WHY WORK WITH US

IR engagements help partners assert personal pragmatic skills that are actional, process-oriented, relational, reflective, and strategic.  Participatory assessments, co-learning workshops & applied projects are mutually affirming, critically reflective, hands-on and in place whenever possible.  They are customized to serve partners' goals and catalyze actions.  Here are a few examples of how IR can assist mobilization of your mission:

• Building support for and capacity to identify, negotiate, and integrate biocultural externalities into the local marketplace of ideas and actions to enhance local sovereignty & well-being (i.e., social and environmental contingencies which have been hidden, neglected, or exploited).

 

• Designing narratives & practices for economic value-webs which enhance biocultural diversity and support local livelihoods.

 

• Developing an intersectional awareness across stakeholders to forge new & powerful networks..

 

• Facilitating knowledge brokering in an Ethical (Third) space to foster mutual recognition, reciprocity, well-being, and project resilience.


• Engaging strategic storytelling across distance and difference to; a) inspire action and innovation, b) build greater recognition and reciprocity;  c) raise new questions and dynamic opportunities.
  

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OUR ASSETS:

• Agile participatory process and conflict theory knowledge gained from advanced professional training in Cultural Anthropology, Cross-cultural Psychology, Global Health, Critical Theory, and Human Ecology.

 

• Field experience working as allies, facilitators, and liaisons with Indigenous partners, local communities, civil society, and government on applied projects, including coral reef restoration, integrated farming systems, community-managed conservation areas, local artisanal economies, and climate activism.

 

• Biocultural entrepreneurial expertise developing sustainable markets and artisanal value chains that become "value webs" grounded in agroecological principles, practices and the economics of local sovereignty.

 

• Documentary film work and a focus on the power of storytelling to facilitate peer-to-peer networking, share lessons learned, bolster collective action, and build mutual recognition & reciprocity across difference and distance.

 

• Pragmatic, experiential knowledge having sustained our personal livelihood as artisanal forest harvesters in one particular market-space of ideas and actions for 25 years
  
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