It was all developed in the Caribbean
In 2008 I innocently searched on google “Aquaponics Guatemala", finding a blog written by Corrina Grace, founder of Project SERES. We exchanged a couple of emails, were I learnded that she was doing a small scale aquaponics system in an orphanage in West Guatemala. We left our conversation there and continued with my life.It was 2009 an Florida and decided to move too Puerto Rico. My idea was to spend time with my grandparents and family in Puerto Rico whom I grew up from a far.
I was enjoying my time with my family in Puerto Rico. I surfed, fished and was helping my grandparents . My aunt, Maria Suarez who lives in Costa Rica, was also staying with my grandparents. There is so much to say about my aunt, but what I like the most is the way she has designed her life, that allows her to spend 2-3 months out of the year in Puerto Rico. On this particular year and specifically on January 12th, me and my aunt were watching the late night news. Anderson Cooper was reporting the horrific situation that the neighboring island of Haiti was living after the 7.0 earthquake. We both were horrified and decided to do something about it. The next day my aunt shared with me the action plan to follow
We started to collect money from family, friends and organizations in Puerto Rico. In a matter of ten days we had collected around $20,000. My aunt had connected with various women's organizations in Haiti and had told us what kind of help they needed.. My aunt flew to the Dominican Republic and I took a ferry with my cousin Douglas with all the aid we had collected. As we were driving to Port of Prince we could see how devastated the island was. We ran out of the things we had brought in the first couple of days. The two remaining days we both stood besides our aunt, while she did her journalism work and met with other oranizations. In those 2 days we helped her organize and facilitate a live concert with the local group, Fa#10, that was broadcasted live from our base camp in Petionville, Port Au Prince. . We went back to Puerto Rico and raised more funds for a second trip. This time we filled a whole truck of aid and put it on the ferry and drove it to Haiti.
This experience taught me a lot and connected me and my aunt more deeply. March came and she was still engaged in Haiti. She told me that she was in the process of building her second house in the south Caribbean of Costa Rica. But due to all the work needed in Haiti she could not be there to supervise it. I offered to do it for her and in March 2010 moved to Costa Rica to build her house with three other workers. My cousin, Douglas who had recently graduated as an architect joined us. We had a great time building her house, made out of wood and with no power tools. We installed solar panels and a rainwater collection system. My aunt came back three months later to see what we had done. She was grateful and took all of us fishing. We head south to a point we heard had amazing fishing. We found the bait that was in front of this remote beach called Punta Mona. I noticed there was some buildings and asked what was there. The fisherman told us there was a farm. We walked to check it out and little did I knew that my life was about to change. The owner Stephen Brooks welcomed us with lots enthusiasm and toured us around his farm. I was very inspired by him and the way we can ecologically and socially design systems. I decided to volunteer at punta mona for 6 weeks and learned more about permaclture. Definitely Punta Mona and Stephen Brooks inspired me to take my aquaculture background to another level.
Back to Guatemala
In August 2010 I moved back to Guatemala. I talked to Corrina, the founder of SERES, and we finally met. She did not have a job opportunity for me but she wanted me to volunteer with her. She was doing great things so I agreed. One of the things I did was to help her facilitate a Youth Leading the World congress in El Salvador and later on another one in Antigua, Guatemala. Through these I got chosen with 5 other youth leaders to go to Australia. At the same time she told me that the she had applied for an aquaponics grant in the past through the Lindbergh Foundation. She did not got the grant then, but she thought that with my background and documentation of the system in El Ahumado community we had a better chance. And sure we did! In August 2011 we got the grant for $10,000 to build an aquaponics demonstration system, having one year to deliver the system.
Ozzie Detour
In October 2011 I went to Australia to learn about sustainability, a dream come true trip for me. Corrina, founder of SERES, had designed our itinerary in a way that we could all learn and visit sites on our areas of interest. We visited and learned about about permaculture, children education, appropriate technologies, biochar, intentional communities and aquaponics. We met Rosemary Morrow, one of the leaders in Australian Permaculture, and did a “leading with the heart” workshop with her. I connected with her deeply and since then kept in touch. While in Australia, I learned a lot more about permaculture and visited various farms. It was the first time I ever heard of community gardens. I remembered sharin a dream to my traveling friends of a meeting with the mayor of Guatemala City about building a community garden.
Dream Come True In Guatemala
We came back to Guatemala and started scouting for a place where we could build our aquaponics Demonstration system. A friend told me about a nursery owned by the Municipality of Guatemala City. I went to check the place and it was amazing, a full on community garden like the ones I had seen in Australia and dreamed of having in Guatemala. I got the space to build the system and started working on it. After finishing the system, an aquaponics manual and running a workshop, someone wrote an article on the local newspaper about aquaponics. The mayor's wife, Patricia de Arzu, read the article and visited the community garden. I got the opportunity to talk to her about all the things I saw in the community gardens in Australia and the possibilities and potential of applying these in Guatemala City. She liked my proposal and offered me the job to manage the community garden.
I was surprised that the community garden already had some interesting systems going on. They were propagating ornamental plants to plant around the city. They were growing vegetables and papayas for refugee children in the city. They had chickens for egg production and were growing tilapia. The workers of the community were 30 youngsters who had a scholarship to be able to work at the community garden and study during the weekends. For some this was the only income their families could make. There were some schools and organizations that came to the community garden to learn about what we were doing there.
Since all these systems at the community garden were already established, my job was to improve them. For example I made new connections with schools, non-profit organizations and universities to visit and collaborate in the community garden.I started to propagate new plants like succulents that required less water. I started to propagate super plants like moringa and chaya. After my PDC in Guatemala I had the knowledge to redesign the community garden and wrote a proposal to get the funds to perform these changes. I started to talk with other entities with the Municipality. For example, we started to propagate fruit trees to be planted on state parks that the municipality was going to build. I was able to include the community garden as a stop in one of their educational programs called “Conce tu Muni”.
Conclusion: Back to where all started
In April 2013 a new opportunity emerged. My friend, Stephen Brooks, from the permaculture farm In Punta Mona was looking for a farm manager position. I was going through difficult times in the community garden due to political issues, bad pay and the fact that they were not delivering the promises they offered. I resigned my position in the community garden and moved to Costa Rica. I have been there for over 8 months now managing the farm. I oversee farming, harvesting, farm tours, construction, boating, salaries, buying supplies and live in a community. I am learning a lot in Punta Mona and I know this experience is going to be very valuable for me in the future. I am amazed on how I came back to the place where I first heard of Permaculture. It has been a long journey so far and one that a series of events have lead me to be enrolled in Gaia U and with lots of new opportunities. I am anxious to see if the future brings me back to old places or it will take me to new ones.
Fernando Maldonado's Journal RSS
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:
- Puerto Rico Ag
- Exporting to the US
- Best practices in bringing our knowledge to other countries
- History of ag in tropics
- 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):
- 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
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