WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO – WHAT WE’VE DONE
Proposal
Engage in a multi-step co-creation process to build the allies and develop the business plan for a multi-year, multi-stakeholder initiative/program to use the power of social entrepreneurship and impact investing to strengthen indigenous communities and create hundreds of social investment opportunities across the region.
- BRING TOGETHER key actors to start a conversation THAT INCLUDES INDIGENOUS ENTREPRENEURS and co-creates a pilot for 2020 that can accelerate and strengthen social enterprise and mindful outcomes from within.
- CENTRE our conversations on developing and deploying meaningful dialogue and collaboration tools, as well to reach thoughtful and realistic milestones within the 2030 Agenda.
- Start with a DEEP DIVE into both the ecosystem and the REALITIES of being an indigenous entrepreneur in a pilot region, The Yucatan Peninsula, to extend into the Mayan Area of Mexico and Central America next.
- UTILIZE EFFECTIVELY venues, tools and organizations already in motion.
- BY MARCH 2020 have a proposal to implement (by S2-2020) a new active and inclusive process that extends from education and incubation through integration into fair and efficient value chains.
Timeline
Oct 13-18 – Indigenous Colloquium.
✓- OC Attended with 3 key Indigenous Entrepreneurs.
Tri-lingual 4-day colloquium. Opened event with Native American Collective, NDN. One day off-site event with 60 delegates and 12 Indigenous entrepreneurs. 3 parallel conversations: 1. Syntropic agriculture and social change. 2. Education, Philanthropy and Social Change. 3. NDN Collective Grants for Indigenous Changemakers.
Oct 22-25 – Pitches and alliances.
✓- SOCAP Attended SOCAP. Pitched at LATAM
Lounge. Met with indigenous organizations from around the world. Participated in Panel on technology and indigenous value chains. Met with potential allies and funders.
Dec 6-9. – Launch IDC and 2020 Plan.
✓- Mérida Represented at BMW by Ben Powell from
Agora. Worked for 3 full days at rented house in Merida with a dozen Mayan entrepreneurs. Developed 2020 plan draft and IDC (Indigenous Development Council) draft structure and principles. Met with potential allies.
BLOG – WHAT WE’VE DONE
During the Welcome at Opportunity Collaboration 2019. Vidal Pat, Mayan entrepreneur and member of the Indigenous Council on Sustainable Development, welcomes Nick Tilsen, Founder and CEO of NDN (Natives Decolonizing Nations) Collective from Lakota Nation is North Dakota. Enrique Kaufmann, from Green Squids translates.
THE CONVERSATIONS – WHO PARTICIPATED
Themes
Extending Native American Financial support to LATAM indigenous entrepreneurs
Facilitation (Incubation/acceleration of indigenous enterprise)
Fractals and fractal models
Global markets for Fractal production and value-added processing
Trans-border collaborations among indigenous people
Technology
Marginalization and impact analytics
Broad-based ownership and dividend models
At Opportunity Collaboration
Agora, Ben Powell
Opportunity Collaboration, Topher Wilkins, Jorian Wilkins
NDN Collective, Nick Tilsen, Kim Pate, Nicole Yunes
Mentor Capital Network, Ian Fisk
Angels of Impact, Laina Greene
Second Muse, Kristin Coates
Fifth Element, Scott Rhemus
Fair Trade USA, Jennifer Botsch
Aspen, Randall Kempner
Future Brilliance, Sophia Swire
Nuup, Vincent Lagacé
MCE Social Capital, Christina Lukeman
Miel de la Familia Pat, Vidal Pat, Rogaciano Pat
Oct 13-18 – Indigenous Colloquium
✓- Opportunity Collaboration
Making and deepening relationships
Why OC
1. Amazing and innovative group-intelligence deployed in a unique venue. 2. Impressive global network and how that network interacts (close, meaningful relationships). 3. We’ve had 4 years of ramping up together and bridging the world to the region.
The Trilingual Colloquium
We invited indigenous Mayan connectors to: 1. Link them to the global ecosystem; 2. have conversations on their realities and needs and on how facilitation and investment programs should be addressing DIRECTLY with them; and show them that THEY ARE NOT ALONE. We co-designed a trilingual Colloquium (English-Spanish-Mayan) led by César, a moderator who had led the first Colloquium with Mayan speaking delegates.
Affection and Purpose
Ben Powel (from Agora), Vidal Pat (our avant-garde Maya entrepreneur) and I have known each other for 7+ years. Yet at colloquium we got to share stories (origin stories J) we’d never talked about before and to understand each other in new and significant ways. Mastery of friendship, if you will. Colloquium is a powerful experience, in both its specificity and randomness, for those who just met as much as for those who’ve known each other for years. I can only hope, that families, coworkers, neighbours, partners, boards and friends can go through Colloquium as a discipline of discovery, affection and purpose.
Dive into Fractal-Zero
Original Damage
Rancho San José, or Cancún Fractal-Zero (as we lovingly know it) has been OC’s offsite venue as well as OC’s and Agora Partnership’s Yucatan Peninsula headquarters. It is a beautiful place that embodies and emboldens the future, linking present action to ancestral rooting. Originally the place had been very damaged because it hosts 3 separate high-tension tower lines, it now hosts much more than that.
Amphibians, Insects and a Mollusk
It is home to Green Squids, a regenerative impact-fund operator and Mercado de la Tierra, GSQ’s local-market building arm. It is also home to more than 80 food crops and 30 raw material and medicine ones; growing simultaneously with native plants in areas of conservation with 250+ documented species of plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, fungi and a mollusk (species) that had been driven away and are back. More than 400 volunteers and fellows, from Mayan villages and from around the world, have worked in developing this exemplary model in an exemplary place; redesigning how we live and create value (produce, consume, learn and grow); how we interact with each other, with our sentient kin and the planet.
A Tropical Shower
A limited number of OC delegates have been coming to FZO year after year, for three years to enjoy a morning (and sometimes a warn tropical rain shower) and to connect with local and regional organizations that share our purpose and are in dire need of connecting to the global ecosystem. This year, a dozen Mayan entrepreneurs and changemakers traveled here to meet with OC Delegates.
Botanas and Conversations
During the visit, we sped through areas of the Fractal farm to illustrate its workings. We then got “botanas,” finger-food served at traditional bars (botaneros) around the Yucatan Peninsula, and conversation. Three main ones with three groups: 1. Syntropic (biomimicry regenerative) agriculture, culture, economies and societies; 2. Education and generosity (philanthropy, impact investment…); 3. Indigenous investment and indigenous changemakers.
