Impact 2020-2024

New Moon Impact 2023-2024

 

In 2022, New Moon relocated to Puerto Rico, where we continue to nurture collaborations across the country that grow a culture and economy grounded in love and care. Highlights include collaborations focused on ancestral agriculture and community birth.

 

Collaboration with RAPA (Regenerating Ancestral Puerto Rican Agriculture/ Regeneración de la Agricultura Puertorriqueña Ancestral). New Moon helped found , grounded in the leadership, experience, knowledge, and relationships of Puerto Rican ancestral methods farmer and trainer Susimar Gonzalez Martinez. RAPA is dedicated to bringing forth a regenerative agricultural and economic system grounded in our island’s ancestral Indigenous agricultural practices, the leadership of local farmers, and our deep cultural values of sovereignty, mutuality, and community care. RAPA is a project of New Moon Collaborations, a national culture and systems transformation effort now based in Puerto Rico.

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RAPA is based in Moca, a town on the rural Western side of Puerto Rico, an area often overlooked in grant making and resources to communities. Since RAPA was founded, we have:

 

• Provided free 4 month intensive hands-on training in ancestral Puerto Rican techniques to 20 farmers, including providing them with seeds and agricultural materials to begin planting and applying ancestral methods as soon as they complete the training. 

• Convened an Ancestral Farmers Retreat in April 2024 for local ancestral farmer leaders in the West of Puerto Rico, creating much needed space for story-based relationship building and collective strategizing regarding ways to maintain, promote, and amplify ancestral farming in Puerto Rico. This retreat included training in micro climate monitoring systems to improve their farming in the face of rapid climate change, which was then followed by donation of these systems and their free installation to all participants, forming the preliminary micro-climate monitoring network.

• Nurtured and deepened organic relationship building and organizing to support local connections needed for ensuring that local land remains in local hands (versus for-profit outside investor purchases) for ancestral methods use, and for potential donations of abandoned schools and other buildings toward use as agro-colmados. 

 

Ancestral regenerative agriculture is crucial to the ecological future of Puerto Rico and the world. Ancestral regenerative agriculture makes it possible to balance the pH of the soil, restore the essential microorganisms in the decomposition of soil nutrients and strengthen the soil's immune system, the fungi. The use of lunar cycles allows for healthy plant growth encouraging an accelerated harvest.

 

Collaboration with Birth Center Equity, where we are part of  bringing forth a world where all communities have access to midwives in a birth center designed in response to their dreams, hopes, and needs. In 2022, New Moon’s narrative and story work (including videos such as this) contributed to an unprecedented infusion of resources into community birth centers and the growth of a nationwide network of people of color-led birth centers. In 2023, New Moon sponsored a listening and learning tour of midwife-led work in Puerto Rico, resulting in new connections and resources for Puerto Rican led midwifery.

 

New Moon is also proud of our work in the community wealth ecosystem (captured in our own videos), in partnership with Full Spectrum Labs, where we are spreading learnings and inspiration across the country through stories and tools of innovations in local economic self-determination.

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New Moon Impact 2020-2022

 

New Moon told revolutionary stories that strengthened community power in tangible ways. We're proud of the 2021 video stories we produced in collaboration with Jason Walker like Lead With Us: Birth Detroit and Return To The Heart: Our Amazing First Year, and our animated work with Renée Campbell on Community Blueprint, and how this work helped to generate resources for communities leading us into the future.

 

New Moon gathered and strengthened networked relationships and ideas that are changing the world. We're honored to have worked with partners such as Full Spectrum Labs and Facilitating Power to facilitate community and ecosystem stewards who are growing economic, cultural, and political power; and Birth Center Equity in creating powerful peer learning in the birth ecosystem; and StoryLine Partners (and TMJ Universe) in shaping strategy for narrative change.

 

New Moon led strategic narrative thinking to guide wise and informed decision making. We're humbled to have listened to the visions and questions of initiative leaders and woven them into reflection and strategy pieces shaping the direction of initiatives in birthing justice, climate justice, food sovereignty, and other sectors.