Life is funny sometimes...
After 6 years on Maui, and finally feeling like I was able to step away from Hana Farms with it able to sustain itself without me...I decided to set out into the world to take the sustainability model that we had developed into places that I felt needed it most.   In December I found myself in Central America seeking out new places of need...farms...charities...orphanages that I could help to bring into their fullest potential.  I began a collective that worked much like the WWOOF organization...but that focused more on finding that perfect person to connect to a specific need.  Think 'match.com' for volunteering :)

Anyways, everything was going great...I was finding literally hundreds of needs throughout the country, and having amazing meetings with humanitarians and social entrepreneurs from around the world...And what happens???

I received 4 messages from 4 separate people telling me that Maui needs me to come home!!!

While I was still living on Maui I use to say that the only thing that I felt I could do on a greater scale than Hana Farms, would be if somehow I could get gardens put into the school systems throughout Maui.  Well- apparently there is a new grant through the Michelle Obama Garden Initiative which works through the Center for Disease Control...and miraculously they have finally awakened to the reality that the best way to prevent diseases is through nutrition.  It is said that 8 out of 10 of the leading causes of death are all food-related-diseases!

 I was thrilled to hear that an amazing organization called Community Work Day (cwdhawaii.org) received the grant and they would be putting in up to 18 gardens throughout Maui, Lanai and Molokai over the next year.  After receiving the 4th e-mail I finally contacted CWD Coordinator-Matt Lane, to find out how I could help with the project.  After a lengthy conversation, and reading through the grant, I decided I should come out for a 2 week visit to see if this was a project I should be a part of.  I jumped in full-force...and realized quickly that it was more work than I had ever imagined.  Not only did they need a designer/ permaculturist...but they also needed someone to coordinate with the schools, to work with the teachers to develop a curriculum around the gardens, they needed a nutritionist and chef who knew how to get the kids excited about eating out of the garden, they needed someone to plan the work-days, and phases throughout the year, and they needed a greenhouse manager, someone who could plan all the seed purchases for an entire year of gardens in sites that haven't been selected yet, a compost guru, and someone who can work directly with the schools to hear their needs and desires and who can take those visions and put them into a pragmatic plan that can be executed for less than $1500/ garden.  This was going to take a super hero to pull this off...or a super SHEro.  And, I honestly didn't know if I had it in me.

On the second week of volunteering with the project...I had already logged in over 100 hours...and there was still so much to do.  I began my day asking the universe for a sign on whether or not I should commit to doing this project.  I was busy enough starting Voluntourism, I already had a full-time job...and I was realizing quickly that this position would take up ALOT of hours each week.  That evening, Tsunami warnings fired.  It was as if the universe was screaming..."If you are looking for a sign...this is it".

Mama Maui pulling me Home

In 2006, I got hired by a photographer named David LaChapelle (Lachapellestudio.com) to create a sustainable retreat on his 30 acre Rainforest property that he had just purchased in East Maui. He listed off a few key parts of his vision, and left this property in my hands for a year before he returned. This was the first time in my life that I was able to work with an unlimited budget- which for any kind of artist is a dream-come-true. With a lot of hard-work, intention, and blood-sweat-and tears.. we created one of the greatest living art-pieces that I had ever been a part of. The property is 95% self-sufficient (we needed to buy only grains and oils and the occasional meat). We run everything on solar or wind power, our cars run on discarded Veggie-oil from the hotel in town, we have goats, chickens and ducks, acres of vegetable gardens, salad mandalas, and dessert gardens (which is one of my favorites with cacao, vanilla bean, ice-cream bean, butterscotch fruit (chicos),mango, passionfruit, papaya, cherimoya...).

A beautiful part of this project was working with World Farmers Exchange who works specifically with farmers in third-world countries who are eager to learn new ways of growing food organically. The thought is that we train them in permaculture and sustainable agriculture- in methods that are cross-cultural- and they bring back the lessons and knowledge to share with their community. It was beautiful to see, when David began doing photoshoots and videos and we would break for lunch, a heartwarming reality revealed itself: that we are all the same. We would cook our food from the land, and have giant meals together, and Lady Gaga would be sitting next to Patience from Ghana, who would be sitting next to our farm-worker Cezar from the Philippines, sitting next to India Arie...all eating, all humbled and reminded of our humanness. It is a memory that will be with me forever. After LaChapelle land became a success, other farmers and families in the area began asking if we could help them as well. The recession hit Hana hard, and many people were out of work and not sure where to turn.

We decided to try an experiment: we had transformed Davids land with an unlimited budget (and figured anyone could do that), and we wanted to see what we could do with NO FUNDING, just with willing hearts, minds and hands working together. So, we found a central place in Hana- and began town-hall-style meetings. Instead of focusing on what we don't have and the scarcity- WHAT DO WE HAVE? And we began to make a list. One surprising thing that many people had overlooked was the abundance that the rainforest provided. They didn't look at the land as being lucrative anymore. They saw the fruit falling from the trees as a burden - it made a mess, had a shelf-life of only 3 days, and brought in mere pennies. So, we had to find a new way of utilizing this veiled-abundance.  So we brought in a couple of culinary masters - we looked at recipes, and found many ways of preserving the fruit by making value-added products (jams, hot-sauces, syrups, chutneys, candies, banana breads, ice-cream, sorbets, fruit snacks, soaps, salves, bath oils...).

And Hana Farms was born. Paul Taylor and Martin Vasey were willing to use their land as the location for the endeavor.  We started with just one employee- Ananda Nadeau (whom I will always see as the Mama of Hana Farms,), and a Costco Tent on the side of the road which eventually became a beautiful sustainable-thatched roof-open-air marketplace.

Paul and Marty were open to providing housing and tent-sites and a basic food stipend for workers, And so we began a whole new sort of volunteer internship program: college-aged kids come out for up to 3 months (we provide gourmet meals (mostly grown from the land), lodging and free permaculture classes weekly), they make amazing products out of the abundance that the Rainforest provides run the storefront, and learn about Agricultural Entrepreneurship. This model grew into an amazingly successful business that now helps to support over 30 families, artists, and farmers! (You can visit the road-side stand just after mile marker 31 on the Hana Hwy at the Welcome to Hana Sign... and we sell our products in 6 different stores on island, and online at www.hanafarmsonline.com It is amazing to see the results of what can happen when the right willing hands and hearts and minds are brought together to focus on a vision.

Basically, throughout this process what I saw as a commonality was that all of these projects from the Greenhouse project in Swaziland, to LaChapelle Land, to Hana farms were all made possible by bringing together the right people who shared a common vision. I have seen hundreds of volunteers whose lives were forever enriched by the experience of giving. Lives were deeply changed

Ultimately, I believe that we sometimes just need to be reminded that we are ALL the same. We are all children of God, we all have blood that flows through our veins, we all hurt, we all want to be Loved, and to feel validated, we all are looking for a sense of purpose in this life whether we realize it or not. And someday, we will all die, and return to that which we came from...and when we do, I don't think it matters how much money we made, or how many things we acquired, or even how many movies we were in. We are all given different amounts in this life, that is true....but what I believe matters most is how much of that we gave. How much of the love, or the voice, or the passion or the fame that we were given did we share? did we use to make a difference? What did we really contribute to the world- and will it be there after we are gone?

This is how Voluntourism was borne govoluntourism.com. We realized that there are millions of needs in the world...and yet, there are equally millions of people who are awakening to a new reality, and who have a hunger to serve, and a hunger to be part of something bigger than themselves...to be used...to be a vessel...and to give. Voluntourism finds these exceptional individuals and places them with the right needs...because YES...there is a need out there just waiting for YOU!