OP3 Guatemala City Community Gardens

At the same time that Arielle and I were planning our wedding, we were planning our exit plan from California to a place outside the continental US where we could start our own livelihood off of land.  We both knew we were leaving good jobs in Califonia, I was leaving my job as Program Manager at the GSRC at UCI. Arielle was leaving an Executive Director postion at Teach Plus. In addition we were giving up a beautiful apartment in an up and coming trendy neighborhood in LA. We were also leaving Arielle’s family behind, special here 95 year old grandma that lived and owned the building were our apartment was located. We were a big part of her grandmas life.   We were very strategic in doing so. We knew that it was going to be tough and that it is going to take several years until we could create a resilient livelihood that works for us.

In order to move out and start pursuing our dream we knew it will be good to have a transition time. A transition time that we could travel, grow as a couple and learn new skills. In order to do this we went to the white board to jot some thoughts and ideas. Please take a look at the pictures attached to this journal entry.

In conclusion we went through a process using appreciative inquiry and some visioning to come up with a transition period. We wrote down the important things, experiences and skill that were important for us to gain during this transition year. We used a POP to create the purpose of our year and the outcomes. For the process part we created an estimate budget and an assessment graph were we pluged in the different opportunties to check if it fulfield our purpose and outcomes.

The purpose of our year was “ A transition year to grow our relationship while learning purposeful knowledge for conjuring our future dreams”

Some of the outcomes were:

• Learning organic farming techniques

• More comfortable using hands in the soil

• Master clarity of communicating what we are doing in the world

• Demonstrate an agroforestry model in PR

• Finding a flow -alignment with self purpose in the world

In order to land on what experiences to decide on we landned on our top 5 things we wanted to do. We each placed them in order and it became clear what were the things we wanted to do. Lastly we created a timeline on how it made sense for us to organize our year. For process we worked on google drive to create project management documents that helped us achieve all the things that needed to happen in order to move into this transition.

This is what our year of transition ended up looking like:

• Jan

• Puerto Rico planted Breadfruit trees at Finca Carite

• February-March

• Guatemala

• Work with SERES

• Yoga teacher training

• Spanish classes for Arielle

• Started Gaia U capstone year

• Traveled in Guatemala with PR cousins, building community “Guateday 1.0”

• Hiked el Mirador Ruins

• March-April

• Costa Rica

• Visit Punta Mona Farm

• Fished with aunt titi cuca

• California

• Met with Arielle’s fam and friends in LA

• Caught up with friends from UC Irvine

• Moved to Santa Cruz

• SERES Global Assembly General Meeting, San Francisco

• April-Oct

• California

• UCSC apprenteceship program

• Exploration of Cali North Coast

• Regrow PR campaign

• New York

• Andy and Zoe wedding

• Puerto Rico  

• relief trip post Hurricane Maria

• Oct-NOv

• Trimming Gig at Cripple Creek Farm, Talent, Oregon

• Guatemala “Guateday 2.0”

• Nov-Dec

• California

• Worked at mother in lawas house

• Packed our boxes for PR

• Made 2nd strategic plan

• Dec-Jam

• Israel

• Scholarship for Honeymoon Israel

• Visit Arielle’s family

• Amazing religious and historic experience

• Puerto Rico

• Checked on BF trees

• Hawaii

• Stayed with Arielles best friend

• Surfed Kawai

• Visit Breadfruit Instititue

• Visit MAO Farms

• Stayed at Professor Albie Miles house and learned about his program

• Feb-April

• California

• Packed and made final moving arrangements

• California-Florida

• Driving roadtrip to move to Puerto Rico

• Shipped car from Jax-SJU

• Puerto Rico

• Finally moved in to our new home at Carite Farms

• We had reflections and think and listens on how our transition year was going and we both thought we accomplished the majority of our outcomes. Not working more on my masters was one of the outcomes we did not achieved.

Since Arielle and I met in Punta Mona, Costa Rica  we dreamed about one day moving to a bigger land where we could grow and sell our own food. We always dreamed about having something like Punta Mona. In 2014 hen I made the commitment to move with her to LA I was very clear to her that I had no intention of making a life and living permanently in the U.S. We got married in 2016 and after the wedding we both decided to quit our jobs and take a one year off for a prolonged strategic honeymoon (link).  

One of the stops during this year was a 6-month apprenticeship program at Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) at  the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). We lived, learned and grew food with 36 other apprentices from all around the world. Among the apprentices there was another Puerto Rican, Gabriela Collazo, whom we connected right away. With Gabriela and other 6 apprentices we created a Tropical Agroecology working group. We met every other week and discussed the following topics:

1. Puerto Rico Ag
2. Exporting to the US
3. Best practices in bringing our knowledge to other countries
4. History of ag in tropics
5. Resource Challenges and Solutions

This working group helped us connect more with Gaby and her partner Crystal (whom unofficially joined the apprenticeship) and understand better the food system in Puerto Rico from a young couple connected to the agroecology movement on the island. The facts that Puerto Rico imports 90-95% of their food became more present to us. They told us more about how big ag and companies like Monsanto and Singenta have the concession of the best ag lands in Puerto Rico to produce GMO seeds. But most importnatly through the Tropical Ag group and the conversations with Gaby and Crystal we learned the beatiful movement of young farmers that is sprouting in Puerto Rico. They mentioned organizations like El Josco Bravo and Organizacion Boricua. Arielle and I were very intrigued by this movement and the need for more farmers in Puerto Rico. We played with the idea of starting a farm in my familys land in Lake Carite.

During the course Hurricane Maria hit the island of Puerto Rico. That week of the Hurricane was horrible for the Puerto Rican co-hort of apprentices. It took Crystal more than 2 weeks to hear from her family in the west side of the island. My family had communication except my uncle that lives in Vega Baja. We found out that he was ok 4 days after the hurricane. It will take a lot of writing to write in  detail about the damages that my family, Gaby and Crystal had after Hurricane Maria. I just want to stay that it was really hard times for the island. And it was hard for us in California without much to do.

Filling helpless we thought of doing something. Gaby had the idea of starting a campaign that we named #RegrowPuertoRico to help 3 agroecological organizations that we identified.We made a Facebook page and go fund me page. We set the goal to collect $16k. At the end of the campaign we collected thousands of seeds, solar panels and more than $22k in donations and helped a fourth organization. Here is the Final Report of our campaign. (link)

Connecting to Puerto Rico through Gaby and Crystal, and the  #RegrowPuertoRico helped us make the decision to move to Puerto Rico. It became clear that we want to join the movement of young Puerto Ricans that are working towards changing the current broken system of the island.

The notes on this journal entry come from a class hatt we got at CASFS from Poppy David that was specifically on “How to own a Farm”. Also, I checked in with my Guatemalan friends, Alfredo de la Hoz and Jose Toriello, for their advice on how to be legally safe and minimize potential problems with my family when it comes to the ownership and inheritance of the land.

Here are some considerations on why we choose and LLC

• Ability to create our own decision making terms

• Ability to articulate a theory about how you are going to sell your product for a price greater than the cost of production, or at a price that makes a material contribution to your overall costs to maintain and improve the property.
• A standard bookkeeping system appropriate to the scale of youOperation.

• Regular review of profit and loss and increase or decrease in asset

value and adjustments to your business plan to reflect lessons learned.

• Acquiring and continually updating the skill and knowledge needed to

run your business

As you can see and LLC gives us the flexibility to be a for profit entity. It keeps on track by having a bookeeping system that works for our scale and purposes. THe LLC also allows us to make our own decision making process between the 3 shareholders (Tito, Arielle and Me).

As far as the rental agreement here are some thoughts that we have:

Lease

Typically a farm lease says that in exchange for rent the lessor (landlord) give the lessee (tenant):

1. The right to use the property – but only for the purposes detailed in the lease, and usually subject to the requirement that the property be restored to its original condition at the conclusion of the lease.

Right to use the property

What should the agreement be around the condition of the land when the lease is finished?

What land can the llc use? Is there a process when a new part of the land is used?

An outline of areas we are thinking of using

Future- usage of houses for rental/campground

Process for booking land/houses for family and business, time in advance, priority, cost

2) The right to exclude others from the property, but subject to the landlord’s right of entry as specified in the lease or in State statute.

3) The right to transfer the lease subject to the restrictions of the lease and other restrictions in State statute.

Next generation takeover? The right to transfer by sale, gift or through inheritance, though the transfer may be subject to the ongoing terms of the lease?

LLC transfer?

-The right to encumber (meaning take out a mortgage against the land, or sell an

easement relating to the use of the land) so long as the encumbrance does not interfere with the lessee’s use rights.

-if land sold, llc gets first right to purchase and/or approval of sale conditions

-longest term with lowest cost

-if land is sold, llc recovers a portion of investment

The lessor (landlord) typically retains

Arielle

• It was the MAO Farm Program.
• I saw it happening on other caribbean islands.
• In the beginning was carite and getting that up and running and then we got another piece of land but still managed carite
• The pictures of the organization was kids that have been to the program. The kids were in powerful postitions like president of a country
• Beautiful community of people attached to project.
• The farm was abundant with food all over, beautiful
• The Farm was connected to the university
• There was a component of training and a piece that we are preparing kids for urban life. How we were transmitting the values of a rural place to a urban scenario
• I saw us how we moved to a piece of land that was flat and closer to city. I saw more people involved. There was people and donors. Adults that like we were doing. I saw the Juan Carlos from PanaWest.
• The people from panawest
• The article was the new yorker
• Fernando family was involved
• Main breakthrough was the network with other caribbean islands. Connected network. Islands standing up more and being more independent through food and sustainability leadership  
• The feeling that the farm was a peaceful place with a lot of people working together.  Different ownership over it the farm.
• The three pictures: The Caribbean Islands,  Picture of a darker skin carribean young adult about his success being a political position, third was a beautiful picture of all the food growing on the farm.

Fernando

• I saw the farm in Carite- breadfruit trees grown and producing, both sides of road planted, terraces producing, soil reminded of the chadwick garden- worked, beautiful and healthy. I saw a lot more structures around, little houses, retreats, lodge, communal space near the lake with kitchen/open space,
• Big success and growing over the years- fabrica came into play but much later on(breakthrough), I saw a lot of value-added products community was developing, shared brand with people selling under their name, COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
• I never saw more than the land until the meditation asked to share with other people what you are doing, then I saw the government lad in front of the lake with an agroforestry system with the food going through the factory with young farmers involved
• Thought about M’AO Farms- that running with youth entering all aspects of the farm, saw other land, smaller and flat, my family involved with art and workshops, I saw us with babies and the apartment in the city, with life in both places, saw our friends Gabi and Crystal hanging out with us,
• Article- farmer to farmer podcast interviewed as a “Community Resilient Farm” with CASFS writing an article about us, Reina worked on the farm
• Youth having their own farms and working in different aspects of the food system with strong alumni network, article highlighted some of the youth
• Through our programs the food system changing in PR and specifically the community we were working in
• Sense of being overwhelmed during first year, then it fell into place and made sense

The purpose of this proposal is to express the reasoning behind my intention to transition my reporting platform from Mahara to WordPress for the Output Packets that I will be reporting during my Capstone phase for my Masters in Science on Integrated Ecosocial Design. According to Forbes magazine “Wordpress is gradually eating the internet market and is not stopping”. Below are some of the main points and stats that I was able to research that back up my decision of transitioning to WordPress:

• Large community of users, helping with support and troubleshooting
• Easy interface and easy to customize
• Offers versatility of Websites, from E-commerce, blogs, membership websites and more
• Adding images and media is very simple
• WordPress has a high security standard
• 50-60% of Content Management Systems (CMS) use WordPress
• Its free
• 25% of all websites use WordPress

LIPD:

I will like to add the skill of creating and managing a WordPress website as goal for my Learning Intention and Pathway Design for my capstone year. I foresee that this skill will make me a more valuable Ecosocial designer for future employees and/or my own career. I believe that WordPress provides easy to use tools that will help me build a more esthetically and professional portfolio. In my opinion, Mahara has an archaic esthetic look and a cumbersome interface.

Epistemic Community:

Skillfully adding knowledge to the epistemic community is one of our responsibilities as designers. WordPress increases the access and effectiveness to strategically contribute our work to the commons. I think is important for us, Ecosocial designers, to be up to date with technology and trends that allows us to be more visible. My hope is that my transition will empower other associates to explore different platforms to share the great work that Gaia U epistemic community is creating.

Transition:

I am working with a consultant in Guatemala, Edwin Xico, to support me with this transition. I will be using a portion of my Learning Service budget to pay for this work. I will document and report this in my LIPD and OP 5 with the intention to have a shareable roadmap for this transition. I will be seeking the support of the associate Tommy Lehe to get a second opinion of my transition.

Here is the list of features offers that Mahara offers and that I intend to have available in WordPress:

• Ensure that PoDAPO spreadsheets can be easily posted and accessed by the reviewers (personal, peer and professional) in the comment section of WordPress
• Clear access to the 3 main components of Output packet: a) Core Report b) Commentary c) Supporting Evidence
• Provide tailored access of entire OP to peer reviewers, pro reviewers and Gaia U community
• Provide tailor access to non Gaia U visitors
• Enable the interactive us of Xmind maps

Challenge:

The main challenge I foresee during this transition is time. I estimate that I will be allocating a total of 10 hours to successfully transition. At some point in the future, once I am more skillful I will like to transfer my pre-capstone OP’s to WordPress. I estimate this will take me an additional 8-10 hours.

Sources:

• Writing about WordPress? Here’s Where to Get Your Statistics From – Karol K – Jan 5, 2017 https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/wordpress-statistics/
• Why WordPress is so pouplar and whi you should use it?- Neegaj Agarwai, Feb 22 2016 https://www.inkthemes.com/why-use-wordpress/

Literature:

Passive Income: http://www.richdad.com/resources/glossary

In July 2014 I took a leap of faith for love and move to California. It was a new transition that I was both, excited but worried about how I was going to get a job. After 4 months of looking for work the Sustainability Initiative at the University of California Irvine (UCI) hired me. My job title was Program Manager of the Global Sustainability Resource Center (GSRC). The GSRC unleashes youth leadership for community resilience to a changing climate and cultivates a culture of sustainability on campus. I spent the next 2 years leading this work at the GSRC.

My experience at the GSRC was personally and professionally life changing. I got to work with colleagues that are leaders in different realms of sustainability like community resilience, energy, waste, public health and environmental law. These colleagues have now become friends and part of my community. The students challenged me to provide them with skills and resources to enable them to become better sustainability leaders. I was able to connect with organizations and communities around the university, particularly a youth organization in Santa Ana called Kidworks.

Some of my favorite moments and work that we did are the following: strategic planning of the GSRC and conceiving sustainability pathways, Campus as a Living Lab for credit Internship, the UCI Garden Project, the 8 Transformational Sustainability Leadership programs we offered to UC students and UCI community members and the highly welcomed panel that we hosted for the UCI Law Food Justice Symposium with our wonderful youth friends from Santa Ana. It was a pleasure to work with such a cohesive and pleasant core team. I carry on many other meaningful interactions that made my time at the GSRC an incredible experience.

I left the GSRC on a positive note. I had a farewell party where more than 30 students and staff showed up to. My supervisor Abby facilitated a sharing session for students and staff to share stories and appreciation from my time at UCI. The session was overwhelmingly heartfelt and positive. I realized how important the center was for the UCI community. I realized how many skills that enhance the “mind-heart-hands” were offered by our program.

Finding a definition for Critical Evaluation was surprisingly hard.  The closest definition was for Critical Thinking and I found that Dr. Richard Paul and Linda Elder in their “Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking” define it as the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it. Given this,I will define critical evaluation as a skill that enables us to process information and ideas in a way that we can analyse its value and its relationship to other sources of information. This skillflex was not found in my pre-capstone phase because I based most of my projects on personal based experiences and did not made the effort to connect these experiences to other thinking or sources of information. In the future I will  evaluate my work with other sources of information and I will seek the evaluation my work with others. I will connect my thinking with other design efforts from fellow peers in the Gaia community.  I will track this skill by checking in with other Gaia U associates and mentors.

Annotated Resources

1. Critical Thinking. Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools. https://www.criticalthinking.org/files/Concepts_Tools.pdf. 2006

Finding a definition for Critical Evaluation was surprisingly hard.  The closest definition was for Critical Thinking and I found that Dr. Richard Paul and Linda Elder in their “Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking” define it as the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it. Given this,I will define critical evaluation as a skill that enables us to process information and ideas in a way that we can analyse its value and its relationship to other sources of information. This skillflex was not found in my pre-capstone phase because I based most of my projects on personal based experiences and did not made the effort to connect these experiences to other thinking or sources of information. In the future I will  evaluate my work with other sources of information and I will seek the evaluation my work with others. I will connect my thinking with other design efforts from fellow peers in the Gaia community.  I will track this skill by checking in with other Gaia U associates and mentors.

Annotated Resources

1. Critical Thinking. Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools. https://www.criticalthinking.org/files/Concepts_Tools.pdf. 2006

I understand the importance to track my learning intentions and and pathway goals during my capstone year, including the PoDAPO skills.  To achieve this I will use the assistance of my advisor, Javiera Carrion  and other professional advisor in Gaia U (to be determined) to specifically track my LIPD and PoDAPO. I will review my Skillflex rada after finishing each OP report. I will use interviews, surveys and skillful observation to ensure I am collecting valuable data. In addition, I will keep track of quantitative like people reached, plants planted, food produced, etc. I will use software like formstack to track the data gathered and create survey’s when needed.

1. Formstack. https://www.formstack.com/. 2016. Formstack is tool that we use at work that is a great way to collect qualitative data.

Permaculture Association. The Permaculture Research Handbook. http://pfaf.org/user/research_handbook_version_1.5.pdf. 2014 This handbook will help me as a guide to gathere research in the field.

The past two years of work and enrollment in the Gaia University Masters in Applied Integrative Ecosocial Design (IESD) have taken me to work in the field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The ESD is a program developed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The overarching goal for the ESD is to “to generate and scale up action in all levels and areas of education and learning to accelerate progress towards sustainable development”. Given the global challenges that we currently face, the UNESCO has called to take priority in the following 5 areas:

1. Advancing policy

2. Transforming learning and training environments

3. Building capacities of educators and trainers

4. Empowering and mobilizing youth

5. Accelerating sustainable solutions at local level

The work that I have done and I am reporting during my MSc has been in the following places:  1.)  Southern California 2.) Tijuana 3.) Guatemala 4.) Costa Rica 5.) Puerto Rico. In each of this places I have done work that is working towards improving the priorities set by the ESD. For example, in Southern California the UCI Garden Project creates a framework to accelerate sustainable solutions in the local context of the UC Irvine Community around growing food and building community.. The work done with the Permaculture Design Courses at Punta Mona, Costa Rica, built the capacities of future educators and trainers from all around the world. In Puerto Rico, I was able to Empower Hector, our neighbor of the Carite Farm, to look for a more sustainable solution to his lifestyle. We are now partners in developing an agroecology system using breadfruit as the main crop.  Recently, I was welcomed to be part of the SERES Global Board of Directors, where I will be empowering and mobilizing youth in Guatemala and El Salvador. Some of these activated youth are going on an advancing the policy in their local communities.

Through this work and places I have also done an array “on the ground” educational work. This work has reached community members, undergraduate and graduate students of higher education institutions, faculty, lawyers, government officials and NGO’s staff.  I have taught hands on skills and applied research opportunities around the following topics: community gardens, organic farming, transformative  leadership and community visioning, permaculture, agroecology, aquaponics, aquaculture and organizing skills.

I see my offering in this ESD field as a “knowledge broker” bridging knowledge to and from different ecosocial systems. Being proficient in English and Spanish increases my “Cultural Power”, allowing me to position have access to educate in different ecosystems. This power allows me to permeate knowledge across diverse cultures and systems.

Reference

1. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for Science (UNESCO). Roadmap for Implementing the Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002305/230514e.pdf. 2014. The ESD is a practical roadmap to help stakeholders to achieve sustainable development.

2. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO). Climate Change and COP 21. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002336/233685e.pdf.2015. The Climate Change and COP 21 has the latest statistics on the global climate challenges that we face.

3. Wikipedia. Knowledge Broker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_broker April 2016. This articles defines what knowledge broker means.

4. Art of Leadership. Sources of Power. 2009. Handout. Rockwood Leadership Institute. In this handbook the different sources of power are explained and the “cultural power” source allows me to explain my ability to do the work I do in different ecosystems.