Brym Labs

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In this week’s podcast episode, you’ll hear recordings from a few moments during our time at the Town Hall Meeting in Lufwanyama, Zambia focused on mining, natural resources and extractivism - I would suggest reading the case study below or on our website HERE first before listening so you have more context on the story of how we got there, but here’s a look inside the episode:

* 01:50 - 17:03: My interview with Martin Bwalya Kampamba, Founder of Future-Preneurs, just before the Town Hall Meeting started. He outlined the history of mining in the Copper Belt, the environmental, social, and human rights challenges mining communities face, and the solution-building strategies of his organization looking to the future.

* 17:12 – 35:06: A conversation during the Town Hall meeting led by Edmond Kangamungazi from Caritas Zambia, focused on challenging the councilors on their actions since their election 4 years ago and questioning the contrast between Lufwanyama’s natural resources value and the lack of profits coming to the actual town. This section also includes a couple different testimonies from community members sharing their experiences + raising their voice for greater government and mining company accountability. 

* 35:15- 44:28: A final push at the end of the meeting for the community members to continue to push for change, not just rest on the laurels of the new government that preaches environmental and social considerations.

Recommended Reading: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney

Organizations Referenced:

Future-Preneurs

Caritas Zambia

Zambia Alliance of Women

Publish What you Pay

Introduction - Part 2/3 - Copper Belt

When American superstar actress, Mila Kunis, had her first child in 2014, she landed the role of brand ambassador for Gemfields. Brandishing beautiful, bright green emeralds from the Kagem mine in Lufwanyama, Zambia, the world was blinded by the light… but I wonder if anyone thought about the small town where her emeralds actually came from and how they got to Marina B’s 57th Street Flagship Boutique in New York…

The town of Lufwanyama is in the Northwestern part of the Copper Belt region in Zambia and produces the most desired emeralds in the world. And yet, as Edmond Kangamungazi from Caritas Zambia asked the Town Hall meeting on March 25th:

‘Why do we produce the best emeralds in the world but also have one of the highest levels of poverty?’

Let me rewind a bit. On March 24th, my friends Kampamba, EJ and I headed North from Lusaka to Ndola in the Copper Belt Province. We stayed overnight with their grandmother who reminded me of my late grandmas, especially when she asked with a smirk ‘Are you fasting or something?’ when I initially declined breakfast on Friday. After taking her up on her generous offer, we drove to Lufwanyama where Edmond, Kampamba’s old colleague, met us and introduced us to Martin Bwalya Kampamba who runs a local non-profit called Future-Preneurs … the two of them in conjunction with other civil society organizations were organizing together for a Town Hall meeting to discuss mining practices and natural resource strategies in Lufwanyama. 

When we set out, we had no idea this meeting was happening. But after introducing ourselves and telling them about Brym, they immediately invited us to join the meeting and ushered us into the City Council building. 

The Meeting

Before I knew it, we were seated in a large room with an early morning breeze greeting us through open windows… a projector at one end, the Lufwanyama Deputy Mayor at the other, and a long table in the middle with city council members gathered in suits. 

We took our seats on the side of the room with about 25 different community members and ‘civil society representatives’ including Caritas Zambia, Futurepreneurs, Women Alliance of Zambia, and Publish What You Pay. What transpired over the next 4 hours was an incredible display of democracy, civic participation, and hopefully a huge step towards Lufwanyama breaking the cycle of extraction from their community.

For more complete notes on the meeting, an Appendix will be included in a complete wrap up analysis later in April. For now, here were my main takeaways from the meeting:

* Extractivism & Imperialism: The large majority of the benefits of the Lufwanyama mines do not go to the local community.

* Profits from selling the emeralds are going to foreign owners of mines. Then they are supposed to pay taxes back to the town based on these profits but activists present say they aren’t paying nearly enough. Also noteworthy, about half of the town profit goes to the council members themselves.

* Workers for the mines are being bussed in from Kitwe and other towns instead of the workers coming from Lufwanyama itself.

* The representatives from the mining companies didn’t even show up to the meeting!!! What does that tell you about the amount they care about the communities where they mine??

* The environmental, social and psychological effects of mining in Lufwanyama are serious! 

* Take a listen to Martin’s testimony during the interview we had together. 00: - 15:

* We also experienced this personally as we drove up to Lufwanyama. We stopped in Kabwe, the most polluted town in Zambia, where you can smell the sulfur and lead in the air. Next, we passed through Kitwe, where you can see the fumes rising from Black Mountain - a huge waste field of copper extract - where many kids ‘picking’ copper were buried alive by the landslide captured on video in 2018 (Warning, Explicit content).

*

* There are both pros and cons when a town thinks about opening a mine. 

* From the outside in, it seems clear that mines shouldn’t exist, but they provide the promise of jobs that community members need to survive. This reminded me of the Coal Mining conversations in the US. 

* Democracy appears alive and well in Lufwanyama in the 22nd year Zambia has had Multi-Party Democracy since their independence in 1964. 

* While they might be up against legislative and politico-economic barriers, moments like this seem important to bring community voices to the table in a structured way… I’ll be curious to stay in touch with the local activists to see if anything truly changes or if this was ‘performative participation’ rather than a truly participatory planning process. 

A Way Forward - Environmental Impact Research and Community Accountability Training

When community members asked the council what could actually be done to inspire a change in the status quo, the Deputy Mayor asked for further research on the impacts of the mines… 

So Martin’s organization has put together an impressive selection of studies that I will outline briefly below – for deeper analysis please see our appendix coming soon.

* The First - attached below, a Comprehensive Study on ‘Environmental Remediation and Improvement focusing on the towns of Kabwe, Kitwe, Chingola and Mufulira from 2017-2020’

* This study was funded by the World Bank in 2017, providing over $65 Million in funding to conduct the study and support the implementation of programs in response to findings. 

* The Second, linked here, a new grant proposal to follow up on the implementation of the previous study for ‘Enhancing Communities Capacity to Demand for Natural Resource Accountability and Environmental Management in the Mining Sector 

* The assessment of Future-Preneurs is focused on updating the public on the lack of results from the previous study. 

* Rather than just citing the lack of results, they also present a strategy for community organizing to hold their elected officials accountable.

Another Way Forward - Conservation, Regeneration & The Just Transition

On the way home, we decided to stop at Mwakera Forest… EJ went to university at the Forestry School here and was able to show us around. Absolutely gorgeous. Luscious greens, huge old …

It was really tough to boil down this conversation with Ndivile Mokoena into a bite-size case study… for all the right reasons. Re-listening to our interview, I found myself trying to write out everything that Ndivile said because it all deserves to be highlighted. That being said, the version in this write up is abbreviated, so please go to our website to read the full case study on our conversation together. I hope you’ll take the time to listen to her story and support her work.

Inside the Episode - During our time together, we spoke about:

* Ndivile’s experience growing up in Soweto, South Africa and discovering her passion for social justice.

* Her work with Gender CC South Africa and why we need women at the table for climate decision making!

* Capacity Building: Beyond being the newest COP26 buzzword, what does this concept mean and how does GenderCC apply this in their communities?

* The role of NGOs in bridging the gap between governments and local communities, and how important that is especially in countries like South Africa where that relationship is historically complex and still very painful. 

Intro

Ndivile grew up in Soweto, South Africa with 5 siblings and parents who worked hard to provide a comfortable life. Early in her young adulthood, once her parents retired, she sacrificed her own education and got a job out of necessity to support her siblings as they were growing up. 

While she was doing well in her job and growing successful, she knew that she wasn’t quite working on her true passion - social sciences and justice. So as she got to this moment and stage of life, she took action. She started volunteering in community development work with youth and women while becoming a counselor to support different orphanages and women’s health organizations. A ‘burning desire’ emerged, she told me. ‘This is where I belong, this is who I am.’ It’s hard to make the jump from comfort to passion, I really admire this about Ndivile.

From there, a friend from church put her in touch with a ministry group called Justice and Peace - working on environmental justice, gender justice, land rights, and good governance practices. Among many lessons learned from her work with J&P, they were heavily focused on developing social analyses to assess needs of communities, ‘There is no point in going and implementing something in a community if the community themselves doesn’t relate to it. The project is going to fail, it won’t be successful.’ An important reminder, reminiscent of the message from Forget, this work became a launchpad for her future work with GenderCC and the rest is history!

In our conversation, we touched on a lot of amazing frameworks, use cases, and imagined new ways forward, but I’ll just touch on a few concepts here with some background on her organization first. 

GenderCC

GenderCC is an NGO based in Berlin with a chapter in Johannesburg and doing great work across southern Africa. They are focused on work at the intersection of climate justice and gender justice, approaching this by attempting to bridge the gap between government and local communities. 

Ndivile categorizes their work as advocacy - in her words, ‘advocating for the integration of gender into climate change policy, capacity building for communities, for government officials, and raising awareness at the nexus of gender and climate change.’ Their work stands up for women and non-binary folks as they are consistently brushed aside during global and local climate conversations.

There’s a lot packed into that, so we dug a bit deeper…  

Capacity-building 

Everyone at COP26 was talking about ‘Capacity-Building’ when it comes to helping communities better prepare for and adapt to local climate change effects. But somehow I left the conference unclear on what that actually meant. 

For Ndivile, it goes something like this: ‘As much as communities are able to identify the challenges they’re facing, they don't always know what to do, where to go, and what it is that is happening around them. Where does it come from, how do they relate to it, and how do they stop it?’

So the goal of GenderCC is to ‘empower these people with knowledge, information and resources when necessary.’ They help communities to identify the challenges, relate them to their social settings, and also tap into their traditional knowledge. 

Engaging existing indigenous practices is a huge priority for them: ‘When it comes to climate change and environmental issues, we know how our forefathers took care of our environment. Some of their knowledge, they gave to the next generations, especially when it comes to farming, preserving food, how we value the environment [in our culture], how we relate to nature, so we needed to tap into that knowledge.’

As Ndivile reminds us, ‘before all of this technology/civilization was there, people survived with clean, pure water, eating well. We don’t need to come up with solutions for them, so rather we ask, ‘it seems you have this problem in your area, how do you think it can be sorted?’ 

Ndivile was kind enough to walk us through their process for community engagement. Rather than write it all out here, please head to our website for the full version: brym.co.

Gender/Climate Use Case - Water:

As an example of how GenderCC engages with communities specifically at the nexus of gender and climate, she told me about a ‘Water Use’ workshop, which included both men and women in a partner community.

They asked the men a simple question: What do you use water for over the course of the day? ‘Bathing, drinking, maybe watering the garden,’ this was the extent of the answers they got. 

When the women answered, even men in their own families were amazed by how many more uses the women had for water, to benefit not only themselves but their family and community as a whole. 

For GenderCC, exercises like these are essential for communities to realize that women must be involved in decision making for all things with regard to water processes… why would you exclude from planning the group who uses water more than anyone else? The thesis is clear: Women are working with water every day, they can come up with better solutions. This also applies beyond water to things like energy, food and many other areas of life. 

On top of that, women across the world are usually still expected to perform care work. This is unrecognized by the economy as ‘informal’ rather than ‘formal’ work and is therefore both unpaid and under-recognized in the context of policy planning. For Ndivile, policies need to be wholly inclusive to all segments of society and involve those who know the most!

GenderCC’s hope is that by highlighting specific intersectional examples to governments, like a woman ‘fetching water or firewood with babies on their back,’ this will create more awareness of the necessity for inclusion in climate conversations. 

The Role of an NGO 

For Ndivile, the role of an NGO is to bridge government and communities together. They offer some resources to governments to help them go about this in the right way when they are considering offering a new program or solution.

Example :

* Advise gov to do a ‘community stakeholder consultation’ - usually at these meetings, there are scientists and academics, but no community leaders. 

* Use community avenues to communicate time and place of a public hearing and gather feedback on the idea - local radios and newspapers rather than international new outlets.

* Use simple and native language - remove scientific jargon and ensure the community can understand. In South Africa, oftentimes the gov will require English, which decreases engagement.

* Have a workshop with the community before a public hearing to inform them on how the process will work for this … encourage them to talk from the heart, tell their story. Use their native tongue.

History of Racial and Gender-based violence:

The relationship between government and communities is even more complex in a country like South Africa. As Ndivile told me, ‘[Apartheid] …

This time around, we’re trying something a little different!  Hope you enjoy. 

Our interview this week, with Raúl Quelovren-Martinez, is in Spanish! For all fluent Spanish speakers listening in, I apologize in advance for my broken language abilities :). For English speakers, you’ll find a transcription of our conversation below. Regardless, here’s some background on how this conversation came to be…

In January, I had the opportunity to volunteer on an organic farm in Southern Chilé, just outside of a small town called Pucón. After speaking with the owner of the farm, Pamela, through a program called Workaway, she connected me with Raúl Quelovren-Martinez, the mastermind who runs their farm operations. After losing my passport on the first day in Pucón (and recovering it through a stroke of pure luck and a stranger’s goodwill), I was picked up by Raúl in the town center and we drove out to the farm together. 

He had a friend in town who produced and sold a natural (non-alcoholic) ginger ale -  he picked me up some for the drive!

Over the weeks we spent together, Raúl challenged me to think differently…Building a spiritual connection to the earth around us matters, gift giving should be the backbone of our ‘economic’ system, and developing relationships with Mother Earth can help us rebuild a more just world.

Interestingly, when I returned home, I found myself feeling self-conscious telling people about my time on the farm because it felt ‘corny’ or ‘cheesy’ speaking about the spirituality I experienced there with human and non-human beings. But as I reflected more, I realized that feeling came from a deeply embedded social coding and it was actually my own reality at home that needed to evolve … Our capitalist mentality of wanting more and consuming more was making it really hard to slow down, breathe, and connect on a deeper level with nature, plants, new friends, a new language, vegetables, fruits, birds, dogs, cats, music and painting.

My time in Pucón wasn’t about making money or going faster, but rather about reconnecting with a part of myself that has long been nascent … re-inventing a city boy’s relationship with Mother Earth. I came away with a passion to start a garden in my community, restart restoration work on the street tree outside the NYC building where I grew up, and to look for ways in which I can have my hands in soil as I chart my future chapters of ‘work’. I owe a lot of this to Raúl. 

On one of our last days together, we recorded a conversation… My language skill improved immensely over my time there and I tried my best. For those interested in hearing from Raúl, I’ve transcribed the interview and translated it as best as I could for you in English below…

We cover a lot together, including:

* His life growing up in Chilé

* His passion for the earth, for gardens, bees, and garlic bread.

* Indigenous approaches to sustainability and relationships with the earth.

* The potential for technology and innovation to combine with indigenous knowledge and Raúl’s optimism for how humanity’s relationship with the earth will evolve for the better. 

Here’s the Interview - my questions in bold, and his answers translated to English in between - hope you enjoy!: 

Here we are at Raúl's house! Ten or fifteen minutes outside Pucón in the south of Chile. My first question: Where are you from, what was your life like growing up and how did you get here?

Great! Well, I'm from the north of Chile and since the age of 6 years old, I lived very close to the pure countryside. We had a little place by the riverside playing with animals, cows, open fields, flowers... a very good life. Just playing, enjoying connection with nature. Then I came here, this is where my brother was born, and I met Andres, Pamela's partner. (Pamela is the boss, ha)!. She loves this place and is very passionate about nature, the garden, and sustainability.

It has been amazing working together in the garden and learning from you. What is your favorite thing about a garden?

What I like most about the garden are many things, but I think the main thing is being outside, in the fresh air, in contact with nature. That's what moves me and I feel that the garden polishes you. It teaches you resilience through the cold, heat, rain, and wind. I think that is what I like the most, apart from the colors as well.

What is your favorite garden you have been to and why?

There is a garden built into the forest in Patagonia Park that is definitely my favorite. It was donated by the Chilean State to be a unique park. Usually, you go to a national park, there are always a lot of people. But, this is a very isolated place in Patagonia with only wild animals. And in the middle of the park there is a garden - the best garden, I think.

Every morning, when I worked there, I would walk to the garden and we would see many birds and sometimes even a condor up in the mountains. So, it is already the best place before all the very inspiring people. Environmentalists, photographers, writers, landscape designers. Lots of inspiration and a place of peace.

What is your favorite fruit or vegetable or flower to grow?

I’m not sure I can pick a favorite, but I think I would say the tomato. It is very interesting to work with them, but a lot of work. I love the smell and it takes a different type of handling and cultivation. But when you work hard with them, the harvest is great. And a homegrown tomato is very different from buying a bad supermarket tomato.

Beyond the garden, I learned that you love bread! We had a blast making pizza together and you also make amazing garlic bread! Why this love for bread?

Because the bread that one buys in the supermarket is very bad for my digestion and inflammation - so I finally started making bread for my own wellness. Fermenting your own bread with just flour, water and salt is very different from a bagged bread with 30 ingredients. It's also an interesting process to dedicate time to the cooking - it is like an act of wellness. The wellness comes along with the perfect bread.

And honey!! You brought me some incredible honeycomb from your bees at home and I even saw you sting yourself with a bee for medicine - why do you love bees?

Why do I love the bees? Simply, the bee is like permaculture. They are a perfect, perfect model of a community. Everyone supports each other. Some build, some forage or feed back perfectly. Besides that, they pollinate all our flowers, fruit, food and in their hive are all these different medicines. Everything one needs to be well is in the hive. Not only honey, but propolis, wax, royal jelly. It's like a pharmacy. A perfect model. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your relationship with the earth and why it’s important for you? You are always walking around playing music and it seems like you have great respect for the garden but also a lot of fun together!

Well, with my relationship with the Earth, I think it is something much deeper than me and a plant. I feel that there is a spirit behind it but that we are totally blocked from this by our system, by political economy, and we are not perceptible to that. 

Also, the garden has helped me a lot, as in my personal path to know who Raúl is. So, I have great respect for the garden as a teacher. I love the vegetable garden, it makes me happy and can you stay alive without the orchard? No.

You told me you really enjoyed studying in university but also you told me that that experience was very different than experiencing work in a garden and volunteering - what did you study, why did you like it, and why was it different than working?

Yes, of course it was different.. I studied agricultural techniques, mostly plant-based, not animal-based. And why was that? Because I suffered a lot of injuries, especially in sports. And I thought, my injuries, maybe they came from bad nutrition… So what can I do to be in nature and seek better food? 

And then it started, as you said. A lot of theory, theory, theory, theory, theory, theory, which is very good,…

Inside the Episode with Forget Shareka, Co-Founder of Chashi Foods and Founder of Life Hope Future Association:

* How can organizations avoid the pitfalls of extractive development work and instead build organizations that identify challenges first - then build tailored solutions second.

* What is a ‘Multiplier Effect,’ and how can social entrepreneurs leverage this for greater impact?

* How can we embody the concept of ‘Shared Prosperity’ for ourselves, our families, and our communities?

Encouraged Reading 

* Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

* How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney

Introduction:

I first heard Forget Shareka speak on the COP26 Panel discussion, ‘African Women’s Grassroots Climate Action.’ Years younger than her contemporaries on stage, I was incredibly impressed by her poise, wisdom and vision for the future. I came away inspired by her work as a social entrepreneur and I hope you will be too. 

Challenges:

All too often, we heard at COP about the consistent failures of ‘development work’ … AKA oftentimes Global North organizations ‘swooping in’ and attempting to make impact but not doing it in the right ways, leading to further harm for the local communities that organizations were hoping to help. One short and simple story stuck with me.

A Global North - based organization received funding for a limited time project (5 years) to help a community in Uganda grow more farm crops. They introduced a new seed into the farming community, one that would yield crops at a much faster rate. This succeeded over the first harvesting season. However, the farmers soon realized a few things: 

* The newly introduced seed did not coexist with the local soil and climate. Once crops were harvested, their seeds did not effectively regrow into new generations - something that their local seed did very well.

* The new seed was much more expensive and they would have to purchase it from outside the community. Additionally, they would need to purchase a new set of seeds each year because it did not regenerate effectively.

* The Global North - based organization would not continue the development project after the allotted 5 years were done and funding evaporated. 

The result was a community, who had been farming with a specific and successful seed for countless generations, now had a new reliance on a foreign seed that did not adapt well to their climate and soil. They were locked into a very expensive contract that seemed attractive initially on paper but was ill-designed and extractive from the start. 

I was interested to learn from Forget what, in her mind, constituted justice when working with a local community and how we can approach partnership differently than the all-to-frequent cautionary tale above…

Signs of Hope:

Forget Shareka + Chashi Foods

Forget grew up in a rural community in northern Zimbabwe, raised by her grandmother who was a subsistence farmer. She describes her home community as ‘marginalized’ but she “doesn’t regret growing up in that type of environment, because that environment absolutely shaped who [she is] today”.  As she said, everything happens for a purpose, and her purpose is to learn from her experiences and have a positive impact in development work.

Inspired by her grandmother and equipped with her education, she decided to focus her energy supporting farmers in her community. As she explained, “Agriculture is life, it is everything… so why can’t I help the farmers and my community around me?”

After spending time with farmers, and even constructing a small farmers’ working group, she quickly identified a key challenge: lack of robust cold storage facilities leads to shorter shelf lives for fruits & veges and lots of post-harvest food waste. Drying technologies seemed to be one potential solution. So, as the leader of Product Development she worked with farmers and in a lab for a year experimenting with different fruit drying techniques.

Forget also knew she wanted to build a completely ‘green business’ and for her that meant ‘no waste’. So the model quickly evolved…

* Chashi Foods will buy produce directly from farmers then process that into dried fruits.

* The residues are either turned into other products (for example, residual spices can also be sold), or made into compost.

* This compost is donated to the community, neighbors or farmers to eliminate waste.

* Today, they sell dried pineapples, bananas, mangos, apples, and more - see more details HERE

* Additionally, they offer drying services for other farmers who want to leverage their technology and also offer farmer training (like the farmers’ working group) who they help with ‘post harvest management and agribusiness.’ Forget was able to share a few amazing stories as examples during our interview together, like supporting a local farmer grow and sell her own dried tomatoes to a local hotel before even Chashi was able to do so! 

Chashi Foods is doing things the ‘right’ way and being recognized for their leadership. They are a majority-women team, received a ‘Green Business Award,’ share their knowledge with the community around them, and I can’t wait to see where they go from here… I’m sure with Forget involved, they will achieve great things.

CAMFED

In our conversation together, Forget referenced a statistic from UNICEF - only 14% of children reach secondary school in Zimbabwe and 8% reach Upper Secondary School. This is an even greater challenge for children like Forget who grew up in rural communities where sometimes just the distance from home to school can make it impossible to continue education. In primary school, she walked 12 kilometers to and from school every day. Compared to my 12 city block walk to school, just over 1 kilometer, this really puts things into perspective.

One incredible group that stepped up to help Forget is CAMFED. Since 1992, they have supported over 4.8 million children go to school in Ghana, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. 

Forget told me that along with school fees being a barrier to education, there are oftentimes many additional factors beyond cost like stationary, uniforms, and sanitary pads. CAMFED helps financially support students who need it but also makes an extra effort to offer non-financial support as well. For example, when Forget’s brother had a stroke, they made sure to track her down and provide support so that she could return to school. 

They also are building the CAMFED Association, which is a network of women leaders educated with CAMFED support who are now pushing for change in their communities … this group helped Forget with university applications, and actually provided her with an email address to use when submitting those applications before she had one herself! They also offer zero interest loans and support to any child who wants to start a business to support their family and community, offering an important alternative to banks or other finance institutions who would ask for significant collateral.

Amongst these incredible gifts, according to Forget, one of the greatest lessons from CAMFED came from their mentality around a ‘Multiplier Effect.’ Every girl who graduates and joins this Association agrees to financially support the schooling of at least three others and extend that support into multiple types of mentorship and ‘sisterhood’. Over time, this network expands and multiplies… this is how Forget hopes to run Chashi Foods, with impact multiplying out across communities and across generations after we are all gone from this world.

Takeaways:

Here are some lessons that I’ve learned from Forget since we first met:

* “Understanding leads to tailored solutions, extrapolation leads to failed impact.”

* Successful projects immediately involve the local community to understand what the real challenges are, what help is needed or not needed, and then leveraging the existing knowledge of the community as a partner to implement a solution. 

* It is important for entrepreneurs, non-profits and individuals to learn about the challenge first hand rather …

Inside the Episode with Dan McCallum, Co-Founder of Egni Cooperative and Awel Aman Tawe (AAT) - we had the chance to speak about, amongst other things:

* How does Community-Owned energy work and what is a ‘Cooperative’?

* Two ‘Social Enterprises’ Combine: The Egni <> Merthyr Town FC Partnership

* Predictions for the future of community-owned energy

Based on our conversation, please see more references and recommended reading at the end of our case study today! Enjoy!

Background: Climate Innovation & Justice

At COP26 in Glasgow, a huge topic of conversation was the intersection of environmental justice and the development of new innovative technologies. New solar, wind, marine (and many more) technologies are becoming more mainstream everyday, driving our dependence on fossil fuels down, and that’s great. However, sometimes these new technologies are not built or implemented with ‘justice’ in mind - just profits for a few owners and/or investors. Therefore, multiple events and panel discussions each day dug into challenges and potential breakthroughs where these two concepts (climate innovation and climate justice) meet.

One question that was consistently asked of panelists by moderators and audience members was: ‘As a new project is getting up and running, how can you approach that work through a lens of justice for the community where the work is based?’

There were many different answers given across many different contexts, but a few motifs emerged… Well constructed projects entail:

* Community engagement and participation - from the design of a project → implementation → ongoing maintenance and education on why it’s important.

* Community Ownership - Community members actually own the assets of the project - Not always possible apparently depending on the context.

* Keeping resources in the local community rather than extracting them.

Intro to Egni and Awel Amen Tawe

Thinking through the above criteria, I encountered what I believe are two important case studies based in Swansea, Wales - Egni Co-op and Awel Aman Tawe (AAT). While two different project names, they operate under the stewardship of the same team and charity umbrella organization, so you’ll sometimes see reference to them here as one entity. 

Dan McCallum started Amel Awen Tawe with his wife back in 2002 with the hope of generating a wind turbine in their local community. Passionate about sustainability and persistent in their pursuit, it took 14 years to actually get through all of the political and financial barriers, finally getting the turbine project approved in 2016 and commissioned (constructed and producing energy) by 2017. 3 Million pounds was fundraised from the community to support this project!

Egni quickly followed, adding a focus on solar PV panel energy generation - their current share offering (see more details below) aims to install up to 5MW of rooftop solar, the largest rollout of solar in Welsh history. They have raised 4.7 Million Pounds for Egni, closing in on their goal of 4.8 Million! 

Egni and AAT have created fantastically unique partnerships with community organizations across the South of Wales. We heard about one such partnership briefly in our last conversation with Rob Davies at Merthyr Town FC. This case study today will get into some of the specifics of how they create partnerships, the unique organization structure they’ve been able to leverage, and why this might be a model that we can all learn from whether you’re starting a new organization from scratch or hoping to redefine an existing organization in pursuit of community energy and justice.

How it Works

The ‘Cooperative’ model and process for Egni is simple but profound:

* Egni promotes ‘share offers’ to local community members, organizations, charities, trusts, and social enterprises. This allows all different types of people to become ‘Members’ of the project and invest in the development of a new solar panel, wind turbine, or ground source heat pump. Egni also sometimes donates shares to organizations, like schools, hoping to teach the local community about the ‘Cooperative’ model by including them as a Member. 

* Egni partners with a group like Merthyr Town FC, a school or a business to install the solar panels on their roofs.

* ‘Feed in Tariffs’ pay Egni back when they produce energy for the grid. They are then able to reliably offer a 4% return to community investors, repaid annually to Members as interest on the original initial investment. Partners who allow Egni to install solar on their property can buy the energy at a discount.

While the shares are mostly advertised to the community where the work is being done, Dan gave me the go-ahead to share this opportunity with the Brym network… So, if you’re interested in investing and joining this program, their current share offer is available now! HERE is some more info on how it all works and you can invest HERE. The share offer is still open through February 2022 but closing soon. The minimum investment is only 50 pounds and the maximum is 100k. For context, Dan says they’ve received an average investment of ~2-5k from ~1,200 total members.

A Social Enterprise Partnership: Merthyr Town FC <> Egni Cooperative

The partnership between Egni and Merthyr Town FC is a big win-win for both groups and serving as a great example for how we can re-imagine our energy system. These two social enterprises, both from the South of Wales, are working together to keep resources in the community, generate clean energy, and provide an income to local residents all at the same time. 

Enabled by an Onsite Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) between the two parties, Egni designed and installed Solar Panels directly on Merthyr Town FC’s stadium. The football club then purchases energy from these panels at a fixed rate (20% lower than the alternative grid pricing from their existing supplier). Then, Egni, because of the Feed in Tarrifs mentioned above, are able to receive additional financial support back to pay their members their annual 4% return. Seems like a no-brainer…

However, it’s not all smooth sailing. While structuring share offers seems like a really successful community engagement and fundraising tool, Dan and his team still run into consistent challenges gaining council approvals from the local governing bodies. For example, as we heard from Rob at Merthyr Town FC, it took a year to complete the solar panel installation project on the roof of their stadium. However, only 3 weeks of that year were spent installing the panels. The other 11+ months were spent adapting their ‘lease agreement’ to accommodate the installation and then gaining approval from Merthyr Town Council.

In working with schools, retirement homes, and other more rural community organizations, Egni also frequently comes up against the technical challenge of plugging their power into the grid system… a barrier faced by many decentralized, micro-grid schemes. 

However, one way or another, they are positioning the win-win components of these partnerships to navigate through governing bodies, achieving their goal of creating localized clean energy.

The Future of Energy is Community-Owned and Democratic

Big utilities are powerful. They control a lot of the energy produced in our world today along with the profits associated with that energy. But when I asked Dan what he thought the future of energy looked like, he spoke about the oncoming decentralization and democratization developing in our energy system. He mentioned some great examples from community owned solar, wind and ground sourced energy… to decentralized clean transportation in rural areas.  

But the example he mentioned that most stuck out to me is unfolding as we speak in Berlin, Germany. The city government has ‘bought the grid’ out of the hands of big private utilities, the main company actually from Sweden. The goal of the city is to build an intricate distributed energy infrastructure over 35,000 square kilometers. There is a growing clean energy and mobility start-up enviro…

Apologies in advance for a long interview and post - there was a lot to cover in our first ever interview and I hope you’ll stick with it!

Inside the Episode with Rob Davies, Board Member with Merthyr Town FC:

* Family history from my dad’s dad’s old home town in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales and perfect serendipity that reconnected us back to our routes.

* A transition from Coal to Green Energy: How history is inspiring a new green energy movement in Merthyr.

* Models for Community Ownership and Support: Merthyr Town FC’s strategy for plugging into their community in more ways than just sport.

References to keep in mind: 

* 3G Pitch: The field that Merthyr Town FC plays on, which also acts as the cetner for community involvement and activities to gather the town together like kids summer soccer camp and the walking soccer tournament for seniors.  The pitch, through some of these activities, is also helping generate income that will fall into the capital reserve for the club.

* Forest Green Rovers: ‘Greenest’ football club in the UK deemed by the EU.

Encouraged Reading:

* Powerpoint attached from Rob Davies on how the Club’s Foundation is partnering with their town.

* Book on Worker Cooperatives: ‘How to be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century,’ Erik Olin Wright

The History

My dad’s dad’s side of the family comes from a small town in the South of Wales, called Merthyr Tydfil. You’ve probably never heard of it before. 20 minutes north of Cardiff, Merthyr is a forgotten town with a complex past. My dad and I set out to return back to Merthyr and learn more about this history, we had no idea what to expect… 

October 2021. Before departing for our trip, we unpacked 4 overflowing Bankers Boxes onto my bed in New York. They were filled to the brim by my grandmother, Frances Helen, with old family journals, notecards, pictures, and artifacts - I learned quickly where my impressive hoarding genes come from.

Amidst the trinkets, we found a picture that Frances Helen had saved. It showed a grassy field filled with sheep, a Welsh theme we would later learn. On the back of the picture, we found 2 things… the first, a reminder in her script handwriting, ‘Merthyr Tydfil, this is where Mary lived’ (my great-grandmother). The second, a building name: ‘Garthnewydd’. We looked this name up and believe it or not, we found an address… and it still existed today… we had our first lead. 

Who would we meet? What would be there? What would we learn about our family? We didn’t know. All we knew was that we would have to go and see for ourselves…

The Journey

While doing research on our old town, we found that they had a local football club, Merthyr Town FC, competing in the Southern League Premier Division South - the 7th tier of the English football league system. I’ve spent pretty much my entire life growing up playing football (soccer), so we knew we had to try and see a match. When we looked up their schedule, sadly, they didn’t have any home games in Wales. BUT, it turned out that on the first day we were planning to arrive in London, they would be playing a match about 45 minutes north of the city… 

We caught the Tube from the Tower of London to the national rail line and traveled north to a small town called Kings Langley, another place you’ve probably never heard of considering even our hotel in London had no clue how to get there. The town train stop was still a 20-30 minute walk from the stadium grounds, so we found ourselves walking along the highway on the last leg of the journey. We arrived early, grabbed a beer from the pop-up pub and chose a good spot on the concrete standing bleachers. 

Merthyr Town FC came out for warmups before the start of the match and my dad and I gave a cheer, inviting a few confused glances our way from the Kings Langley faithful. ‘Who are these two random guys we’ve never seen before? Why are they rooting for Merthyr? And why do they sound American?’

The match began and Merthyr scored a great goal, jumping out to an early first half lead - my dad and I went crazy. Of course, since we were the ‘away side’ the rest of the crowd was silent EXCEPT for us and these three guys behind us, also in celebration and wearing some very stylish Merthyr Town FC hats. We turned around and high-fived them, thankful that we might have someone on our side if the local team fans decided to turn their death stares into action…

At half-time, my dad and I struck up a conversation with these three men behind us… they were born and raised in Merthyr Tydfil and actually on the Board of Trustees for Merthyr Town FC! They were confused why we were there, confessing that their first thought was ‘who the heck are these lads?’ but also excited to see some other fans who had clearly traveled a long way to show up for the club. We told them about our family history, the notecard with the sheep we had found from my grandmother, and they excitedly invited us to the Merthyr stadium for a tour when we planned to be there a few days later. 

‘Perfect Serendipity’… What were the chances of us standing directly in front of them? What were the chances they were a part of the club and kind enough to invite us to their home field? This was one of my first great lessons in the realm of ‘fieldwork’. Go on adventures, put yourself in positions to meet new people, and exude an open mindset to welcome other people into conversation with you. 

Community-Driven Green Energy

When I followed up with Board member Rob Davies over email, I told him how excited we were to visit the Merthyr stadium and also told him about Brym, this new project I was working on at the intersection of Climate Innovation and Justice. There were a few environmental organizations in Wales I was hoping he might know and be able to introduce me to. Turns out, while he didn’t know the groups I was targeting, Merthyr Town FC had actually just launched their own ‘Green Energy Programme’!!

We arrived at the stadium and he offered to show me the new solar panels they had just installed in partnership with a local South Wales workers cooperative, EGNI. We will hear more from the Founder of Egni and this partnership in our upcoming episode, but their agreement allowed Merthyr Town FC to purchase energy from those panels at a 20% discount compared to the normal grid pricing. They had also just replaced their old lighting system with LED lights that saved up to 50% of the electricity used, and had installed smart infrared sensors to act as timers in their buildings to only use energy when people entered rooms. Moving forward, they are launching a few other great initiatives with the community including a new wind turbine, electric car chargers in the carpark, potentially on the horizon as an example for the community and for larger football clubs as well. 

After the tour, we walked out onto the pitch (field) and I asked him if we could record an interview together on these initiatives… our conversation ended up being Brym’s first ever interview. We were off to the races with a great positive example at the intersection of green innovation, local community justice, and a sport that I loved. 

I was not expecting to encounter this third variable in the equation. However, it makes complete sense when you learn more about the essential role of a local football club in supporting a small community like Merthyr beyond just sport. They run a Foundation alongside the club that supports schools, healthcare centers, elderly populations, and is a strong overall proponent for the health of their town.

From Extractivism to Labor Organizing

During our conversation, I also learned more about the history of Merthyr Tydfil and its central role during the global industrial revolution. Under the Merthyr soil lies a vast wealth of coal. In the early 19th century, industry flocked to extract the resource, lifting the population from a couple hundred to over 80,000 in just a few years. The town’s story of extraction is similar to countless others across our world history, leaving the Merthyr…

We’re happy you’ve made it here, one way or another. :) 

Brym is a dream, a mission, and molding itself into a new reality. It’s an organism that is growing deep roots and given the right nurturing, will flower into many manifestations of different shapes and sizes.

To start, we are excited to build a global community of changemakers at the intersection of climate innovation and justice - and hoping that this group can collaborate together to mold Brym in service of global equity and understanding. If you’re reading this, then you’re already a part of our growing community!

Season 1 of our newsletter and interview podcast series will run through July 2022 - thank you in advance for your understanding and patience as we put together a better and better audio product - we’re learning on the job and loving it! Feel free to check out our Website here and give us feedback on what makes sense and what needs work!

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Our Mission

Brym’s Mission Statement (Version 1) is as follows:

Brym seeks to support climate innovations that center environmental justice for local communities affected by climate change. 

Coming from this, there stem more than a few questions! What types of innovative climate solutions do we need? What does environmental justice for local communities mean? Who are the communities most affected by climate change?

As the mission for Brym started to manifest, it became clear that we definitely did not have all the answers to the above questions. And that’s ok! We’re excited to collaborate with leaders who can help us navigate these issues while activating a network to not only brainstorm together, but to build solutions.

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Phase 1 - Brym’s Global Research Program

So... the first year of Brym will drive a heavy focus on research, centered around the question:

How can innovative climate solutions manifest through a lens of environmental justice for local communities?

The research program syllabus spans across 4-5 continents, if COVID19 will allow it, with the intention of listening and learning from the experience of organizations and individuals at the frontlines of climate change. Brym hopes to take you along for the journey - highlighting these experiences in different communities, offering initial insights and learnings, and encouraging avenues for engagement.

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Packaging the Research

Dialing into some more details, the research program will be released in a rolling fashion, packaged as a combination of: 

* The Brym Podcast structured as a Ted Talk Series, where Brym engages in interviews with a global network of organizations and individuals, uplifting their work and encouraging people to get involved! Cadence: Bi-weekly.

* The Brym Newsletter highlighting the work of members of our global network and relaying research conducted, lessons learned, and helpful resources to engage within specific areas of focus. Cadence: Bi-Weekly

* A Culminating Thesis Report will present research and analysis, weaving together a narrative of learnings from multiple countries and sectors. Findings will inform and shape future evolutions for Brym’s work at the intersection of climate innovation, community empowerment, and global understanding. ETA: September 1, 2022

Please, please, please give us your feedback along the way... there will be things that we can be doing better and we are all ears.

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A sneak peak at the what’s coming your way:

To launch this research, I traveled to the UK and had the opportunity to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. The highlights? Listening to panelists share their experiences from across the world and joining in the Climate Action March with 100,000 other young people fighting for a new world.

You will have the opportunity to hear directly from some of the brilliant minds that I met at COP26 along with collection of learnings from conference panel discussions. You will also hear stories from my travels in Wales (some of which I was lucky enough to do with my dad) and some inspirational figures I met along the way. 

To give y’all a more specific sense, you’ll hear from…

* A Local Football Club (not the NFL) partnering with the local community to implement a new green energy program in a former coal mining town.

* A Workplace Cooperative building community-owned and operated solar and wind projects in Swansea, Wales.

* A new Marine Energy company, building ‘Proof-of-Concept’ for a new Wave Energy Machine off the coast in Southwest Wales. 

* A Sri Lankan organization launching an accelerator/incubator program, supporting youth-led solutions to climate change in their local communities.

* A beauty brand re-shaping how we think about waste and the future of a ‘Circular Economy’.

* A food justice and educational organization in Zimbabwe - providing a great example of how to incorporate local communities into program planning and implementation processes.

* A South African organization fighting for climate justice through the lens of gender equity.

* A Middle Eastern faith-based advocacy group pushing for a new type of COP conference.

* A Global Buddhist Organization fighting for the protection of all sentient beings, hoping to impact our global food system.

These are just some of the conversations we’ve already had. Can’t wait to share more with all of you. Stay tuned! 

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A Call to Action

The ultimate goal of Brym is not only researching global solutions but activating groups of people to learn from these examples in a meaningful way. Brym will offer opportunities to plug into different organizations, partner with individuals and activist networks, and maybe even motivate you to start something of your own with a greater context for what is needed and how best to bring that idea to life. 

Personally, I hope along the way, I can get out of my ‘American bubble’ and grow from engaging with people different from myself. I hope to tell stories that cultivate a greater a sense of Global Understanding. Let’s start with listening and learning first, then see where we go from there.

I’m a huge JRR Tolkein fan. After quitting my job and diving whole-heartedly into Brym, sometimes I’ve felt a bit lost along the journey. But, as he says, ‘Not all who wander are lost’... I’m excited to take the time to get out of my normal bubble, meet new people, and wander a bit more than usual into new stories and experiences...

Welcome again! Can’t wait to start this journey with all of you…