At reNourish studio we work with organizations to rethink how they can work on environmental goals and their bottom line through seeing themselves as playing essential roles in larger systems. Core to this work is growing a guild of stakeholders motivated by the same vision. This post is a personal version of how reNourish has enabled her work as a fulfillment of her family’s past struggles with food security.

Where does the tide go when it recedes from the shore?

My parents were adamant about my swimming lessons when I was a young girl, seeing this as an essential skill. I used to think that it should be enough just to float in an emergency, but in their minds was one of a different type: they carried within their bodies the memory of having to swim (without knowing how) against rip currents towards the opportunity for a new life away from post-war starvation. We do not float to safety, we must swim there.

 The boat captains who awaited these refugee-seekers in the night carried an important role, masking themselves with the midnight fog and lifting malnourished people from one mile offshore onto the boats. Equally important were the guards who stayed up in the night, whispering details of the boat arrivals to refugee seekers throughout the city.

For the next week to month, they navigated through the high seas, overcoming massive waves, negotiating with pirates (sometimes successfully, sometimes not), working against sickness, famine, and loss, and maintaining morale for survivors to make it to the shores of a new country.

Grains were being withheld from the people back on the mainland, and guerilla farming was made impossible by the millions of unexploded mines, bombs, and Agent Orange which were dropped by the U.S. army into the forests and rivers of Vietnam. People faced the choice to starve, take chances on foraging and finding food (which was considered illegal), enter a re-education camp, or leave in hopes of finding a new life. Mine chose the path of creating something new, and passed this legacy on.

My career as a scientist came to a need for change when I realized that I could not engineer our way out of global misunderstandings. I came into this role wanting to remediate the land and water by changing my environment, not yet understanding the unintended consequences of such actions. I spent years in labs engineering crops and trees, hoping they would contribute to reducing pesticide usage, increasing carbon sequestration, and absorbing heavy metals from polluted sites, including war zones.

The aim was to create safer environments for people to live with a higher quality of life. Meanwhile, I was generating more plastic and using more toxic laboratory chemicals and electricity than I would ever touch in my personal life, thereby contributing to the problems I was trying to fix. I also learned that most people could not afford these technology stacks over time, leading to further socioeconomic and political turmoil. Through an ‘expert’ paradigm I saw all solutions, without considering all perspectives and consequences. I realized that I actually needed to begin by being a participant in healing the ways we engage in how we treat land and water.

reNourish Studio is like the boat captain that brought my organization into being. It enables the  way that I work in business and organizing today by shedding light on new potentials that I was unable to see from my hunger for change. It is the guard that carefully carries the message of these vehicles’ arrivals  through the country and reaches out to those who are willing to take a chance at a new way of life and doing business. It is also like the parent who reminds me that I can empower myself to bring my organization to safety– a new place that holds new possibilities, if I am willing to learn how to swim.

So as a next step, I started a journey on building a global grassroots movement to reconnect people, water, and land, starting with the ocean that held my ancestors through some of the hardest times. This was a new approach to working with a more diverse group of stakeholders that were traditionally not part of the conversation. 

Feet on the ground, I spent the last two years engaging face-to-face with farmers, fishers, scientists, academics, environmentalists, local residents, indigenous stewards, doctors, lawyers, politicians, storytellers, business owners, from all over the world and discovered their unique, yet similar, needs. We walked a mile in each other’s shoes to understand the other’s roles and challenges we each faced towards our collective goals. We began working together to create new frameworks and uses of technological solutions that included traditional wisdom and everyone’s wellbeing. Transparent conversations, collaboration, and collective action are our main aims, and we are going back to first principles to develop a platform that enables this to take place.

reNourish Studio provided the resources needed to ensure that the legacy continues to unfold in a way that honors the origins of the organization, while providing insight into how it can evolve into the next phase of its highest self. It asked of me to consider the greater context of which I am a part that was hidden to me by years of specialization in a specific field and community.

Since joining the Studio, my team members and I have taken on a new process of organizing movements and catalyzing events. Rather than forming a traditional organization, we co-created a cooperative of organizations and individuals from all around the world who were willing to stand stronger together in mutually empowering campaigns. At the heart of our scientific, legal, and political pursuits is the spirit of regenerating the land, water, and ourselves. In our commitment to the greater aim of protecting our land, water, and everything in between, we have continued our dialogue and strategies across industries, institutions, and experience levels to cut through the invisible tape that held us back from working in new, collaborative ways to apply ecocentric standards and laws on an international level. 

Riding these waves together and holding each other to our own highest potential during this uncertain journey towards new shores is one function of the Studio. Like the flow of water, the Studio has helped my organization chip away at the static, bureaucratic foundations that have kept us in the cycles, reminding us that there are well-intentioned humans at the core with whom we need to be willing to engage and understand. It shone a light into murky waters and revealed that even in the deepest parts of our subconscious lay certain foundations that perpetuate the existing paradigm that leads us to work in silos, and instead, asks revealing questions that encourage us to face and transform them. 

It returns to the shore, when the conditions are just right, to remind us that perhaps we needed to drift away to come back stronger, with a new theory of change, and to build a sense of collective will to get to where we need to go. With reNourish Studio, I feel that we are doing just that.