 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Well, it's happy Wednesday here for us. This I'm Glenn Martinez and my partner Natalie Cash. We thank you for tuning in to Think Tech Hawaii. We think we have an interesting show for you today. Today is something special. We're going to get off the farm a little bit, so to speak. We're going to go to the Philippines. And we've made about three trips to the Philippines, all courtesy and funded by Consuelo Foundation right here in Hawaii. They're located right here on Hotel Street, right downtown. And they're funded by a lady who was a Filipino who married an American general and never went back to the Philippines. And when the general passed away, she was getting her affairs and orders and, you know, getting everything, you know, the taxes and all that kind of stuff. And they found out she had about $300 million in the bank and in the Philippines at the Consuelo family down there is quite large. So while she was alive, she set up a trust. And about four years before she passed away, she got it all in order and got it running. Rather than just writing it in her will, she started spending her money before she passed away. And basically two-thirds of the money is spent on the children of Hawaii and the other two-thirds on the children of the Philippines. She didn't have any children of her own through her intermarriage, but she really liked the kids. And it has been a major support. And Consuelo Foundation here in Hawaii has done some great projects. One is out in Waianae and that is backyard. They did a whole housing subdivision out there for the people. And they funded so many different programs and health-orientated programs. Well, when Dr. Benny Rahn was with the vice chancellor's office at University of Hawaii, he hired me to be a lecturer for University of Hawaii. And pretty much he brought his class out to my farm, Olamana Gardens, and we would do hands-on kind of things. So he taught the academics in the college and then he'd bring them out and we were the show-and-tell place. And then he invited us to, he was taking a team from University of Hawaii. It was a team of social people, psychiatrists, and different fundamental social planners to bring them to the Philippines with the Consuelo Foundation and he nominated Natalie and I to go, and we would be the show-and-tell part of it. And so we did it. And in seven days in the Philippines, we visited like 12 different places and farms and set up. We'd do two places, three places a day, some places we spade overnight. But we went to about three different islands. We went from Manila, Kabakio, et cetera. But our all-time favorite is... Father Rocky's Place at Toloe Foundation. It's a compound where they house homeless children there. It's an orphanage. And he's a Catholic priest there, and he has his church there, and he also has dormitories for each of the kids that's there and a school for them. And so in Consuelo Foundation, in fact, my person who's kind of like, I say my boss want him in the Philippines is Danny. Danny found him. Father Rocky had 11 or 12 kids in a 10-by-10-foot room and they were kind of the untouchable street kids, and so when he saw that, he said, we can do better than this. And he petitioned the government and anyway, Father Rocky ended up getting 16 acres of land. And it's right there across the street from a modern mall, California Pizza and all that. It's an al along, which is a suburb of Manila. And so you get out there. It's a 16-acre big campus with a stone brick wall all the way around. And the other side is a squatter's village. Behind them is a mental institution. And a gated community behind them. Yeah. And then a gated community on the other side. So it's kind of funny, if you walked around, you would see quite a cross section of life in the Philippines, right? From the rich and famous to the poor. And so when we get there, they go and they show us a piece of land, a scrub acreage like the Boneyard, which is like behind the basketball court and the construction materials and things like that. And a little garden area. It was so dry and so terrible. I walked out and it looked like there were rocks, but they weren't rocks. They were just broken pieces of concrete. This whole site, this 16-acre, where they torn down buildings and where there had been a rock quarry. So it was an armpit piece of property. And then that's quite typical of governments. They don't give you the best fertile piece of property, et cetera. But through the years building up in 10 years, he built his orphanage up to 240 kids, okay? And we were really proud. Neat as a pin. The kids are very respectful in that. And they take him from kindergarten to high school and then two years of vocational school. And they're fully wardrobeed out. And you go out and get a job, you know, and they're employable, right? So he's taken the most unfavorable, unwanted, untouchable kids and make them into great citizens. It's really amazing. So we have some pictures here we'd like to go through and show you some of what our experience was in our first 12 days at Talloy Foundation. And by the way, Talloy means welcome, okay? So it's a welcome foundation. What a neat name. So if we could pull up on some of those slides there for me. That'd be great. So this is what we started doing. We went into it. It was an abandoned field. They had to dig down and put foundation in because Manilicus hit with four or five hurricanes a year. It just gets trashed. Or I am walking away there to you. You see the backside of me there. That's the best side of me, I think. You see the concrete mixture. You see the scrub land, the trees. All the trees are gone now. This is all 100% aquaponic. Everything was mixed. That mixer turned on at seven in the morning and it ran all night to 11 o'clock at night mixing concrete. And so they had to build the foundations and do it all up with a lot of recycle, reused material. And these guys know them bending rebarb. Let me tell you. Everything was straight and true. There I am with my Filipino crew and that's Father Rocky there to the left. And you see those railings? We had to have a way for the kids not to fall in. So they built these railings to go all the way around. And they're going to set plants on top of it. But that way a kid cannot just walk up and fall in. Now this is the original little dirt garden they had going on. And not much of an area. Let me tell you, when it was about 105 degrees out it was not a happy place to work there, was it? No, it was really hot. And they tried to grow food. Right. So you see us laying the pipes out. Now here in Hawaii, those pipes are all going to be buried underground. We'll go right to the next slide. You'll see everything had to be dug into the ground and seamed in it in because of the hurricanes and the tornadoes that actually come through. What do you call them? What's the opposite of a hurricane? Cyclone? So you see there, we start digging them in and see how they cut out the concrete. They're going to put the pipe in and put it back so there's no trip hazard. Everything got carried in by hand and we cleared the land off. Natalie and I would be out there three in the morning with our levels striking the lines for them guys doing the engineering. We're getting it wrong. What if the water doesn't flow? We inherited six ponds and they were only filled that high and the overflow was such that that's as far as you could do it. We raised the overflow and now those tanks have twice as much water in them and so we have six 5,000 gallon tanks and each tank says 5,000 to 6,000 fish in it. There you got the guys pouring concrete and putting it in. They carry all of these sacks of the concrete up and when they pour the concrete out they save the bag to go back and get rocks. This is a sump pump at the bottom of the hill a tank they built in there and those blue pipes going to the left there go up to a water tower. So this was the unique one and there's our water tower. So you see the water in the fish tank is at the base we pump it up to the tower and then we could gravity feed it around the property. It's 30 feet tall. That mixer is something else. They towed it in with a truck and they pushed it by hand. It's amazing how they pushed it up steps and overall kind of things. Now you see these bare tanks there with the tarp over the top all that's going to get fixed up when they are going to build a canopy over the whole thing. This entire area you're going to see in pictures and they're going to turn it into fish tanks and all this area scrub area here it's all going to get cleared out and so in 12 days we sent them on the path we built one small system for them one fish tank one 75 foot grow bed there's our 30 foot tower we have now and you have a greenhouse there to the left and everything was welded right there on the site. So these are the students that graduated from there and now work for them continuing to build. In fact their crews built all of their buildings the cafeteria, the basketball court everything. So you see the amount of concrete we're pouring there and going in and the plants are already started they didn't wait they started planting right away and so when we go back now this is on our first trip we go back now and it's over four acres of aquaponics on the campus. Also we've taken the population of this campus from 240 kids to over 800 kids and what really got me to buy into helping and volunteering with these guys we volunteered we got paid by Consuelo to go there first week and since then we have volunteered a lot of hours and Consuelo's funded all of our trips back and forth it's really been great for it. And so some of the things that we go do is now when we go back now it's all covered it's all under canopy we have outside classrooms we've got some of those let's see if we have some slides on that so here we are welding everything up so there was a misunderstanding they asked me what I do I work half a day here on my farm it's from 8 to 12 and I said well I work from 8 to 12 and they turned around to the Filipino crew and asked them if they were willing to work 8 to 12 and they said yeah well there was a misunderstanding because their 12 was midnight so they work from 8 in the morning till midnight every day for 12 days straight through no breaks and that and they learned a lot about plumbing and rigging aquaponics so much so now that my first trip was 12 days the next trip was 4 days the next trip was one day and I think the last trip we had lunch and walked around for an hour and that was it they're very enterprising that's a stainless steel tank they laid it on the ground sideways to become the sub tank and then concreted around it everything is absolutely bullet proof this tank was welded out on site that's over 30 35 feet tall and we pumped the water all the way up there and we can send it anywhere on the campus gravity feed so they're totally self sustained and you see that cat walk up there kind of faint in the picture against the cloud that's a little spooky as rebarb wrapped in a circle tack welded around and they have a ladder going up the side it's just welded rebarb all the way up the side and I did not know I was scared of heists until I got up on the top of that and I looked down to the ground found out at a certain age it's a time to keep your feet on the ground but this is an air powered system it's a motor it's a call of a hybrid system we use a motor and then I inject air to put the water up in top of this power and that so here we are doing the runs on that there's your siphon there's a siphon right there the orange went right in the middle now here in Hawaii I would use a 55 gallon drum with a 3 inch siphon but they weren't into doing the plastic in the drum so they built concrete tanks and that was their siphon and we had 4 and 6 inch here in America we'll use a lot of plywood with holes drilled in it they used reinforcing wire put plastic over the top and then stuck the plants in it because they can't tolerate the rot in the wood and the water is very dear very expensive so this is their first grow bed first grow bed that they did and the water is 2 feet deep under it and that stabilizes the temperature and those walls are 6 inches thick of reinforced concrete so they really fight the heat very very well well take a little short break here and think tecawaii we'll be right back and show you some more of the Philippines this is think tecawaii raising public awareness freedom is it a feeling? is it a place? is it an idea? at dive heart we believe freedom is all of these and more regardless of your ability dive heart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity since 2001 dive heart has helped children adults and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before dive heart has helped them transition to their new normal and share our mission with others and in the process help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities in their lives I just walked by and I said what's happening guys they told me they were making music Glenn here with all the money gardens and Natalie Cash and we're talking about Taloi down in the Philippines but I normally have a tool every week I like to show something it's a simple one I think you guys will identify with this one this one has just changed our lives you see a cell phone to me I see my camera and I see my video camera we used to carry video cameras a whole suitcase of them with this and we are shooting so much on our phone I'm almost embarrassed to admit how much we're shooting with it and this week we got an added little thing it's a little clip on that goes on here it's a microscope if you go up on amazon.com and just do a cell phone clip on microscope it's a little clip on it'll fit any phone you put it over but then you can come up and I can take close up microscopic pictures like 400 power which is really quite ample and it has a built in light on it like on your phone a lot of people have a light well this has a light on that microscope so when you get down you're not in your own shadow it's really great for me and it's so great for me because you can hit share and share it with people when we were doing our big cameras professional cameras, Olympus cameras, great cameras but I had to go all the way back to the office load it into my computer then hit an email then send it and the people to get it they had to go look at their email and get it now we send it phone to phone and the people see it immediately and there was so much trouble shooting and we had a very well healed client come down the driveway not too long ago and he hopped out, very well dressed man and he comes over and he says I'd like to introduce you to my crew before we start the tour and he was taking a tour of our farm $25 educational tour and he said but before we do it I would like to introduce you to my crew and the man was all alone and he whips out his iPad and he turns it to me and he opens up and there's the greenhouse and he hits it and you can hear a beeper going off in the greenhouse his crew comes walking over and they've got an iPad in the rack and they come over and he says hey Paul, I want you to meet Glenn and he turns it around to me to Glenn and he says and this is Natalie and that and he says hey before I go do the tour let's show Glenn that siphon showed it to me and I'm troubleshooting this thing and these guys are in Wisconsin you know and it's just so quick and easy it has so changed our lives and before we even took a tour you might say I earned my lunch right there that day we fixed the siphon we were able to spot the problem it was an air leak right away they fixed it, they glued it down and no more problems but what a transformation on us and also when we're in the Philippines for me to be able to take a picture of these plants and I sent it to Dr. Benny Ron and he's with Aquaculture Hub you guys can look that up on the internet aquaculturehub.org fantastic, it's free, you can join and you get on their newsletter it's everything about aquaponics and aquaculture well do you have some more slides in the Philippines? yes we do you do, alright now for the time for the improvement so you saw the base work going in there that was the 12 days of hard work that we were able to do now you see all the shade cloths that they're putting all over it that's pretty neat and they welded up and they put it on and that was the first stage and then as they get on they did the screen netting across the fish that kept them a lot cooler and then see all the plants going in the ring all the way around and by the way all those plants are for sale if you come there and you meet Father Rocky bring you a checkbook we want to get you this is where we grow the azola now you see the greenhouses starting to come alive and all the shade cloth and the azola and duckweed is fed to the fish so we grow the food that we feed the fish which is really great now the rock beds and the cinder beds are coming in now this is just when it's first starting if you go back today you cannot see across this room it's like a jungle in there and you see all the plants they don't only harvest and sell the plant like cut and sell the lettuce they will sell the potted plants now you see those triangles in the middle I skipped off all the area any oddball area that wasn't 4 foot by 20 foot I skipped it in my American mind it was not economical to develop it Father Rocky went behind me and every little triangle trapezoid area filled it in and made a fish tank out of it and is growing in it and if he ran out of flat space he started hanging things up he came up with their own systems here see those boards going across and then hanging the plants there now that water goes up and down every hour so it wets the plant and then it goes back down now see what I'm talking about you can't see across the room now can I just point out to Glenn he doesn't just use the flat surface to grow in hanging pots and he waters the water with two sprinkler systems that waters into the hanging the water that we did up to the tower is now trickle fed back down to all those plants when you walk around every plant is for sale now the orphanages all the kids they work one hour a day in the garden for that they get room, board and education for one hours of work in the garden three times a day plus that and so it really made a difference in the heartbreak for me I started to say what got me to really buy into this project that was when Father Rocky walked over and showed me where the 240 kids lived they had a girls dorm, they had a boys dorm then he walked over and showed me two empty dorms all painted, all full of bunk beds all made up blankets on them, pillows the whole thing and they're empty because they couldn't take any more kids in because of the food bill every week and that's killing them every week they got to go out and raise the money to feed these orphan kids well now these kids are raising their own food and they get to go out and sell the plants and make a site income, ornamental plants let's see if we have a few more pictures and Father Rocky did good because now you see it going green Natalie what about those posts oh my gosh it's just so amazing what they did with all the cement you don't see bare seamen anymore it's all painted and you see the awnings are putting up all over the top all the children want to be in the green house now it's a favorite classroom area and the food is great you know delicious that's a personal taste you can tell how beautiful it is and how disease free we are because plants get unlimited food and nutrition, okay the water and the nutrition and the water and see how every little column is painted going up and look at all the recycled material that they're using in there everything from the wire that's like a wire fencing in the Philippines and that they're quite clever in fact every now and then I'd see something a little weird that I've never seen before and didn't quite understand what they're doing I would say what are you doing and what would they say Natalie experimenting that was a catch-all phrase that got them through everything right no matter what crazy thing they're doing when we got there there was like say a cafeteria and then there was a gymnasium there was about 15 or 16 feet and there was a two lane two strips of concrete for it where the trucks would back in and deliver my concrete and delivered my rock for me we went back on our last trip there's no more driveway anymore he's got IBC totes on both sides four feet out, four feet out a walkway down the middle and it is just choked plants from one end to the other do we have any other shots of it let's see what else we got now here you go see that there's aquaponics there and organic well it says aquaterra see that a-q-u-a-t-e-r-r hydroponic terra hydroponic is terra is for earth going to the terrain and what that means is they take the fish water and they irrigate the crops that they have in the field and all the potted plants and see all these plants stacked up here they can make towers make towers, vertical towers those are just plastic bags up there and all the shelf this used to be a driveway in between buildings shelfed it out and they got plants growing now this is a wall of plants you can walk over and pick them up now we go back and they're doing designs in the wall like you saw in the other one right in the wall on the freeway some of the pictures are really neat I don't know if I have a picture of it in this one one I had one tank at the end there were two pieces of pipe sticking out I came back and I did a double take they painted on a diver space it made it look like he was looking through binoculars you know and painted eyeballs on the end just as cute as can be and on our company t-shirts we don't have them with us today but there's a half fish half plant a fish this half animal half plant and it was drawn by an 8th grade kid did it and it became our corporate logo and that we we paid the kid for it Father Rocky gave us the right to use it yes he did now we're going to the terra this was a quarry site and it terraces going up it's about 30 feet high in the back side they tears up and they walk the aquaponics all the way up so you see the water tower there to the right it's taller than the hill is you see it all the way over there to the right stainless steel tower we pumped the fish water up into that and then it gravity feeds this whole thing and this playground there that's the soccer field and all the kids live for soccer right there's a fish tank all the way around the same the soccer field yeah fish tank it looks like a bull run like you know if you were doing a rodeo where you'd run the bulls back and they put the fish tanks in and Father Rocky is in charge of 40 other orphanages in the greater Manila area and this is spreading from one orphanage to the other so what Natalie and I took 12 days out of our lives to help them get started and that and Consuelo covered our expenses and everything for it then you look at this and you see how serious they've gotten about the plumbing and the rocks and the growing of the food and that and they're not just doing it so this is looking down this is all green now these are the construction photos this is a green oasis when you look over you walk in people say I don't see the aquaponics it's just a green hill and it does a lot of decorative bird bass and fountain so there's a sense of aesthetics to it it's not just all utilitarian and the kids go through it it's like a maze going through it all the pathways and that he just goes on and so now you see they're starting to grow in now it's a field of green and we go out on the highways they take those cups and there's a barrier in the city road and they want people to not cross they put a fence they go out and they hang up these plants on the fence and it's really gorgeous and not everything is food notice a lot of ornamental here well the kids put their tag or the number on the side and when they go to the market the kids get half of the money of what their plant sells for now notice the fish tank underneath in America it would just be a fish tank they put stands in it and put the plants up on top nothing is wasted and here's these walls of plants I'm talking about isn't it cute pots and they're made to hang on a fence and so they do that so that's all lettuce it's an edible wall and this is their version of doing a garden they just coil the fence on a circle and hang these plants on it and they made it has little hooks in it but wherever you walk water is flowing that's right yep so you have the sound of water and the coolness it's something like being in a hotel or next to a lake you're sitting next to the water that you just feel better and cooler just for being there you don't actually have to get into the water yeah but I think Dr. Benny Rahn of Aquaculture Hub he's now located over in Texas he's left University of Hawaii he's over with I believe University of Texas now or college over there in Austin Texas right and in Israel and his site is international Aquaculture Hub you can be anywhere in the world you get on it and it's just a great sharing thing you can ask a question and you'll get an answer somewhere if somebody's away somewhere else in the world and they'll answer my question so it's really good fun great people you look up Consuela Foundation on the internet right here in Hawaii wonderful story great people great board of directors a who's who of Honolulu for it but been really proud and we're really grateful that Dr. Benny Rahn introduced in this film well we thank you all so much for tuning in and can we just share that it was really nice to attend the Think Tech Hawaii party yes we will think last week we had the Christmas party for Think Tech Hawaii we had a grand time we had to meet a lot of interesting people there thank you all so much for tuning in Think Tech Hawaii we try to keep it entertaining and educational thank you all so much