Networking Organic Argentina

On Monday, January 10th, Sarita and I fly to Buenos Aires. For the next five months we will travel through Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Peru for our non profit organization, Organic Volunteers. Our website, www.GrowFood.org, lists more than 750 internships, jobs, workshops and volunteer opportunities in organic farming and sustainability in the USA. This winter we will collaborate with Latin American organizations to create an intercontinental network.

In the age of eBay our little website doesn’t sound like much. However, we’re talking about more than online sales. We make real connections between real people. We use a decentralized network, rather than a hierarchical organization to revolutionize education. Over 9000 members use Organic Volunteers to get their hands dirty experiencing sustainability, instead of paying large sums of money to read about it at a university. The farmer is the professor; the farm, the classroom. We enroll as many students as my state university, The Evergreen State College.

During our trip we will report on current events and our adventures on this blog and in independant media. (Using a Linux based laptop supplied by FreeGeek Olympia!) Our itinerary is ever evolving but here are some exciting events we will cover:

• Enero Autonomo, an international meeting of autonomous organizations and human rights activists, to be held in an occupied factory in La Tablada, Gran Buenos Aires, Argentina. (www.autonomista.org)

• The World Social Forum, one of the largest meetings of international civic groups to set an alternative world agenda that puts peace, social justice and environmental sustainability before short-term profits. (www.forumsocialmundial.org.br)

• Permaculture in Patagonia, a twelve week practicum where participants learn to design sustainable human settlements that regenerate, rather than destroy, the Earth. (www.kleiwerks.com)