 And you will all have little buttons to click to approve that. So this is a case clinic on Thursday, August 19th, 2021, part of the community food systems project that Klaus is heading. And we are here to listen to Tricia talk about the situation on the ground where she is in Costa Rica. We're using a process called the case clinic that comes out of Theory U. I put a link to that in the chat in case you want to look at the PDF of the process, which has an explanation of the process. And I'm going to kind of read through some of the steps of the process just as we go through it. But we're going to be gentle with the process. I've been a critic of this process through the couple of times we've used it. So I'm hoping we do better with it this time. Go ahead Ian. I joined the call about a minute in and there's nothing in the chat box for me for PDF. You can put it in again. I'd be grateful. I'm willing to bet I can fix that. Thank you. There you go. Any other questions right now? Sam, thanks for joining us. I didn't think you were going to be able to make the call. And we're not hearing you, but you're... Oh, hi. Sorry. There we go. That's better. I thought I was on mute. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't expecting to be able to make it, but we closed the restaurant today. Yeah. Yeah. Well, how about that? Excellent. Nice to see you. And before we actually go in Laos, we should see who's in the fish bowl, so to speak, and who's not. I'd love to leave that to you for how to figure this out. Because the process requires us to sort of step through the people who are kind of participants in what I'll call the fish bowl for now. And the rest of us would be observers and chatting in the zoom chat, but not going through one after the other, offering the feedback of this case clinic process. So Klaus, I don't know how you want to arrange that. And I know that Sumit and Joshua ought to be here, but aren't here yet. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, we'll just play it by ear, but maybe if I could just say a few words to set the stage because we have also some members who haven't participated this. So we have been talking about this case clinic idea several weeks now, right? We have been maybe two or three months working on this. And this is our first case clinic where we actually have a client. So thank you, Tricia, now for all the work we did to prepare for this. So we've had several conversations over the last few weeks and to advance our thinking about this farm, the four community food systems project, and then to define the outcome of the product now that we, that we seek to create here. So what are we trying to do? What is our understanding of product? The regeneration of soil is an intensely local issue. Types of soil, conditions of soil, access to water, climate are all unique in each location. But what we are learning is even more important than thinking about that. When we are thinking about the regeneration of soil, the socioeconomic systems that govern local markets. There's very little information at the policy level, decision makers at all levels of government, from county or community, county, state, federal and businesses operate with assumptions that are often divorced from the needs at community level. And there is really no good preach to overcome that. So if nothing else, we want to provide a listening post and begin to unravel what communities and in particular communities at the base of the economic pyramid are dealing with and find ways to communicate that out. So this is work in process, we're iterating our way through this, but that's the intention. So with that, thank you, Tricia, for stepping up. We're all students here. We're all new to this. We're all trying to understand how this could all work and how we can be beneficial to the process. So with that, Tricia, how about we'll let you get started? Why don't I just read the intro to the presentation part, which will be a little different from what Tricia is going to do, but just to get us sort of in the mood for the intentions for what's happening. So Tricia, in this case, is the case giver. And the directions for this particular part, which is normally to last 50 minutes, but it will go as long as you go. Now to take a moment to reflect on your sense of calling, and then to clarify these questions, the current situation, what key challenge or question are you up against? What are your stakeholders? How might others view this situation for the intention? What future are you trying to create for threshold? What do you need to let go of? And what do you need to learn and help? Where do you need input or help? And the rest of us will listen deeply and we can ask clarifying questions at the end of this. So with that, the floor is yours. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you, Klaus and everyone else who's joining here today. I think that within the context of my presentation, I can probably go over each of those things as they were outlined, there might be some that might be missing, but the intention of my presentation today is basically to spend my first few minutes just taking you through the system here in the Sariqa and then here specifically in my bio region. And then I recently got turned on to this presentation process called a Pecha Kucha, which I'm going to be experimenting with today, which is a series of 20 slides that are presented for 20 seconds at a time. And I take my story through those 20 slides. So I'll have about a little bit more than a six minute presentation within that format. And then we'll go on into the discussion and reflections. So I am in Costa Rica. I am in the southern tip of Costa Rica. I've been a resident down here for 20 years right now, and I've been involved in the food system on and off for the last 15 years. So I have somewhat of a of an intimacy and a knowledge of the food system. My knowledge of the food system is very anecdotal. It's based on what I've experienced within my work, working with local farmers as opposed to any type of kind of academic or quantitative background that I'll give you. So basically what I'm going to be presenting to you today is based on my observations. And speaking of observations, so Costa Rica, as we all know, it has a really wonderful international image. It's known for its incredible biodiversity. It's moved toward becoming carbon neutral as a place for ecotourism. People are very friendly and very kind. There's a way of being pure life, and these are all true. But for the purposes of my presentation today, I really want to take you behind that green facade. And I want to take you into another reality that is important to share for the purposes of this presentation. So historically Costa Rica has been somewhat of a banana republic. And what that means is that you have kind of states within states. So historically when we had the United Fruit Company and other large multinational corporations that were doing exportation of crops from here, they had developed banana republics. And so those were basically like states that were run by the fruit companies that were in the larger state. While we don't have that anymore, we still very much have that style of plantation style commodity farming that exists here in Costa Rica, that is still the dominant practice. As a matter of fact, Costa Rica has the dubious distinction of being the largest capita user of pesticides in the world. And a lot of that stems from this plantation style farming when we all know what happens with monocrops. Probably our biggest monocrops plantation style commodity farming is pineapples, bananas, palm oil. There's other other ones as well as the way that cattle are farmed here. Cattle is also done in a commodity way. In addition to kind of that structure, we have a situation where farmers who are going to seek out the inputs that they need for being able to work on their farm are faced when they go to the farm store with about a 90%, 95% chemical option for buying their inputs, be it things to control insects, things to deal with funguses, all of the challenges or the opportunities that they have, they're pretty much faced just with chemical options. On top of this, their access to a diversity of both seed stock and plants, a diversity of plants is very, very limited. And so basically they are within this kind of chain of multinational agriculture where they have very little opportunity to get out of that, to diversify into maybe more lucrative crops or crops that would be easier for them to grow. In Costa Rica, all of the commercialization of our produce is centralized. And so about 40 years ago, the Costa Rican government created a vehicle for commercialization, which is called Sennada. And this is a giant warehouse that's based in the Central Valley in the northern part of the country. And basically we have intermediaries who are out in our rural areas. They aggregate all of the produce from the farmers that are growing for commodity crops. And then they bring all of that up to the Central Valley to Sennada. From there, the local communities around the country send their trucks to Sennada, and they buy the produce that's available through this intermediary. So it's a very centralized system. It's a very depersonalized as you might imagine system. But beyond that, one of the key things is that at Sennada, there aren't just the national produce and products, but there's also international. So we have the apples from Chile, and we have the avocados from Peru, and we have the beautiful little mini vegetables from wherever they come from. And so when these trucks are coming from out in the countryside, they're buying the local produce, but then they're also buying this international produce. And for the most part, they don't know what is what. So you go into a supermarket here, or even a fruit and vegetable stand, and you will find beautiful. It looks beautiful, so colorful and so diverse, but very often you have no idea what's been grown in this country, what's been grown externally. It's very difficult to find organic here on a commercial level. In some of the larger cities, yes, but here on the local level, it's more difficult. And for the most part, people are not educated as to what is a local fruit or vegetable or what is a imported fruit or vegetable. That also goes for the people who are growing. I mean, who are selling those products. It's the same thing for me in this country where a local farmer who's raising cows or raising pigs or raising chickens, it's actually illegal for them to slaughter those animals and then sell that meat. And so that creates, as you would imagine, a whole other host of challenges for those, for those farmers. Now I want to take you to where we are on the Osa Peninsula. This is where I live. This is on the Southern Pacific tip of the country. And the Osa is, is, was called by national geographic, the most biologically intense place on the earth. And it very well. Yes, I believe it is. We were home to over 50% of this country's biodiversity, but we're also home to 2.5% of the world's biodiversity. And this is on one 1000th of the world's land mass. So the biodiversity that we have is incredible. We are also home to some of the poorest populations within this country. It's a very interesting dynamic that we have here. We have about 10,000 inhabitants that are here on the Osa Peninsula. We have about 50,000 visitors that come in. Over the last 20 years, tourism has become probably like 80% of the economy of this area. So what we have is we have a town, which is where I am right now. It's called Porta Jimenez. And that is our hub town for the area to the south of Porta Jimenez. Is where we have all of the kind of tourist interest and investment that's going. So it extends from Porta Jimenez to the Percovado National Park. The majority of land in that area is owned by foreign individuals, affluent Costa Regans and different tourism companies. So it's to the majority of the tourism dollars coming in or going into that area. Then to the north of Porta Jimenez, we have the majority of the population of this area. And as I said, it's one of the poorest areas in the country. We have primarily commodity farmers. And so those are going to be who are. Sorry, Trisha. Yeah, my apologies to interrupt interrupt you. I'm assuming that you're not showing, you're not looking at a slide deck right now and that that's coming with Pecha Kucha. If you are looking at a slide deck, I've had three requests as to whether you could share your screen so we can see the slide deck right now. I don't have a slide deck yet. No, that is coming with the Pecha Kucha. Perfect. Thank you very much. Yeah. So, because as I said, this is all anecdotal information that I'm sharing with you now. So I didn't pull it from anywhere. So in this area, we're primarily going to have palm oil producers, tropical fruits, cattle ranchers. And this is all going to be pretty much on a plantation style farming. We're also going to have some small pockets of rural tourism operators. And we have a lot of people who are staff and laborers for the businesses that are in and the businesses that are to the south of Porto Jimenez. And in that area as well to the north, we have our subsistence farmers. And these are people that are going to tend to grow local root crops or platinous fruits. They'll have their rice beans and their corn. So they're going to have everything that they need for their, well, not everything they need for their subsistence, but they're going to try and grow as much as they can for their subsistence. And then they also usually have a little bit extra to trade or sell to neighbors. They're also usually going to have like one or two farm animals, be it chickens or pigs, something of that nature. So the small scale diversified market farms are going to be super rare down here. We don't have hardly any of them right now. Let's see, and then we have here, as in the rest of the country, we have the national model replicated. So we have two supermarkets and one vegetable store. And they are all being supplied for their produce from this system of going up to Sonata, getting what they need and then bringing it back out to the countryside. So I just wanted to, I just wanted to situate you guys here where I am right now, just to kind of give you a little bit of an overview about what the, what the landscape was as we had to do our project. And now I am going to go into, once I figure out how to do this, I am going to go into my petrocucha and I'm going to start away, right away because the slides are going to be starting right away. So let's see. Excellent. It's the button down below that says shares, the screen. Okay. Thank you, Jerry. Yeah, yeah. That's my best Norwegian. Okay. Share screen. It's working. It is working. Brilliant. Now, if you switch to your presentation tab, I think we're rocking rolling. Beautiful. The other tab. No, sorry. Yeah, you can close. I think you can close this tab and then I see your presentation in the other tab. Oops. No, no. No, this is it. Okay, so. Okay. My journey. On this project started with a, this building. My husband and I own this building. It was formerly a bilingual multicultural school. And it was sitting empty for a couple of years. And so I decided to invest in it as a form of social capital. Into my community. My first activity was to connect with this woman, Carmen, who is a local community organizer. And I invited her to come. And join me in activating the space to do something around local food and to activate the community and provide an economic engine for the community. What happened, our first activity began May of last year, which for many of us, you know, is Labor Day around the world. And it was called Manos Cambiados, which is a day where you go out with a bunch of people. And it's kind of like a barn raising. You're going to go out and you're going to do whatever the farmer needs. And you're going to share with one another and enjoy. And what we were doing is we were activating this with another local grass roots organization. And we were also working with the local community. And this was bringing out monthly food boxes to those in the era that were most affected by the shutdown economically. So we had two mutual aid projects going on. We had lots of opportunity during these projects for people to get to know one another. We always had put lunches and seed and plant exchanges. And so we began laboring to do that. And we were also working on a project called. We had lunches and seed and plant exchanges. And so we began laboring together, but we also really began stitching our community together and working together and getting to know one another. What we realized from working with these farmers is that they had no economic engine anymore. They had no place to sell their products. And so Caja Verde was born one year ago this week, which was a CSA project designed to work with six local family farmers at the time and be able to take their produce and get it out to people. At the same time that we were doing this work programmatically, we also had people living on site at the co-op. So, and these were people who just kind of were thrown together. So in addition to doing this program work, we were also working with setting up code living regulations for figuring out how to do conflict resolution for doing all of those interesting things. And then we were also dealing with external factors. You know, the, the, the, all the regulations were changing around COVID. We had no permitting. We had no, no legal status. We were just kind of flying by the seat of our pants. And that was a hindrance. Then there was my own personal hindrances because we were working in a circle. And so I knew how to lead as like a triangular leader, but I was learning how to lead in a circular way. I was trying to figure out how to, how to not have my voice, have a primacy, but then again, at the same time, step up as a leader when I needed to step up. And what I found and what we're finding is that, that these little projects and that these, all of these aspects that are unquantifiable are super important for the qualitative aspects of what we're doing. So that we're not just building these programs, but we're building our community. And in building our community, we need the different tools that we need to be able to do that. We need to be able to, to tell the stories and to, to figure out how to not have to go with the matrix of quantitative evaluation of what makes for a good program. We also have the challenge of the helper in the area who are people that are coming out in every community has them, but these are people who are coming out, they're offering their services almost always for free. They're skilled, but they're not, they're not acknowledged and they're not compensated. And then what we find is that oftentimes when resources are coming into an area, they're going to like either governmental organizations or they're going to international NGOs or no offense here, but they're going to regeneration consultants and they're actually going into things that are external to the community and not actually helping us to build the local community. One of the things that I find to be possibly part of this is that we are fundamentally an analog community. We really operate by the speed of nature much more than you find in our technological world. So we need to find a way to marry that analog and that digital. And we need to figure out a way to really go behind and below those numbers and to go behind and below the scaling and the modeling and figure out in each individual community, what are the projects that are happening? Could I say it means grow and we have that on our front gate because that's what we're trying to do here. And that's what I really wanted to encourage all of you and all of us to do within this space for us to grow out of our idea of, you know, set solutions for us to be able to grow out of our idea that we can quantify everything that we can that we can build models that are going to be always scalable. I wanted to bring you into the flavor of a local community and to help you to understand that each local community is going to be operating differently. And each local community is going to need champions like you to be able to be our advocates in these spaces, be it among funders, be it among fellow consultants, be it among your own personal family to figure out how projects like this are supported and met with that support at the level that we are at as opposed to having to fit in to the matrix that are being given to us so that we can actually support ourselves and grow our projects in the way that we know that they need to grow. So I encourage you all to support us to support whatever local community you might be attracted to, but to go ahead and get in and dig in with local communities. And I thank you for your time. Tricia, your Pecacucha worked impeccably. That was beautiful. Thank you for that. If you want to unshare the screen and we can all see each other, I will see if anyone has any clarifying questions. Yeah, it's almost worth to have a moment of silence here because that was a lot to unpack. Thank you, Tricia, that was really wonderful. Can I suggest just like a minute of quiet time? You bet. The next step in our process actually is some stillness, but we can have a little more stillness right now. Let's do that. I'll bring this back up. I'm trying to smell the banana trees. Were those cocoa pods? Thank you. Yeah, that was very touching because you really shared your world. And I'm so emotional. Tricia, tell us a little bit more about the farmers you're working with. What do they call, how much of what do they call? Just a rough guideline there. Yeah, thank you, Klaus. So we started out, as I said, with six local family farmers. That was a year ago. Now we're working with about 18 producers because in addition to working with farmers, we're also growing with like producers of coconut oil, of chocolate, people who are basically taking crops that are here local and turning them into value added products. So our farmers are all the subsistence, they're all subsistence growers. So they're growing, they're all growing yucca. They're all growing platinous. They all have citrus at different times of the year. They're all growing seasonally. We have one of our producers who is focused in on greens. And so she's the primary producer for our lettuces, our bok choy, our mustard greens, our arugulas. And when she doesn't have greens, we pretty much don't have greens available within our project. So it kind of goes to show you how devoid, really, our area is of producers who are actually able to fill the local market. The primary reason for that is because with the centralization, producers never had the opportunity to sell their products. And so a lot just gave up quite honestly. I don't know if that answers your question. So your community, when they go out and buy food, where do they go? They go to the supermarket and to the veggie store. And those supermarkets and veggie stores don't buy anything from your local farmers. No, the veggie store by some local, let's see, platino and juca and papaya, but those are from the plantation farmers. And so those are commodity farmers. We're not working with the commodity farmers because the commodity farmers do actually have an aggregator here locally. That is aggregating their products for local institutions like schools and hospitals. So we chose not to work with commodity farmers for, for both that reason, as well as for the reason that we knew what we wanted to do is be able to shift with our farmers into engaging in regenerative practices. And that was going to be just way more difficult with commodity farmers than it would be with the subsistence farmers. Sorry, question Tricia. I'm wondering before you began with them as, as you were saying, they are subsistence farmers. Would they have considered themselves a community before you started working with them versus producers? So the context starts to change when a group of people, and I noticed the quotes that you used during the presentation, when you, when you start to gather a group of people that have a shared aspiration and shared values. Was that already there before you began or were they producers providing a product and then out of the necessity or the, what the situation, the circumstances they found themselves in, you were able to tap into what their sense of what was needed and they built the community out of that sense of something has to change. Yeah. Thank you, Karen, for that question. We all together have built ourselves as a community. The farmers were not. I mean, everyone, there's 10,000 inhabitants here, right? So people do tend to know one another. And, but, but people have been very isolated and everyone is just really busy, frankly, just trying to survive. So being able to kind of be interdependent was not really something they almost saw it as a, as a luxury in a way. And it was really beautiful because this past weekend we just had a celebration with our farmers to mark the one year anniversary of this project. And it was actually the first time that we've been able to meet with them all as a group because during this last year, it was just really difficult as, as we all know to kind of meet together. So, so this, we all met together. And I think all of us who work here as, as part of the team here, that's kind of running the logistics of things. We were really very touched and very surprised by the level of coherence and cohesiveness that is felt by this group of farmers, you know, words like family and words like community and, and really taking on the mantle of cooperative, of a cooperative where we're present basically universally among the farmers. So, yeah. Steve asked a related question in the chat, which is, can you talk about the catalyzing energy that something shifted among the farmers? What was it? Haven't they changed their patterns? What were their motivating factors? Well, the catalyzing energy was us showing up and saying, hey, we want to buy whatever you're producing. So if I step back, Caja Verde is, it's a CSA project. So at the time before COVID started, one of the things that I was envisioning for this space was a farmer's market. And it's still something that I see as, as a beautiful extension going forward. But, but what we realized is that we needed to be able to really buy what farmers were growing. And I also knew that there were plenty of people that I knew that we really wanted to support local growers and just didn't have a way to do it. So we said, let's just do this box program and let's enjoy, let's invite consumers to sign on. And if we get at least 20 consumers, let's just start this thing. So that's what we did. And then we went around to the different farms that we knew of, and we said, Hey, we're going to start buying. So, you know, if you're interested, we'll give you a call and we'll let you know how much we need of what you have. And then we'll also provide, this was one of the key things is we provided transportation, because many of these farmers don't have transportation. So we would just do the route and we would pick everything up. We would bring it back here to the cooperative. And then we had a group of volunteers who would put it into boxes and then the consumers would come and pick it up. So that was the catalyzing course. Thank you. Sounds great. Melina. Hi, everyone. Hi, Julie. Well, I don't know if I am the only Latin American in this group listening to this. More or less, but just hard ways. Probably. Or there is one. I saw one there. But what I want to notice about this is. I really appreciate the. Commitment that you have shown on, you know, like, or integrating yourself into, you know, bringing what the know, or the global north has developed for a very long time that it is. I appreciated the. I really appreciate that. Getting things done and, you know, like a kind of. Acting and, and, and, and being proactive in the, in communities. And I think that this is something that we really need to acknowledge the exchange of global north with global south. Because neither. Neither of them. Isolated will be will find a. A balance like a, of course, Central America was hyper extractive top soil. We had a lot of interaction from all the, the 20th century. And, and, and it was massacres and they were many kinds of things happening in Central America. And in Colombia as well, we have exactly the same complexity. But on top of that complexity with us, we have an armed conflict in Colombia. And we have narco traffic and we have drug production and we have. We have a lot of interaction until, you know, the veins, the, the bones. And, and, and, and actually I think that this is a, a, you know, like this. This conversation I appreciated a lot because it is kind of. This is really what is going on. Like there are so many things happening on the ground. So many things happening in territories. In the Central American, we have this sense of community is so grounded, like so much, like a, we, we need this park. We need to get out of, of, of needing the, you know, like the $2 daily or the $5 daily just in order to, to change. And this is kind of a very important. Because we really need to get together into, into how we can organize in a way that these flows of resources and these flows of collaboration and, and, and accept each other the way we are. It's like a, because, because sometimes it's, it's difficult for even for the Latin Americans to see gringos as in a proactive or in a collaborative way. And at the same time, the gringos have difficulty to interact with this kind of communities because they don't know how to behave because they don't behave the same, the same way they do. You know, like gringos are very, very percussive. And I think that, that this opening will really be constructive in, in a way that people like usually you are very, you know, you have been just sucked into understanding and being truthfully connecting with, with people. And, and, and I want just to notice that because this is kind of what I observed in Costa Rica is that there are many gringos that are not able to connect. You know, like they're just in their bubbles and they're just you know, like expanding the price of land as crazy. Like, so now, for example, in Costa Rica, no, no Tico can buy a piece of land. No. There is this is amazing. You know, like a really little piece of land is $40 million. Wow. It's like, it's crazy. Yeah. The prices and the pandemic made them worse. So I think that there are, there are many things that we need to consider in that relationship. And especially in Costa Rica, that relationship is super. You know, like is Latin. So, so that could be a real point of work from the north perspective to try to, you know, like to get more into, into what the south perspective is and how we can really collaborate, collaborate and balance the equation. Of this agriculture development, food production and governance, actually. That's my contribution. Yeah. Thank you, Melina. And then we'll head back into our process. I just want to build on what Melina said. Melina and I work together and I've been in Costa Rica for the last 10 months working with it. And one of the things that I just want to build on what you were saying, Melina, is the notion of the global north and south coming together on what we learn. Because one of the things is that I'm not accustomed to coming from the global north is living in, coming from Australia, living in England and moving to Costa Rica is the contrast. And the opportunity to learn how in Latin America community, as you said, Melina is foundation of life. And one of the things that I saw in the projects that Edward, because someone cited Edward in the chat, is there was a community of 30 families that came together. And I think it says everything about how they built that community. And they all sat together when they were given the land. And they agreed as 30 families how they would go into the property to toil the soil and build the produce or seed the ground and build the produce. And one of the agreements they made after sitting together was that none of them could carry their burdens into the property, into the land. They had to leave their troubles. They had to leave their frustrations. They had to leave their worries outside and tend the land with love and with respect for one another. I would never hear of that ever in any experience I've had of working in the global north. So I think there's something fundamental about the community spirit that's profound in what you spoke of Tissure and what you spoke of Melina is that the learning opportunity of what one brings and what the other. These diverse perspectives is so critical. There's no one way. And we're certainly learning so much from the essence of the Latin American culture of community, passion, no military, all of these principles that the country is based on. And I think to go into the country and just see it through one perspective as I certainly did in the past was I trying to do England in Costa Rica. Yes, I was. And I think so many gringos go into the country thinking they can live or approach it from a perspective versus standing. And someone said to me, oh, I can make a contribution. I can teach the locals English. And I said, I don't think they need that contribution. So this notion of colonization and how we approach the contribution we want to make. I think that's a great question. And I think that's a great question. And I think that's a great question. And you highlighted it. I think it's so critical. Thank you, Karen. You know, if I could just, sorry, I'd like to jump in. Because I just really want to acknowledge. Melina and Karen's. Statements and really like. Do that exclamation point on, on, on that, especially Melina, what you were saying of that. That marriage, because I've often felt as if. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know who are working the land here. This land has been in their blood for generations. There's no one that is going to know this land or love this land. More than, than these intergenerational families. People from the global north, if you will, we have certain. You know, you know, education or things that we can bring, but that was really the point that I wanted to drive home in this presentation is that we need to bring these things in service to these people that are here on the ground and that, that know what they need. And I just want to reference a two weeks ago, we did another Manos Cambiatos with one of our producers who he has about half of his production is in cacao. And he has a, he had a horrible fungal overgrowth in his plantation. And so we did, we, we called the Manos Cambiatos and we had a group of 18 of us that went out and we, you know, did as much as we could to get the, the infected fruits off as well as helping him harvest the good fruits. And before we started and we were sitting and we were all just checking in with one another. And we could feel from Don Marcus, how much this thing had drained him. And by doing this work together, everybody that was within that circle took on some of that burning that was all on his shoulders. Energetically, we didn't have to do anything else, but just be there for him and participate in that labor together. And as a result, he was lighter and every single one of us was lighter as a result of that. So I think it's just really important that we bring in that sole aspect of it. Yes. So thank you. So, Tricia, let's go and explore your world a little bit more. Can you tell us about this tourist spot that's, that's to the south of your community? How, how, what, what, what do you know about them? Can you describe how that works? I can totally describe how that works because that's where I live. Okay. So, um, so I am one of the fortunate, um, and very privileged individuals who lives in the place that like people dream about coming, right? This is the place where people engage with that to 25, 25% of the world's biodiversity. This is where all of our yoga retreat centers are, um, Airbnb vacation rentals, higher end eco resorts, all of that type of thing are located there at the, um, south of Portland minutes. It's a, frankly, it is a bubble. Um, we have, there's pretty much the only Ticos, the only Costa Ricans that live in that area are either multi-generational cattle farmers that have large tracts of land or they're people who are working for the owners of that land. So it is a very, very stratified, um, and, and for someone who's conscious of very uncomfortable, um, place to be. Um, it doesn't, it receives the tourist dollars, but it does not necessarily understand the local economic, um, how to support the local economy. So when we started this Caja Verde program, we naturally went to those people, to my neighbors, um, to say, hey, come and support this program, um, buy your boxes, or if you don't want to buy a box, donate a box. So in addition to our Caja Verde, we have Caja's Day Abundancia and each week we have actually right now it's half of our boxes that are going out to families that are in need, um, that are sponsored by people who, um, who want to support the product, want to support the project, but don't necessarily, um, want to learn how to eat the products that are being grown, um, uh, seasonally and locally here. And so they just do the economic, um, support. But basically, yes, it's a, it's the, to the south of Porto Jimenez, it's privileged and to the north of Porto Jimenez, it is scarcely. Uh, financially speaking. So in this tourist dominated, um, community. Um, the cultural culture that is being expressed in restaurants and catering. Um, are there restaurants? One of the. Yeah. One of the biggest challenges is that all of these. Well, all of the, like the hotels or what would be larger consumers. In order for them to, um, there's something in Costa Rica called a fact, it's basically a, um, a digital receipt in order for, um, businesses to be able to show what they're spending on their business. They need to buy from other, uh, businesses who have the fact order, electronic as you might imagine subsistence farmers, they do, you know, that's kind of the last thing on their radar screen. So even if this, these, um, businesses wanted to buy from these farmers, they couldn't kind of economically justify it because they couldn't get a digital receipt in order to be able to do that. Um, we are, we're in the process right now where we're thinking about, um, going from being kind of a rogue, um, um, organization into actually forming ourselves in under some type of legal structure so that we can begin to, um, look at ways that we might be able to support in those ways. But that also has its own set of, um, of challenges because basically pretty much everything that we want to do, there's some kind of law against it because when we're talking about relocalizing the food system, what you'll find is that, um, there's a law set up all over the place that are going to go against these local producers and go against being able to have people, um, buying from people. And when you, when you said that earlier, when you said that, you know, these people can't slaughter their own livestock because it's against the law, et cetera. My heart was sinking because this is a common feature in so many places across the earth. Like, like the things that might liberate them and connect them and enable some kind of food sovereignty are, have been made illegal in many ways. And, and I think that a piece of this effort might need to be about lobbying and lobbying or bypassing or in some quiet ways getting, you know, getting around some of the ways in which, in which good thrive ability has been illegalized. Um, we are, we are well off road from the case clinic, but we have a lot of, uh, patterns. So I'm happy to keep going this direction, whatever, whatever you'd like to do, class, but we're, we're almost an hour into the call at this point. Yeah, I think because we need some technical information to, to, um, flesh out what, what, uh, scenario, Trisha is facing. So if you were to make a pitch to, um, the leadership of your community to, to empower a local food system, who would you be talking to the leadership of the local community or the leadership of, um, like the governmental or probably starting with your local community, which, which has the capacity to engage the political process to wherever it needs to go to, to make that work. Do you have a contact? I mean, is it like the Chamber of Commerce coming in, speaking in US terms or a business organization or the city council or who would you pitch to, uh, in order to, uh, to, to solicit, uh, supporters, uh, who understand what they're trying to do, but, uh, how important this is for the community. And would go to back for you. Um, well, we actually, we already have, um, working relationships. Like for instance, our local city council, I guess would be considered that ID with. The development institute. Um, and we work with them actually quite closely as, because we didn't want to kind of take on everything. And so for instance, our donation boxes, the, the families that are the, the ones receiving those donation boxes, those are all found, um, in collaboration with the leadership of our local ID. Um, but you know, here in this area, um, there is, uh, for instance, there's the, the national government that has the ministerio of agriculture and, um, and cattle. They have an office here. Um, there's another, I believe it's a quasi, um, governmental organization called in there. Um, there are a number of like, I guess what I would consider institutional players. Um, but I, we have chosen the tact of not trying to change. Or even try and move these institutions because it's, it's too cumbersome and it, um, Frankly, it's exhausting and what we decided to do instead is build something new that felt more resonant with what we were trying to do. So actually what my pitch would be more would be, um, let's get resources into the hands of these local communities. And let's make these resources unrestricted. You know, let's get past like these, you know, having to put in measurements and, and, and the, you know, the burdens of, of receiving, um, resources in or even applying for resources. You know, you know, it's too cumbersome and so burdensome and, um, and very often you're, you're having to develop a project, not on what you know your community needs, but what on the funder is wanting to fund. So I really believe, and that's why I was advocating for, you know, the group here to be advocates is that as we're in these places that we're in, be it with conversations with funders or even be it with our own, you know, the team. I mean, it's just a whole lot of people, you know, But how do we figure out ways to, um, to provide kind of the support for people without their need to justify. Um, what they're doing or quantify what they're doing, when what they're doing is very, very quality. Yeah. Melina. Thanks for sharing. Go ahead, Melina. Thank you. Like what I am seeing with the question is where it is pointing to, like, is there any leverage point that it is already recognizing the system that we can just push and kind of move the system, and actually government it is not, you know, like Latin America is characterized for very corrupted government managed by multinationals, that's where the power is. And what Julie said about the, you know, like the direct connections, I think that that's the way. I totally agree with that. And I have been involved with the regenerative communities network and I am coordinating the connections of how bio regions can be collectively, you know, like getting together just to be able to funnel this kind of philanthropic impact investments or impact investments, you know, philanthropic, but the way that we can really connect even directly or through channels like the regenerative communities network or the specific bio regions by the people that are in that bio region. And from the perspective of acting at some level, I think that, you know, Costa Rica has this amazing confluence of wealthy people with Costa Ricans, you know, like poor people. So this connection needs to be done. Like this connection is necessary. But systemically and bio systemically communities are not ready to receive money. Like Latin Americans watch television and television is telling them that they need cell phones and cell phones are telling them that they need to buy and to buy and to buy and to be busy and to be productive. And the message of productivity of the neoliberalism economy is is is huge. I mean, we ourselves is club icing ourselves is labor in ourselves. So so there might be a process. They might be facilitation of a space for entrepreneurship, training, you know, like a community really engagement and and and not being able. I mean, what I want to say is that people need to understand what's money, what is for how to use it, because they will just get crazy with money. So this is like the both sides of the of the coin. And I think that that that that people with money need to understand that they need to find that process too. It is a kind of charity to to to to a community because poor people, they need to solve their needs right now and and and this space of, you know, like guilt. I need I think that we really need to build spaces of of exchange in a way that take care of all these systemic aspects so we can hold the pro the processes that that start to develop in those in those areas. And and and money is actually one thing that we really need to put on the table. For for for rich people and for poor people, like a both sides need to manage what money is because rich people, it is not it is not understanding the flow of things. And and if you you see this is the system, it is like a diabetes, like all resources are accumulated in one place. That's that that's a disease, a natural disease. So so they are not understanding what the money is for. So we really need to put that in the center and starting to ground the conversations to in order to really build that kind of connections that it is not to control the connection. It is about just to open the space to ground the reality of what is really going on in territories like also. Thank you, Melina, for that reflection. And I also want to point out like for instance, here in many of the rural areas of Costa Rica, there are it's it's basically like a local self funded bank, right, where people that put in a an amount of money, there's a pool, and then that pool gets sent around to the different people that are within that pool so that they can make the investment in what they need. And then then they can pay that back to the pool. And then it can go around to the next person. So what what we've done and and I'm very, very blessed because at this point, I'm the only foreigner that's within our our core team. And so I don't have to do a lot of asking around of like, Oh, okay, what are the the practices right that are already kind of known by people or remembered by people, right? And then how do we kind of like bring those in in in a new way? And because that is kind of a practice that has been used by many people to have those kind of revolving loan projects, where people are paying it back, really, the the incentive for paying it back is because they know that it's going to somebody else within the community. And they also know that if they don't pay it back, then they're they're answerable to their community and they're answerable to to the others. And then I also understand I do believe that yes, we all need to kind of decolonize our minds when it comes to money, be it if we're on the poor end or or if we're on the rich end and really understanding what is capital and looking at capital beyond just just dollars, but capital, social capital, cultural capital, natural capital, and really valuing those things and I do think that there are projects that that do, you know, that do need this funding, like for instance, our project where we're at, we're at a one and a half year mark of running completely, we're at a one year mark with our Caja Verde program. And we know at this point that without actually kind of going right now and finding some resources to bring in, we can't kind of go to the next level. So at some point, there is, you know, the need for those resources to come in. If I may ask one more clarify, clarifying question here, Tricia, taking you into a different direction. Is there in this region, an indigenous community that would have an indigenous cuisine? And is there is there an indigenous culture that could be showcased or that that has not found its voice, in particular, looking at the tourist influx that you're dealing with? We actually have two indigenous territories here on the OSA. And we have relationships with, with some of the individuals that are in one of the indigenous territories of the Ngobi people. And Dona of Alina comes here to the co-op. Sometimes she was actually here last year, we did a plant and seed exchange, a community wide one, and she came down for that. And I had asked one of our volunteers to do an interview with her and to, to interview her to get the, the Gobi's creation story around seeds, you know, because every culture has cosmology, and I thought it would be important to, to get theirs. And one of the sad things that, that of Alina shared in that interview was that they're actually not saving seeds anymore. They're not saving seeds because they've gone into the, the chain like all the rest of us have. And so they go and they purchase their seeds from the veterinarian store here in town, or they purchase their starts there. And the practice of saving seeds has fallen by the wayside, and pretty much the practice of, of like working just with local foods or, you know, local fats. If you go into a Costa Rican supermarket that's actually set up for the Costa Rican people, it's going to be very difficult for you to find oils, salts, all of like the staple basics that have not been somehow altered in very health damaging ways. And that is what people are buying because that's what they can afford. So, so yeah, indigenous culinary is not actually one of the, the things that's really present right now. There are indigenous, like, so not indigenous meaning like First Nation indigenous, but like indigenous to the area, culinary practices and every Wednesday, when we have our Caja Verde, one of our producers Tonya Eva Fletes, who's from actually she was born in Corcavada Park before it was a park. And, and so she's a native to the OSA, and she makes our lunch each week from whatever is in the box. And so, so each week we have that culinary experience based on what the local foods are. And part of that is, yes, it's like re remembering what what the local foods are here, how to produce them, and how to make them delicious, and how to really to celebrate them. It's one of the the main focuses on for us is how do we celebrate this food and how do we celebrate the producers and how do we celebrate the land that is giving it to us. Thank you. Yeah, Jerry, do you want to move into the next phase then? Sure, we kind of have 15 minutes left. So we don't really have space for I think that that's 90 minutes is plenty to ask for from people. The phases that we're that we didn't go through. There's a three minute moment of stillness just to listen to your heart and then there's there's a 10 minute mirroring phase which is really trying to get out of our heads and listen to our bodies and see what images and other things show up and it's it talks about images from open mind feelings from open heart and gestures from open will and then sharing into the conversation what sorts of images showed up. Then there's 20 minutes of generative dialogue, which is kind of what we've been having sort of skipped, you know, the the intermediate steps. We've been somewhere between clarifying questions and generative dialogue and then some closing remarks from what happened. So I think I think maybe we'll just sort of continue in the mode where right now until we run out of time and that'll be fine. And Julie just one thought before before I pass it back to you. I'm getting sorry, Trisha. God, I keep seeing the name there and doing that wrong. My apologies. And that is that I'm so as if the situation on the ground weren't complicated enough with trying to make enough food to stay alive and laws prohibiting certain things that would actually be really highly functional and profitable and so forth. Then there are these layers of other things on top of it, including just cross cultural communications and colonization and decolonization and the effect of foreigners and, you know, on native country and native peoples, all of which are surrounded by climate change and other kinds of external disasters all in the context of the pandemic. And for me, the images that are coming to mind are just like layers of molasses or something layers of some kind of inhibitory viscous sticky messy fluid that just stick to everything around people who just really like to be in community and make a living and feed themselves. And I just keep coming back to what can we pour on the molasses to make it kind of melt away in some sense. And I was sitting here, I was sitting here like fantasizing, okay, okay, so maybe you could raise pigs as pets. And then the veterinarian could be euthanizing the pets and then those parts of the pigs could be left someplace in a shared basket that could be picked up by the different people who have taken a share of taking care of the pet and its afterlife. And then in that sense, like work around like not being able to slaughter a pig for God's sake. But you know, how could you mess around with the kinds of systems, institutions, whatever, even in a funny way to try to make points in some sense. I'm drawn here to a funny thing called Better Block where this is in Dallas and they pretended that an intersection in Dallas was actually a cafe. And they served coffee, they borrowed some tables with umbrellas, they borrowed some potted plants. But then one of the things they did was they printed out the ordinances that they were violating and they posted those on the wall of the intersection. So that if anybody from City Hall came by and said, hey, this is a great idea. Why aren't we doing this? Everybody could go, that's why. Exactly. That's why. And this feels livable. Don't you want your community to be like this sidewalk cafe? We're not doing it in part because we're prohibited from doing so in all these different ways. So how might communities do things that are kind of like actions to bring attention to the dysfunctions of the system, the capture of the system by large, you know, large providers, the all these different dysfunctions that I'm hearing. So sorry for the soliloquy there. I'll back to you in the booth, Atisha. That's okay. Thanks for that. That's actually kind of funny. So one of the things that I had recommended maybe is like as a result of this presentation, what conversation, do you feel like what conversation is arising for you that you feel like you would like to have based on anything that came up in this presentation or anything that was generated. So maybe that's a way to end if each person wanted to share what conversation would be important to them or feels alive to them that they might like to see as a result of this. I can start for for me my what I would love to see a conversation about is analog, not analog versus digital, but how do analog and digital potentially mesh together in a way that is meaningful for both. So that would be a conversation I'd like to have. Thanks Trisha. That's awesome. I'll go next real quick and then whoever else would like to just jump in. I'm interested in sort of a question that's between Klaus's project and you on the ground, which is a piece of what we were doing here was just verbally mapping resources, people, problems, issues, and things like that. If there was a more not formal or rigid or whatever, but if there was a more useful kind of mapping of what was going on on the ground, would that be helpful? Would that be doable? What other kinds of mapping might be helpful in understanding the opportunities and the obstacles on the ground? What would that look like? So I'm curious about that. Anybody else other other topics? Karen, please jump in. You're still muted. Something for me is particularly around money and how do we shift the notion of other? So the other being the recipient, the other being the benefactor, the other being the victim of the circumstances, the other being the privileged. This notion of other keeps it separate and the notion of money as currency which is in flow doesn't happen. It's held in the power of the privileged and the privileged enjoy that power and then they see the other as the benefactor and I should do something to contribute like a charitable gesture. It makes the other and it perpetuates the situation of those rather than being empowered and having agency and sovereignty waiting in some way in a state of scarcity waiting for someone to come with the money to provide. So I think that system still exists and I know years ago when I worked in India with the hunger project that we would look for the resources and the passion and the optimism for what was possible in the community when they had their own agency and they could take control, not controls the wrong word, but they could take hold of seeing potential and possibility having a vision for something that was possible versus waiting for someone to come along to fix the problem and I think that still that problem that concerns still exists for me so it's risen a reason for me this how do we shift the notion of agency of power soft power versus power over and hierarchy and domination and the privileged. Karen I love that and just a brief response to what you just said community currencies are kind of really important in what you just said in that they're sort of self issuing currencies you earn local currency by putting in time at the co-op or wherever else and then other people in the community and only in the community will accept that currency for other things like meals and a lift with a truck or whatever and then you're not waiting for somebody else to drop money on the community you're basically inventing your own currency so these things are quite powerful and might be helpful and I think the other thing Jerry just to build on that is that what we're still not we're not citing citating evaluating and valuing is the unpaid work of the women absolutely the carers of the home the carers of the community they their healers and we're world over wouldn't matter where we look that unpaid work is still unacknowledged and women are supposed to continue to do that without payment and it's um we've got to turn that around agreed we've got brian and mark with your hands up brian is delightful to see you here even though i'm only seeing your photo likewise Jerry and sorry it's like four in the morning here in Australia but um i did want to say that we like to think of currency like the blood stream and if the velocity of currency drops to zero then that's like the pooling of blood and yet we see very low velocities of money in many of the western thinking and i think the challenge and the opportunity is to increase the velocity of money of currency get the blood stream flowing and enable those number of turns per year to increase thank you brian uh it's just a small question oh and you figured out how to change your name that's fabulous uh thank you so i will not be twisted around to calling you julia again um could you share the link to your deck your petra kucha deck in the chat here before we wrap up the call that way we can take a look at what you what you had by ourselves if you can if you can figure out how to do that in nor region um otherwise go ahead mark yeah now i wanted to share a little bit of my own experience um within this you know more rural communities i've been working for eight years with indigenous communities in the amazon more particularly in ecuador and one nationality has been uh really the one that that still completely amazed me and every time i dig in i feel like problem and i don't think things that that you know we should probably spend time uh applying effort to and and my my question and form of suggestion as well is um about within these different communities that rich is working with if there has been any effort to uh co-design a living plan and and to that just a few words uh uh the kishua of past asa and ecuador have uh issued what uh that their philosophy is based on summa kosei which is living in plenitude and from that derived uh a plan uh for living forest uh kosaks asha on their day issue every four years the living plan and the living plan touches upon you know every little thing that has to do with their relationships and relationship has not just with the outside world but with themselves within themselves with the forest of visible the invisible etc etc thank you mark uh anyone else yes i would like to say something um i think that that that we really need to recognize the internal crisis we are in right now because we we try always to put the crisis outside and all the problems and putting everything outside and i think that there is a point where we need to internalize this and i think that the the point that mark uh brought about about this internal connection with nature with the territories with with each other with the community um it's it's it's something that we really need to work in the inner world um we are not solving that outside we cannot change the world if we don't really recognize that all the separations that we have been having from outside are are a real like a really we need to recognize the illusion of the separation in order to understand that we are a collective that's that's like oxygen in the air we are a tribe so so so the the conditions that we are living beings and how to bring that awareness into uh how we think problems i think that that's a connection that we really need to be very sharp and very um brave to embrace uh in order to really see changes in the outside so it's outside yeah melina like some of the remedies or attempts to remedy the situation you're describing which is really important are things like the sapatistas in Chiapas basically breaking away and having their own government uh within the nation of mexico which is kind of gingerly respected at the borders because it's enforced internally and and going about creating an entirely separate economic model inside as much as possible right with very few resources that's a pretty radical kind of way to do it uh columbia's had the fark and uh an attempt to sort of tear away from the government and do other things which uh it seems to be reviving i don't know i don't know the situation on the ground right now but i don't think it's it's great and i don't think it's been helped by the pandemic so how are there globally with indigenous peoples what are the most fruitful models for and with local communities what are the most fruitful models for taking back some kind of sovereignty uh in the way you're describing i'd realize that's a big question so uh no need to answer it now i'm just i think it's an important question for us to ponder but if you want to it is it is a very important question and i don't think that we have what i want to say is that if we really take this seriously we will see what is going to emerge we cannot just copy a system that somebody did because every context is different so for me it's like an a a reconnection a deep deep deep reconnection with our selves our living beings our healing like a healing ourselves for all the woundings and all their beliefs and all these things that will let the space and open this silence space this this this connection that that will let the emergence on something else and this something else is not is not from us with we feel we need to work for it what we need to do is to listen what is emerging is is not even up to us you know it's like a empty ourselves empty our needs in in a in a in a such beautiful the way that we can be channeled of what the earth is telling what what the living what what life is telling us thank you um ian then i think trisha then back to claus and then i think we should probably wrap our call um thanks gerry i just wanted to respond to what dialogues would i like to have around this my background is i live in the uk um and i grew up working on the local farms and in the local communities and those communities have disappeared as they've all become one great big conglomeration and the farms have disappeared but they're starting to come back and one of the things that is also really surfacing here is the need to learn from other cultures i come from the global north where the problem um i would really welcome dialogues to see how are there any parallels between what is happening here in the uk of local communities looking to what is to actually grow their own food with their own currencies and focus on locality and community are there what are the parallels what are the commonalities between that and what's happening in Costa Rica can we learn from each other i would certainly like to learn from what's happening in Costa Rica and understand what the dynamics are because the world is changing very rapidly we're under huge threat and i suspect that the issues that are being faced in Costa Rica will be facing all of us uh in the in the in the northern western world with our civilizations and all the rest of it because it just don't work and i would really welcome dialogues around that and approach it with humility thank you very much jean um Trisha closing thoughts i'm just grateful to have um been here with you all and uh thank you all for your time and your input and um the present thank you very welcome um Klaus yeah thank you uh Trisha that was uh that was really uh a very regenerative and rich conversation and and i think it made the case that we have been uh putting forth as a hypothesis of saying that each community is unique um each each unique in each community deals with unique circumstances um and there may be communities that are that are similar and that may they may be able to share and and there's probably a lot of information behind that community level uniqueness that that we can use to assist but we have to honor and appreciate the uniqueness of of each community and the people the socioeconomic systems that make that are the makeup the foundation of community so um we have christiana here just want to briefly introduce christiana our next case clinic is on august 30 and christiana is going to introduce her community increase the miraki people um and so she has been working on uh on percent on preparing for that conversation so i'm really looking forward to that as well different part of the world but we'll see uh an astonishing array of issues that are very very similar between crease and and and costa rica so with that thank you very much uh i have to we have to now process all this and download it and see what we do with it and where do we go with it thank you very much yeah thank you all for coming this has been great um really appreciate your participation yeah you too thank you trisha thank you trisha thank you yeah trisha thank you very much