Hi All! So, I am interested in getting a fellowship or some kind of funding for our Neverland projects. I have been living on the edge of broke for far too long and can no longer keep up! Any of you who reads this please write to me, chirusco@yahoo.com and let me know what you think. Help me take these ides and turn them into a an application for help. I know, plenty of typos and such. But I am looking for a way to get more out there in the world, and to attract more help in what we are doing. Poor rural workers and poor traveling students are wonderful. But poor. Help me turn the following scribblings into something I can submit for funding and help for us all. Thanks so much.
OH- Andres and Silvia now have the funding for a purchase of a lot of land in Tumianuma. They are working on papers now I hope. Silvia is so happy! I sold a small piece of the farm to accomplish this, but I simply can't feel bad about it- they deserve to have a home and I am sooo happy that we are able to help them do it! I love having them as nieghbors, and the thought that this way they will never leave makes me feel good. And I want to do it again soon! Making sure ecuadorians can continue live in Vilcabamba Parish is so important, what good is it moving to Ecuador and having a lovely home if you destroy the heritage of the place in which you will live!? Lets all explore how we can keep our neighbors, how we can support the loving and rich culture and traditions of the valley in which we love to be!! Thanks everyone, read on! Peace and love, yer not so hippie Den Mother, Tina


I must admit I never thought of myself as a social innovator. More just one person who believes that a single person can make a difference in our world. I am Tina Marshall. I live in Tumianuma, parish of Vilcabamba, province of Loja, Ecuador. I own a small farm where I attempt to live in the manera Antigua, the old way of these people, but with some innovations that I try to make available to everyone. Composting toilets vs. no toilets, solar battery chargers instead of throwing the used batteries in the river. How to recycle all of your trash around your home with minimum burning, holistic organic medicines instead of antibiotics that cause resistant infections, home birthing, organic/biodynamic agriculture, and so on.. I have composting toilets, grey water run off, no electricity (yet!). I try to provide an example for peoples from all around the world of sustainable community or communal egalitarian (all work weighted equal, watching babies or mixing cement, women's and men's work rated the same) living. Around 250-400 students and individuals from all over the world come annually to volunteer on the farm and learn how to live in community, how the poor rural farmers live and how they can live like we do, in peace and equality. The kids tell me they learn a lot. I am sure they often leave transformed, with new ideas and hope to live in a world community. Many come back year after year to participate in ongoing projects (organic gardens for local elementary school, for lunches, teaching computers in local high school and 3 elem schools, painting and fixing up, participating and then cleaning up from local festivals). Always plenty to do, and the local people always helping and trying to understand why we are doing this! Even sharing each others religions and traditions is interesting- recently a young man came and taught us, in the form of lovely stories, about Yom Kippur- my neighbours came to break his fast and learn more about Jewish people, who, it turns out, are very nice and have no horns whatsoever. I am serious, when you have no idea about the what and why of other religion it seems all bad, simple story telling can heal that gap. I hope this kind of teaching inspires locals and foreigners to accept each other as humans, a global community. I know I am having great success.
I will list a few things I have done this past three weeks. We are currently installing a micro hydro electric plant on the farm. This plant will supply electricity to us and ALL of our neighbours for 2.5 km. In Quito I fought for 5 days with our local, corrupt, customs officials. While there I twisted and broke my foot in three places, so half of my trip was on crutches. Two local lawyers, and some employees of a company that makes aluminium building materials, helped me tremendously and at the end of this work returned to me all of the money I had paid for their services. I came home and after another week and 1800.usd they got the generator that had been donated by a firm in the Netherlands released. Came home to 16 volunteers and a large Ecuadorian work crew working frantically on getting the water delivery system installed. Attended the birth of a local woman's son (number 5). Planned and began, with the help of a French couple visiting who were appalled at the idea that the kids get no computer education, a program that will, hopefully, keep two or three volunteers daily in our local schools, broadening the children's horizons. Purchased materials and coordinated the painting of a kindergarden and a preschool classroom, purchased (with local donations) a toy for the classroom (and it is the only toy they have), distributed (donated) antiparasite medicines and multi vitamins to all of the children at the local schools who have been exposed to run off from a local trash dump and seem to have a high parasite and illness problem. Made lunches and dinners for 25—30 people daily, also providing rooms and bedding for all of them, coordinated volunteer work on our gardens, assist for a local woman with a profoundly handicapped adult daughter. Helped two new gringos to understand the visa process for this country and why it is bad to come in and try to buy up land from the locals, how this affects the local economy and makes it nearly impossible for the local people to own property. Explain how my neighbours and I encourage new people to help a local person purchase some land for each property they buy. I call it cultural alliteration. Teaching locals how the foreigners think and why, and vice versa. I did a lot this past two weeks. And went broke in the process I must admit. I am constantly seeking donations to keep all of these projects going. This is the single most difficult thing I do I think. Many people have given me funds, to build the micro hydro, to paint the schools, help on medical expenses. But the majority of what I do I pay for myself. And I am too busy to get a job!
I would like to tell two stories of young people who have come to visit and volunteer in NeverLand.
Last week we had a young woman, foreigner, coming out to the farm. On the bus from one town to Tumianuma the helper on the bus had not closed the storage bin under the bus properly. When she arrived in Tumianuma, where I happened to be, on horseback with a broken foot, the driver of the bus came out and asked me to please translate.
He informed the young woman that her backpack, containing her passport, money and pretty much everything she owned, had fallen from the bus. He was scared and upset as the woman was crying- men here almost always take responsibility if a woman is crying, certainly it frightens them and worries them. When the helper realized the backpack had fallen off the bus he got off the bus and began walking the road back towards town looking for her bag.
Its kind of difficult for these country bus drivers with no helper, almost everyone is coming home with cargo. The driver was doing double duty so the helper could search for the bag. I went to a local store owner (teeny store) and asked him to please help. This man only drives his car daily to the next town, where he is an administrator at our local high school. He said one minute, got his shoes and in 3 minutes had the truck ready for them to leave. By now the young woman was weeping and another young woman, an Ecuatoriana from Tumianuma who had been preparing supper for her large family, was touching her and hugging her to try to help. The two young woman (American and Ecuadorian), and a Belgian man who had been on the bus coming to the farm also, got into the truck and sped off to look for the lost backpack. I had come to town without my crutches only to make a phone call, so I simply could not leave. I did wait for the Ecuadorian woman's husband so I could explain that he had to make supper as his wife had run out the door to help this woman. I must admit he was at first kind of angry, but then his mother came over to tell him that the gringa had been CRYING, so he agreed that she was right and had to go and help her. And I rode home in the dark.
The next morning I got back on my horse and rode to Tumianuma prepared to leave and go find this girl and learn her fate. Our Ecuadorian neighbours told me that they had left her with the police and a group of people searching, in the dark, for her backpack. But it had not been found when they left, getting home at almost 9 pm, very late for country people here.
I came into Vilcabamba, about an hour from Tumianuma, and went to the police to find out where our gringita was staying and what next. The volunteers on the farm had gathered a sum of cash for this girl and all the woman put in some clothes, just in case her things were not found (we get the most generous volunteers, always willing to pitch in, if not always able).
The police informed me that the driver for the bus and the helper had called their families in Loja, about 1 hour 45 minutes away, and all of them came immediately. Then all of them began walking the country road going house to house to find this girls bag. The mothers and wives and daughter, brother, two whole families. The police told me the driver and helper felt awful about losing her backpack and making her cry. I am very happy to say that they DID find her backpack, someone along the road had found it and had in the house to bring into the police in the morning. Our young gringas bag was found and returned, and she says it had not even been opened, not one damage occurred. I went personally and thanked the driver, helper, local police, everyone who had helped. I felt so glad, so happy that these people had all made such an effort to help a person who was a complete stranger. To me this is one of the beautiful things in the world, and increasingly rare! Happy ending.
Second story.
The other day I took the bus into town, Vilcabamba, a small but very touristy place where over the past few decades several, many, foreigners have begun moving in and living. As soon as I got off the bus and began walking into the town center a local gringo approached me. A man who has been living here in Vilcabamba for many many years, from New Zealand. He stopped me to ask if I knew about this girl who had been coming to our farm. The girl had taken the bus to Tumianuma and was nearly robbed! He told me that the driver and helper of the bus had taken her backpack and hidden it, stolen it. And not until several white men went to interrogate them and threaten with legal action and jail did the men produce this girl’s backpack, claiming to have found it along the road. This man informed me that it was impossible that it had been found along the road, it must have been well hidden, as everyone knows that all Ecuadorians are liars and thieves and had it been encountered it would have been sacked and discarded fast. But the white mans strength had saved this young woman from being robbed and her things were all recovered. A happy ending. Sort of.
It's the same girl of course. Just a different perspective. I did not get too angry, I corrected the man, no robbery or even near robbery had taken place. In fact the people involved had ALL behaved in a very responsible fashion and done everything possible to help this young woman. In fact a very beautiful thing had happened, in the end, with everyone feeling good about everyone else. And then I began my work. Sharing these two very different stories and pointing out the differences in the attitudes and cultures that made the stories so different.
I never think about this as my work, just my responsibility. But sometimes getting in between the two cultures, and explainng one to another, is a job. So I began to tell these two stories to a few people, Ecuadorian and gringo, and point out how racism can raise its ugly face in this fashion. I asked the young woman involved to please tell her story to as many people as she could, locals and foreigners, in hopes of illuminating the way she had been helped. Mostly I think if we point out racist statements and attitudes, and help both sides see each other in a better, more clear, light, we can all begin to live together more peacefully.

Susan Davis wrote-
The innovation Tina has created is crucial for rural farmers in developing countries around the world and can be replicated. She has taken the Peace Corp concept and created a model for creating community between very poor rural farmers, very poor travelling students and sustainability-focused Northerners. Her farm of X acres 1.5 hours from the resort destination of Vilcabamba, Ecuador models an organic garden of vegetables and fruits, holistic animal care and 'intentional community' practices of collaboration and co-creation. Young people from around the world come to stay for weeks or months to learn about sustainable practices and experience community. (My favourite saying is, "whatever the problem, community is the solution.") They pay (almost) enough to cover their expenses and work everyday on the gardens and orchards and a wide variety of other community projects benefiting the local farmers. These include repairing and renovating a classroom for very poor and malnourished children 2-4 years and creating an organic kitchen garden for school lunches. They helped create a multi-use sports court, are helping prepare for a new community center and teach on newly installed school computers which Tina arranged for- and Jaime Mendoza from the Andes Children Foundation. The latest innovation they are helping on is a model hydro power system on the farm's clean stream, which will supply the closest 7 farm neighbours. She is doing this with step-by-step records so that the method can be posted on the internet on a GlobalGiving.com site I will be setting up soon.

Over the last some years, Tina has woven herself into the community such that the students are treated as part of Tina's family and thus get to experience poor rural life as community members rather than gawkers. Tina is now taking the next large step of helping Northern families who want to live sustainably buy land next to her farm so that they create an expanded community of gringos who stay and live there. Two such families have bought land so far and we are one of them. The widening gap between rich and poor is one of the world's major current problems and, by creating a family feeling between locals and gringos, Tina has achieved an innovation I've never seen anywhere. I spent six years, as you know, using my KINS innovation method to introduce microenterprise into Nigeria, during which I travelled throughout the country. I have never seen a project similar to Tina's and I feel it is replicable if she creates the materials to describe it.

Back to Tina-
My goals for my life and projects here in Tumianuma are many. I see a need within my community and try to manuever the situation so that need can be met. I have begun several projects, and each of them is to be ultimately handled by the beneficiaries themselves. In itself this is not a new idea. But how to mix the cultures and have both sides working on the issues, sharing responsibility, may be a new idea. I have been asked to make a statement about how this will all be when I am finished. My response is that I cannot imagine I will ever finish! Each time a project flies on its own I find several other needs to be met. In the long run I hope to find myself surrounded by the children of the children I am helping to deliver now. I hope to see them practicing agriculture as a culture, an art of growing biodynamically, well educated and on their way to being productive and profitable farmers. My goal of decreasing the rural exodus and urban overcrowding by making the agricultural workers lives more comfortable and open to innovation and foreigners input is selfish. I love my nieghbors, and would hate to see more of them go away. But it also important, even critical, to encourage the agricultural workers and families to remain on the family land, even if it is share cropping. It is critical to the survival of our world to get back to organics and healing the land. I think the way to do it, or at least one way to help, is to make agriculture profitable and the families who continue comfortable in thier own homes. Sounds like such a simple thing. I wish I could expalin why actually doing this is so nearly impossible.

The goal of introducing poor rural agricultural workers to poor travelling students (and any other individuals) who wish to volunteer and learn more of the plight of the campesino is being accomplished. These people who come to volunteer are presented to the population around me as people who earnestly wish to learn about and help the local community. As I have been here for 11 years now, offering assistance in any area (medical, homebirth, agricultural, establishing micro negocios..) I have established myself as what the locals call a serious person. They recognize I do not present an idea and hope it takes off- I present a plan that is not only viable but practically done. Foreigners have a long history of empty promises. I do not make promises I cannot keep. This has given me a rare status. Also my neighbours and most of the local community have seen me as my own son died here and then the child I adopted here also died. They know I have suffered and live as they do, and this is respected. They know I took a campesino child to the US for a transplant- and stayed with him and his family for the entirety of his illness even became the donor for him to live on my white blood cells and transplanted my own cells to help cure him. Too bad, sad, that it didn't work, but the effort was well done. I guess it gave my nieghbors the chance to see how human suffering is not limited to the poor, or to any one race. And I had the cahnce to see the same. My neighbors shared with me, fed me and loved me through these crisis times. We learn in every aspect of life.
So here I am now. I will continue the farming and teaching. My volunteer projects I hope to see ongoing. I am without any funding for all of this, but I am determined to keep doing everything I have begun. And I am now learning to reach out and ask. I am learning to be open to all the wonderful things the universe has to offer me. I hope you all will join in and share with us your input. Ideas.
Emails to chirusco@yahoo.com! Peace to all of you, Tina