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

Well it’s been some time since I updated the web page blog, so here goes. Things here have been super busy. We are in the midst of construction on Charlie’s house, have put in the big hole for the septic at what used to be Hans’ house, cleaned and fixed up some- but by no means completed-Hans’ house. Construction on my house has stopped completely, but one day that too will get done! We have Walter and Susan Davis Moora as our new neighbours and a land use agreement with them for all of us to continue the conversion to biodynamic farming, and the micro hydroelectric plant will probably be complete by October 3rd. This means NeverLand Farm and all our neighbours, down towards Tumianuma and the bridge, will all have lights. We will be producing 3.9 Kw of electricity!! The internet is NOT working in Tumianuma anymore, but I hope we can get our own satellite dish and have a computer on the farm THIS YEAR! And wwoofers have been a major part of all of our doings, without them things could not be so pleasant. Thanks to Erin and Benjamin and all of you who have been so helpful this past few months. The farm is managing to pay for all of this- actually me, Tina, has done it. But with loads of help. Greg and Liz Rice, along with their Dad George and daughter Luciana, will be our next new neighbours by December and they have pitched in on everything. You wwoofers are gonna love them, and their little girl is bringing new light and love to all of us. They will have a holiday house at NeverLand one day. The next step in the process is to Keep Working! New volunteers can help at the school and high school levels teaching English or math or computer skills. We want to help the kids learn how to research on the computer encyclopaedias’ in Quinara and Tumianuma. Internet would have been nice, but the basics of computer skills can still be taught while we have access to the computers. We also have tons of materials to move up the creek to the building sites and canal construction, so walking the burros up and down is happening all the time. Also work is ongoing in the gardens; I am looking for someone who can help us get a nice herb spiral going. Our animals are all good, Walter bought Andres’ burro, which promptly ran off. We think we know where he headed but he had not gotten there as of yesterday! But Boomer and Nova are pregnant, and Tutti is in heat now (pain in the ass), our chickens are giving us eggs, those little white ones are so furry and cute! And our eggs are golden yolked and tasty, yummy. I have not bought eggs in weeks! The horses are fat and happy, except when they have to haul tons of sand all over the place. Clem is his usual self, His ears are rattier, he fights some, but he is still a nuisance. And our Mowgli is her hermit self, lives in my house and I recently learned that few people even know we have another cat! But if anyone has a pest problem Mowgli spends the night and problem solved. She loves rodents! And we have some cows on the farm now. One is pregnant but not delivered yet, when she does w will have milk and cheeses, I can’t wait!! Milking is so much fun. And that’s about all the news of the moment, that I have time to write. Off now to buy more boards for cementing the tanks for the hydro, write to my precious daughters and head home. Make lunch, dinner, make sure the mule train is running… Plenty for me to keep busy! As always I miss all my lost boys terribly, 27 and Pagina and Molly and Lucas and Alaina and ALL OF YOU! I think of you all the time and hope everything is good for all of you now. And I would love to see all of you soon! Peace to each of you, and come on home!! Tina

OH YEAH! Many people have mentioned that they did not know that Neverland asks each person to contribute to ongoing projects. We are asking each volunteer to contribute 35. a week towards food and projects. We acomodate vegetarian and meat eatters diets, as weLl as any other special needs and your contributon includes everything you need to be comfy and at home on the farm. With the rising costs of food and the lowered value of the dollar this is an unavoidable reality. If it is a problem please write to me in advance and lets talk. Thanks!

So yes, you will be welcome at NeverLand Farm when you come. Please let me know more about your dates and a last minute note, like "see you in 3-7 days" is nice. I have tried to answer most logistics questions on the rest of the web page. Please see that for most stuff. I am trying to introduce the concept of community we use here at the farm more completely and fairly, so I have gotten verbose for the rest of this letter. You can skip the explanation if you like tho. The bottom line is that there is a minimum weekly donation of 25. towards ongoing projects and instruction. This comes to $3.67 a day. Don´t be stopped here guys, read on for details.

Our farm has been built up and maintained by wwoofers, we have several who return every year. We call them the lost boys! And the whole town loves them. When you come ask almost anyone if they have a picture of any volunteers, they most likely will. We live pretty happily here.
But economically things here are getting very difficult. Ecuador is a country that has dollarized. And along with the change of currency came the fast and dramatic increase in cost of everything. Especially, of course, food. In recent months we have seen flour and rice more than double in price. Oils, sunflower and olive, have tripled. Meat is expensive and organic soy products even more so! Included in our vision-goal statement is to become a sustainable biodynamic organic farm and intentional, more or less egalitarian community (see thefec.org) while maintaining that sense of fun and play every day that keeps us all young (always time to play pirates)(and food so good we tell everyone lick the plate). However to keep having our volunteer program and still be sustainable we must ask that each wwoofer participate in the farm as a community member. In saying as a member, I am actually saying an egalitarian community member. With everyone making an equal contribution in labor and food expenses it creates a more equal situation. Instead of one person eating gourmet meals and another living on beans and rice and garden produce, we eat together and join forces. Instead of one person weeding and working the gardens, picking fruits and cafe, we do it together. Sharing. This means that all food in our kitchen and gardens is communal, no one needs to ask anyone permission for snacks or whatever. But cook enough for all please! The farm provides candles, tp, shampoo, natural soaps, wine (with meals, sometimes), local grown tobacco, our own grown cafe´, meat and vegetarian food, three meals a day, laundry for sheets and towels gets done, Andres, and Carlos, get enough money, mostly, to support thier families ( the kids often come to work with him), and more.
As each person comes in as member I do not have to insist on a minimum work day, you work for yourself and you must be self motivated enough to get up and go do something. Woofers tend to work about 4 hours a day. Sometimes for 5 days a week. Often less! But more if we are all having fun! And we all cook together. Projects include everything from building a new composting shitter to hosting a puppet show in the nearby pueblo, teaching english at the local elementary and high schools to evacuating a sick neighbor. Painting tshirts for the kids or walls for the farm or the shop in town that needs painting (we just helped paint the church, too). And always caring for our land and harvesting fruits and garden produce (we have 68 varieties of fruit). All of our produce stays on the farm to support the farm (in other words, we eat it all). The farm is in a valley, biodynamic, we own the whole valley. Membership in this community includes sharing all of the privileges in the farm, which we actually do quite nicely. It also means sharing the responsibilities of the farm. As owner I feel responsible for making sure that everyone who comes to us has good food and is physically safe in this environment. I take care of sick woofers (travel in SA for a week or two and you will appreciate this). But as each of us are community members I expect that anyone who takes on a project takes care to do this as they would in their own home, because, in fact, for your time here, Neverland IS your home. As each of us is in a membership position I expect that if someone comes who cannot contribute equally it is up to the farm as an organism, our community, the people who are there, to decide if we can support that new member or not. Mostly we do. In the time I have been practicing woof like this I have not had many complaints. A german girl recently decided we could eat less meat and save money. So we switched to tofu and tempeh. More expensive but she was happier. Another volunteer decided we must have electricity. He is covering the micro hydro model himself. Soon, hopefully, we will not only have electricity but be able to supply all of our neighbors with lights. In a place that has never had lights, and for our aging neighbors, this is gonna be NICE! School supplies have been purchased, a local farmer is getting a new farm- the woofers have been pitching into a fund for him. With woof we have become a sustainable community, and sometimes a large one at that. And the result- a sustainable organic, biodynamic farm where anyone can come, can participate as member, can have their own space and can LEARN how this is possible for our joint futures. Community and sustainable farming. I hope you like this idea and can come and share with us. Members who come for more than one month should talk with me about how to manage it economically. I look forward to seeing you one and all! Peace, Tina

La yaegwa, our mare, has given birth! This after months of debate on whether she was even pregnant. Horses are pregnant from 310 to 370 days! Thats a two month lee way, so it is hard to know. Not to mention we had no idea exactly when it was she got pregnant. And if she even was pregnant or was THAT just fooling around!? Free range horse, its bound to be this way. Next time I will pay more attention.It's a colt, I am told he is really big for a new born and healthy. The color of cafe with cream! I think his name will be Zeus. But Olympus was a possiblity. Any suggestions please let me know. I hope I can post pictures the moment I get home.
Tina, me that is, is off the farm. I have had a family emergency and am currently in the US. I will be in Quito on Dec 4 and home by Dec 8th. Sorry folks, my family needed more than anyone else. Volunteers are welcome, Killo is there and Andres, just go head on!

Dear Sara and Jake,
Yes, we need help in October. Yes, yes yes yes yes. My partner has just had an accident and cannot walk or be mobile for several weeks! He stepped backwards on a construction site and a piece of tin severed his achilles tendon. He got home from the hospital 2 hours ago, home to an apartment in Vilcabamba as we cannot transport him home to the farm at least until stitches come out and he can handle crutches. Even then getting to the farm is gonna be a bitch.
I will be double timing it from farm to town a lot. Andres, our partner in the farm, will be there. He knows everything. But the bottom line is it will be very difficult for him to manage to DO it all. Currently we have a couple from Australia who arrived the day I ran of into the night to go to the hospital, Wednesday. They have the new baby goat we got, great timing, Wednesday, and are trying to train him to the goat we already had as his mother became dinner somewhere. She, the baby goat, Mini Component is her name, is gonna keep the two of them busy for a bit. Ben Wwoofer is working on the weed management with the local guys, who will not have work with us after this week until my partner and I are home. and so on!
Its not so bad, the farm life is tranquil and nice. The only thing missing is I am not cooking, but everyone else is. Which means four and five star lunches and dinners, with lots of variety.
But yes, we could use some help. So come anytime. I just updated our blog page, chirusco.tripod.com no www. Not much has changed except Killo and I will not be home much until mid October, and even then he will be on crutches. Let us know your plans, I will be checking the internet more often, as I will be in town more often! I am gonna post this letter on our Blog now as well! Peace, Happy and safe travels and Lik Yer Plate (but not in the bus terminal)! Tina