Settling into Autumn 2020: R&R’s New Logo, the Youth Visionary Collective, and Seasonal Goals
No doubt 2020 has been a strange year. Amidst a global pandemic, climate change still pressing on, a turning point for the Black Lives Matter movement, and the United States election results looming before us, Roots & Routes IC still continues forward.
While still in its youth as an organization, R&R seized the opportunity to take a step into the unknown and grow up quickly. Now in the autumn 2020, we can look back and see how far we’ve come and where we’re going. In today’s blog post we are introducing you to R&R’s new official logo, the revamped Youth Visionary Collective (YVC), and goals for this season.
It’s an exciting time here at R&R. With every weathered storm, we’ve been able to grow in profound and unexpected ways. An important symbol of this is the new R&RIC logo.
R&RIC’s official logo contains many stories and details within its small parameters. Above all, we hope it serves as a reminder of how we can all learn together, leading with Indigenous forms of knowing toward a future of corazóstenibilidad: Sustainability from the Heart.
We want to share how we have represented our Roots & Routes worldview with you: from the compass design, guiding us with sustainability from the heart as our North, to the rivers and forests, which we defend together.
The roots of the tree of life come together as the veins in our hearts and that give rise to the river paths that connect us all.
The mountain is Taita Imbabura, the heart of Imbabura Province, Ecuador, the homelands of the Karanki people. Imbabura is the birthplace of Roots & Routes, and where the board members first came together in the house of one of our co-founders in 2019.
The compass represents Indigenous cartographic practices since time immemorial, a nod to the rousing work of our Kanaka Hawai’i co-founder. The Maya cardinal directions–red in the east, yellow in the south, black in the west, and white in the north–are to honor our co-founder and his work with Maya communities in Guatemala.
We, at R&R, join one another from all four corners of the globe and the ring of people around Imbabura represents us and what we collectively do in the world: intercultural collaborations.
Roots & Routes has always been about building bridges and expanding community to learn from one another and share in our passion and culturally specific ways of knowing to nurture and protect Pachamama and all people. We hope the new logo reminds all who see it of our interconnectedness and that we are a place for coming together.
The YVC meets with R&R board member Alexii Sigona who is a member of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, a tribally-led organization working to restore Amah Mutsun stewardship practices to traditional territory. Guest speaker meetings like this one allow us to come together to learn more about Indigenous knowledge and current events facing communities around the world including Amah Mutsun.
Falling in line with changes to the organization, the YVC welcomes its new intern teams! Our collective is now constituted by 17 people, and still growing strong! Every season so far, youth have sought out R&R as a place to learn about Indigenous and Ancestral people’s sustainable practices and ways of knowing and the inner workings of a non-profit space. What they find is not traditional academia or HR-organized orientations.
The YVC is youth-led and international and intercultural learning space constituted by youth, Indigenous and place-based community organizers and teachers, and the relations between us all. No one is at the front of the classroom every day. Instead we share (Zoom) circles of conversation to problem solve and dig deeper into what we can offer and learn as a team and what we want to become.
Even if growing pains are inevitable, we are excited to be collaborating with one another in this creative process that is unfolding in unexpected ways each day.
This autumn season, for instance, we began implementing working in YVC teams: Grants and Fundraising, Alternative Educational Research,Operations, and Social Media. Based on what the interns want to learn and the needs of R&R, each team includes up to four interns who meet bi-weekly to plan, discuss, and complete tasks with guidance from Co-founder and Executive Director, Juli Hazlewood, who serves a vital supportive role in facilitating the Collective.
You can meet this season’s lovely interns on the R&R’s member page.
This season, the Grants and Fundraising team is working to secure $25,000 for the YVC for activities and a retreat/experiential learning weekend in summer 2021, $30,000 for the documentary film in the Ecuadorian Chocó Rainforest, continued support for the communities leading the first Rights of Nature lawsuit in the world, and creating R&R’s pitch deck for our 2021 intercultural collaborative activist educational/research project launch (coming soon!).
We are also still raising $5,000 so our partners in La Chiquita and Guadualito, Ecuador can buy drinking water and continue documenting damage inflicted by oil palm companies. Due to increased pressures by oil palm companies, there is an increased need for cameras to document pollution violations that are occurring as we speak. We are on our way to reaching our goals, but we need your help.
The youth and several Awá and La Chiquita community leaders are at the helm of the documentary team that produced the teaser of Hope & Struggle in the Ecuadorian Chocó Rainforest featured on YouTube. Even in times of chaos and pandemic, the community continues toward justice. Funds are needed to buy clean drinking water and camera equipment in order to continue documenting oil palm destruction.
Click to Donate to the Emergency Water and Documentary Equipment Fund
In Guatemala, we continue to raise $30,000 to support food solidarity and multilingual informational media with Mayan communities. Funds go toward food, transportation, communication-based utilities/services (phone, internet, electricity etc.), essential/sustainability stipends, rent and utilities for "La Red" (DESGUA’s extraordinary work and community gathering space—with masks and the social distancing, of course), and disinfectants & P.P.E.
La Red is DESGUA’s physical workspace where La Casaca Social Radio is produced, which provides an alternative medium for generating content on ancestral practices for Indigenous communities near and far.
Click to Donate to the Indigenous Resilience Network Fund
The Alternative Educational Research team is doing background research for R&R’s future organizational paths. The nuts and bolts of the organization, the Operations Team is implementing systems for keeping track of our community, an online library for future R&R researchers, time management and record-keeping, and updating R&R’s long-term strategic plan. The Social Media team stays hard at work trying to bring R&R to the online world by creating blog posts, email newsletters, and posting regularly on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
In between weekly tasks, the YVC makes sure to pause and check-in as well as take a step back. We’re able to reflect on this creative process of helping to build an organization, as well as being at the forefront of developing our own international community.
Sometimes tasks are put on pause in favor of simply talking, healing, and processing what’s going on in the world. The world may be a heavy place to be, but sharing moments together reminds us why we’re here, and talking with our bi-weekly guest speakers, the weight becomes a little lighter.
As an organization as a whole, Roots & Routes IC is focusing on developing a strong foundation for the YVC and stepping into its full potential as an educational and research organization that practices and fosters cultural approaches to conservation. Through online and on-the-ground learning programs, we will teach international and intercultural collaborative life skills and knowledge for restoring and re-storying a world that respects all sentient beings. We are on our way!
Even with the thicket of challenges that has been posed by 2020, R&R has taken off with more energy than we ever imagined. There is still a mountain to climb in terms of acquiring the support and resources we need to support our organizational and community partner needs.
As we head toward Giving Day 2020, we are increasing our stamina and ever thankful to our expanding R&R community for walking with us. We are hopeful in accomplishing our goals, getting to where we want to go together, stronger than when we started.