Biodiversity Collage Event Q&A: A Facilitator's Journey

Seacoast NH Permaculture will host a Biodiversity Collage event for its members on March 29, 2025, in Dover, NH. Hosted by board member Yulia Rothenberg and led by Biodiversity Collage facilitator Petia Koutev, the event will give participants an opportunity to collaborate in exploring the challenges and pressures around biodiversity through a fun, collaborative, visual and accessible workshop. For more information or to sign up,  click the button below. And learn more about Petia and her interests in biodiversity in the following Q&A:

Click to Sign Up

Yulia: What sparked your interest in biodiversity?
Petia: I have always been drawn to nature. But my training is in engineering and business. So, I had not really given much thought to nature, to be honest, until I joined a field naturalist training with Mass Audubon four years ago. And for some reason, it is the grey tree frog that was singing just next to me perfectly camouflaged on a branch that filled me with infinite wonder and the desire to learn more, to care more, and to find ways to protect nature at my own level. 

Yulia: What led you to facilitating these Biodiversity Collage events?
Petia: I joined the Terra.do online training program to learn about climate change solutions. And as I was discovering nature-based solutions, in particular the Miyawaki forests, I came across Bio4Climate <https://bio4climate.org/> and joined Jim Laurie’s class on biodiversity. Jim’s class was an amazing journey of discovery starting with life, and showing how life and climate are interconnected, showing how life brings life, and how biodiversity is life. At this point I was totally hooked! And I was looking for ways to share what I was discovering. 

Yulia: How do your Biodiversity Collage events help participants learn about the biodiversity of nature and its systems?
Petia: I love working in teams and I find interactive workshops a fun way to understand complex topics. There is so much information out there! It can be overwhelming. The Biodiversity Collage is a fairly simple and engaging way to build a visual map of how our human lives are intricately connected to biodiversity.

Yulia: What are the Biodiversity Collage events like and what is your role?
Petia: As a facilitator I guide the participants through the steps of the workshop, but it is up to them to figure out how to assemble the cards and tell the story of humans and biodiversity. Every team’s dynamic is different, and I love that. I learn something new every time I facilitate a session. Participants come with different experiences – some are farmers, others are gardeners and some like me are engineers. Others are coming as parents or as students. Those who know more share with the group. We all come to those sessions because we care, and deep down we feel there is something more that we need to understand. We all leave the session with the happy feeling of meeting like-minded people and the energy of discovering ways to pursue our own journeys further.