We are the founders of Fundación Barichara Regenerativa. Our mission is to regenerate the regional climate system of our territory in the heart of the Northern Andes. This includes three major river systems and a unique ecology like nowhere else on Earth – the “High Andes Tropical Dry Forest” that has been severely damaged in the last 80 years.
Our team is comprised of community leaders who work in one or more of four thematic areas:
A major focus for us is watershed restoration through land-system change. We live in a region that is rapidly becoming a desert after more than 95% of the tropical dry forest was cut down in order to produce monoculture crops, introduce cattle and real estate development. We weave among local initiatives to organize at landscape scales using techniques from permaculture, Syntropic agroforestry, and other domains of relevant knowledge.
We also gather and convene local producers of food, cosmetics, natural fibers, earthen construction, and related craft skills to create regenerative economic models through an initiative called Casa Común. Barichara is registered as a national heritage site in Colombia for its depths of local cultural craft skills among the descendants of the Indigenous Guane people and local campesinos that go by the name Patiamarillos.
We believe that regeneration at all the levels mentioned can only be possible if there is a spiritual and emotional healing at the individual and collective level, through the restoration of the human relationships and also through our relation with Planet Earth and all of its earthlings.
In order to help organize all of this work, we have established our own territorial foundation called Barichara Regenerativa and are in the process of creating four different community-led funding ecosystems. They are a Regenerative Education Fund, Restoring the Rivers Fund, Regenerative Economics Fund, and Territorial Healing Fund. In the last four years, we have mobilized several hundred thousand dollars through various philanthropic relationships and in numerous Gitcoin rounds. The funding has always come into community hands through processes of sociocratic decision-making.
Our focus for the funding that we receive in this BioFi Pathfinders Round is to support the creation of governance structures for watershed restoration while weaving among reforestation efforts that are already underway throughout our territory. This is part of the Restoring the Rivers Fund that has been in a process of gradual formation throughout the last year. It is connected with work that we are doing to create a Geoportal of geographic information systems that connect different educational initiatives and watershed restoration efforts across our territory.
Our team at the foundation has the following founding members:
Mariana Atuesta
José Barco
Sergio Barrera
Joe Brewer
Camila Encinales
Tannia Falconer
Emilce González
Manuela Ángel
Margarita Higuera
Natalia Ortiz
Maria Cecilia Restrepo
Ivonne Valencia