suits include:
- Someone planning to buy land and start a farm, smallholding or market garden
- A permaculture teacher building a course or education business
- A permaculture designer or consultant wanting more real project experience behind their advice
- A grower or farm manager moving from working for someone else to running their own operation
- Someone setting up a retreat centre, farm stay or agritourism business
Your role here varies accordingly. A future teacher spends more time inside course delivery. A future grower spends more time in the beds and the nursery. Someone setting up a retreat centre spends more time on hosting, food logistics and how twenty people are fed and housed off grid. We agree this with you before you arrive and write it into the Commitment Agreement.
Three things run in parallel for everyone.
Work alongside us. Not tasks handed out and left alone — you are next to us on whatever the season demands. Soil and compost, reforestation and tree planting, food forest management, water and swale work, animals, natural building, nursery and propagation. Course weeks pull everyone into cooking, hosting and teaching support. You see how the work is sequenced across a full year, which is the part that is hard to learn any other way.
Mentorship on the business itself. The parts nobody tells you. How the year is priced and budgeted, where bookings actually come from, how a residential course is costed down to the food, how we manage volunteers and staff, how we use EU funding channels, what we got wrong in the first few years and what it cost us. We will go through our real numbers with you if that is useful.
Bring whatever you already have — maps, soil tests, land registry documents, draft budgets, a course outline. The more concrete your project is when you arrive, the more we can do with it.
What the grant is worth
Your Intermediary Organisation pays your grant, not us. Portugal sits in the lower cost of living group, so the monthly lump sum for a stay here is currently around €850 per month to cover travel and livign costs — check the figure with your IO, as the rates are set by the Commission and can change.
Be realistic about what that covers:
- It is a contribution towards travel, accommodation, food and insurance. It is not a wage and it is not meant to cover everything.
- You will normally be expected to top it up from your own funds.
- It is paid in instalments, and the final instalment usually only arrives after the exchange has finished and both of us have submitted our evaluation forms.
- You keep receipts. Your IO can reclaim the difference if your actual expenditure comes in under the grant.
That last point matters for planning. Do not arrive assuming the full amount is in your account.
For Intermediary Organisations
We are registered as a Host Entrepreneur. Keela Permaculture Farm has been operating since 2018 as a registered Portuguese business (CAE 01610), run by Laurence Manchee, who has well over the three years of owner-manager experience the programme requires.
The business is a working regenerative farm and a residential education centre running roughly six certified courses a year. We have hosted over 1,000 people on the land in a mentoring capacity, so supervising and supporting one new entrepreneur is well within what we already do.
We can provide a company profile, insurance details, the exchange programme in learning outcome format, and a signed Commitment Agreement. We host one new entrepreneur at a time.
Sectors we can genuinely mentor in: regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, market gardening, land restoration, natural building, agritourism, residential education and retreats, and small-scale food production.
We also host under other Erasmus+ actions. See our full Erasmus+ host page.
How to apply
- Talk to us first. Complete the enquiry form and tell us your business idea, when you want to come, for how long, and which of the three tracks fits. We will tell you honestly whether this is the right place for what you are trying to build.
- Register on the EYE platform at erasmus-entrepreneurs.eu and choose an Intermediary Organisation in your own country. You will need a CV, a motivation letter and a business plan.
- Once you are accepted, send us a match request through the platform and we will confirm it.
- Agree the details — dates, hours, objectives and tasks — which go into the Commitment Agreement signed by you, us and the IOs.
Start early. Getting through your IO’s process takes a couple of months, and our accommodation is fully booked during course weeks.
Permaculture Design Course Portugal
Your host and mentor
Laurence Manchee
PDC Lead Teacher
Co-founder of Keela Permaculture Farm. Laurence is certified by the Permaculture Association to teach certified PDCs. An author in Permaculture Magazine and teacher of Agroforestry, Permaculture Design and Natural Building Courses. Laurence will be the lead teacher on all courses. Laurence has lived a permaculture life at Keela since 2016. He is a farmer, shepherd, gardener, builder and homesteader.
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