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Join us to celebrate the WasteNot program and the work of borderlands youth who interviewed community members about their household sustainability and explored innovative entrepreneurial solutions to the region’s surplus food issues.

Nov. 16, 2019  | 2:30-7:30pm (Come to some or all!)

Holler & Saunders, 590 W International St, Nogales, AZ 85621

2:00pm: Community Celebration Kick-Off 
2:30-4pm: Info Table Fair
2:30 & 3:30pm: Holler & Saunders tours 
4 pm: Youth Presentations by WasteNot Story, WasteNot Startup, and Seeds/Semillas
6:30pm Shared Meal

Every year, 60 percent of all fresh produce in the United States arrives through the port of entry in Nogales, AZ. Over 6000 tons of that produce, much of it still fresh, ends up in the Rio Rico landfill. That surplus could be turned into value-added food products or fertile compost for use in household or commercial ventures. WASTE NOT engaged Nogales, AZ youth in ethnographic documentation and entrepreneurial innovation addressing the community’s waste management and food surplus issues. It was a partnership between VozFrontera (a program of the Southwest Folklife Alliance (SFA), Startup Unidos, and the University of Arizona Office of Sustainability/Compost Cats. It was funded, in part, by the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.

“This program is critical in the borderlands because it creates the space for young people to see themselves as problem solvers and identify opportunities in their own community,” said program manager Nelda Ruiz, who grew up in Nogales. “Living on the front lines of environmental injustice, young people see firsthand broken systems all around them. From ongoing militarization at the port of entry to the unnecessary loss of tons of fresh produce passing through that port and then dumped at the landfill. They are ready to change these systems using the folklorist’s tools to document everyday culture and the entrepreneur’s tools to innovate new solutions for their community.”

Free and open to the public. Please RSVP here.

 

 

TUCSON, AZ—A new project will engage Nogales youth in ethnographic documentation of local foodways to develop innovative business ideas around the community’s waste management systems. The project, called “Waste Not: Borderlands Innovations in Food Waste Management,” will be managed by three partners: the Southwest Folklife Alliance (SFA), Startup Unidos, and the University of Arizona Office of Sustainability/Compost Cats. The organizations were awarded $63,000 for two years from the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.

Every year, 60 percent of all fresh produce in the United States (November-May) arrives through the port of entry in Nogales, AZ. Over 6000 tons of that produce, much of it still fresh, ends up in the Rio Rico landfill. That surplus could be turned into value-added food products or fertile compost for use in household or commercial ventures.

The project aims to create educational and experiential opportunities for young people to create real solutions to issues of food surplus in the region by 1) engaging young people youth in ethnographic research, documenting narratives of cultural traditions around food waste, 2) creating business innovation opportunities, and 3) building greater community awareness of and engagement with the borderlands produce industry. It builds on strong partnerships and ethical practices of community engagement, foregrounding the importance of traditional knowledge to inform inventive solutions to pressing community needs.

The project grows out of prior work in Nogales by all three organizations. In 2018, SFA launched VozFrontera, a center for youth engagement, leadership, and local arts incubation in Nogales. Startup Unidos launched a pilot program through VozFrontera, offering a certified training in economic development and entrepreneurship to five Nogales youth. SFA’s long-standing relationship with UA Office of Sustainability comes via its largest annual event, Tucson Meet Yourself Folklife Festival (TMY), for which the Compost Cats have worked to divert festival food waste and recyclables from the landfill to the Cats’ compost center at the San Xavier Cooperative Farm, where it is transformed into valuable soil amendments (compost) that can be reinvested in local food growing soils and landscapes. Nogales’ Fresh Produce Association of the Americas (FPAA) will assist in educational enrichment and, workforce development.

PARTICIPATION is open to 10 Santa Cruz County high school students. Online registration opens Tuesday, February 26, 2019 and closes Friday, March 15, 2019 at midnight. goo.gl/P1XxMM

by Eric Meyer, Junior, Nogales High School

The following essay shares lessons from Sessions 2-5 of Startup Unidos Youth Entrepreneurship, a program of Voz Frontera directed by Stephanie Bermudez

Learning and Practicing a Startup

We were introduced to entrepreneurs and startup community influencers, Saul Macias and Audrey De La Rosa. Saul, an Uber executive who works to provide Uber’s services to Southern Arizona, spoke to us about his experience with Uber and how it came about. He also spoke to us about starting a company, since he has also participated in multiple startups. In his first startup, his group’s idea won the competition.

Audrey is an entrepreneur who has also participated in many startups. After giving the youth members a brief introduction of herself, she spoke about her experience doing startups and the positive impacts that they have had on her.

After hearing from the experts, we got to work thinking about business ideas that could solve problems within our community. To do this, we brainstormed ideas using the business model canvas. Over time, we came to a consensus about two problems to address. One, there aren’t enough food providers in Nogales and two, the unemployment rate is rising. The business we came up with was called “Mom Rockets,” a local meal provider that employs unemployed mothers. We then analyzed the problems that Mom Rockets would solve for stakeholders.

Learning about the U.S. Small Business Administration Guidelines

For this session we attempted to simulate a conference call using Google Hangouts. Over the call, we learned about proper business planning techniques. Using guidelines given by the United States Small Business Administration, we individually analyzed each step in the business planning process, including: finding a location, calculating the startup costs, conducting market research, and funding the business.

Innovation in Downtown Tucson

Today was a real treat. We started the day at Connect Coworking in downtown Tucson. This innovative space allows for small businesses to have an office in a shared community along with space for people to come, work together, and collaborate. We met Startup Tucson founder Justin Williams, who is largely responsible for the development of a startup ecosystem and innovation district in Downtown Tucson in recent years.

As the day moved on, we walked all around the Innovation Sector of downtown Tucson. Williams led us to new businesses now booming in Tucson, Arizona. He gave us insight on how the downtown lifestyle was before the major changes and explained on how these major changes took place.

After a very productive and educational day of walking the streets of Tucson we made a pit stop at Street Taco Company for lunch. We finished the day with a tour of a makerspace, Xerocraft where we got to see innovative tools that now help entrepreneurs create products.

A Visit to the Techstars Community Unsummit

This session was the most important and most interesting for us, as we got to expand the amazing knowledge we’d learned in all the prior sessions. Our goal for the day was to help facilitate a specialized Techstars Community Unsummit in Connect Coworking.

The early Saturday morning kicked off with a fun and educational tour of some of the new murals in downtown Tucson with Techstars U.S. Regional Executive, Jordan Rothenberg. Afterwards, we went for coffee and breakfast at Exo Roast Co., one of this program’s sponsors.

Then, the real fun began! Heading into the Community Unsummit, a non-traditional approach to a summit where the participants choose the education tracks that would like to discuss,  we were prepared to help facilitate the program. This included speaking to the group and instructing them where to go and what they would be doing. Each of us tagged along with one of the groups and discussed various problems in Tucson and how to fix them. We met entrepreneurs, chief executive officers, and other important community members and got to share our ideas with them.

In our groups we discussed various problem-solving strategies for about two hours After lunch we came back together to figure out a way to present a viable answer to their problem.

The day concluded with a small get-together for dinner.

After a remarkable experience at the unsummit and dinner, we returned home. The end result was exposure to CEOs and high ranking officials of all sorts of backgrounds. We also were exposed to different methods of problem solving and pitching your ideas.

by Stephanie Bermudez, VozFontera-StartupUnidos Project Director

To support the Startup Unidos fall youth program, we solicited support from business owners in Nogales and Tucson. They sponsored youth participation and made our field-trips possible. We are so grateful. Here’s a little more about them.

Nicole Koch, Co-owner, Technicians for Sustainability

How does supporting SUUYVF inspire you?

Although I have had to work very long and hard as a business owner, I’ve also been supported encouraged and helped by others along the way. Since the beginning of our business, we understood that reaching out to support others is how we want to operate. We’re proud to have been able offer encouragement and support to many, especially youth. The vibrant creativity of youth, like the folks participating in SUUYVF, is especially exciting.

How do you see supporting border youth programs like ours a gateway to a better economic future?

A better economic future must create an opportunity for each person in our community to participate in dignified creative livelihood. Border youth programs like SUUYVF offer an environment where ideas and entrepreneurs can develop and thrive in order to create the transformative change our community needs.

What do you know about Nogales?

Nogales is made up of two separate yet connected communities, and many people and families live between the two.

Nogales is simultaneously a gateway south and north and also a place to be in and of itself.

Much of the food produced that comes into the U.S. comes through Nogales.

Nogales is the intersection between the U.S. and Mexico, and there is both a tension and collaboration there.

 

Eric R Meyer, Sales Manager, Prime Time International, and SUUYVF parent

If you could develop an app for Ambos Nogales, what problem could it solve?

Although we do not have a plethora of restaurants on [the U.S.] side, there are so many in Nogales, Sonora. Maybe an app that regularly visited lots of the different restaurants and took some of the ubiquitous food photos while giving props to the local restaurants would certainly attract some followers.

How well do you know Ambos Nogales?

Pretty well, could always know it better. I was born and raised in Nogales, Arizona. My wife of 21 years was born and raised in Nogales, Sonora. My mom was born and raised in Nogales, Arizona. My in laws have always lived in Nogales, Sonora. As a family we have strong Ambos Nogales ties.

What is your favorite characteristic that makes you a border citizen?

I just think the bilingual and bicultural aspect is what I have always found to be an advantage in my life experience. It has never been a negative.

 

Miguel “Mikee” Angel Suarez, Jr., Quality Control/Sales, Mas Melons and Grapes

How well do you know Ambos Nogales?

I was born in Nogales and have lived here for 18 years straight. Things have come and gone through the years, but a lot has stayed the same. I feel I know more about Ambos Nogales now because I’ve grown with it and I get to discover the new places to explore as it keeps evolving.

How does supporting SUUYVF inspire you?

I feel this program would have been great for me had it been around in my time. Supporting young people in my community to better themselves, their families and hopefully Nogales is something anyone can be proud of supporting.

What is your favorite characteristic that makes you a border citizen?

Because of our current political administration, I think my favorite characteristic is not being a stereotype and knowing the truth of what the border is and the great lives made on both sides of it.

 

Additional Sponsors

Dre (Kampfner) Voelkel, Programs/Events Director, Startup Tucson

Amy Smith, Manager and Director of Communications, EXO Roast Co.

 

by Stephanie Bermudez, Startup Unidos Director

What do you get when you put five aspiring young entrepreneurs from Nogales together with mentors and new opportunities? The kind of curiosity, creativity, and energy that sparks innovation in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

That’s the vision of VozFrontera’s Startup Unidos Youth, Economic Development and Entrepreneurship program, which kicked off last month with its first cohort of participants. The nine-week program works with five high school graduates to explore the state of entrepreneurship in Ambos Nogales and develop new ideas for solving challenges.

The first session was magic! Pure magic!

We gathered at a local law office in Nogales, Arizona. I spent extra time setting up the room and filling it with inspiration: the right music, the perfect quotes on the wall, all the best diagrams. I focused on making the space ours a place of learning but with no traditional barriers. It is super important to me that the space is right, that the relationship fits. Startup Unidos Youth is teaching Nogales youth what may not be taught in any traditional school for another 10 or more years. I am proud to be the first to bring these teachings to my hometown.

One of the first things I told the students was that space was theirs.

“No bells will ring here. You are welcome to get up whenever you’d like. You do not need to return to the same seat every time. The snacks are all yours. You can speak at any time and for any reason. I am not your teacher or authority.”

I could see brightness in the students’ eyes.

Our objective was to get to know one another and orient to the program. We began with an introduction to local, national, and global economic development, with a focus on Ambos Nogales. We also talked about “startup culture.” In just a few years, 50 percent of the workforce will be freelancing, telecommuting, launching a startup or working for a startup – exposing the students to present day workplace culture allows them to begin to value creative problem solving and establish open communication strategies.

Their futures are wide open. None of the five students in the cohort will be staying in Nogales after high school, and only half see themselves returning in the future. But right now they are here and they committed to contributing in any way to contribute to their hometown.

Students’ parents have been very receptive to the program. Which is key, because we consider them not solely parents, but partners. Nogales is a family town, shaped by family history and narratives. This is how we dig in and this is also how we create change.

There were smiles across the board when Nils Urman, Executive Director of Nogales Community Development Corporation and our guest speaker, stood before them. “No matter what it is, big or small, we need each of you to not forget Nogales and return to share your experiences and expertise gained elsewhere. We need you to return so that we can learn from you or else we risk not growing simply because we may not understand you.”

This is the underlying philosophy of this project—to invest in this community and to create a change in the way we envision and speak about it. The dialogue, the narrative must change—one person at a time.

In this first cohort we start with five bright-eyed young people and are inspired every time to meet.

Here’s why Luis Felipe Parra, a senior at Nogales High School, signed up for the program, in his own words:

“Nogi raised” is what I always reply with when people ask me where I’m from. I say it loud and proud too. Not only am I proud to be from Nogales, but I am very fortunate to have grown up here. The vibes and feelings that this little border town gives out is unreal. Startup Unidos Youth, is such a wonderful opportunity to prove how distinct and special Nogales really is. I am confident that I will learn a lot and graduate with a different mindset on my beloved hometown.

We look forward to sharing more from each of the students enrolled in this inaugural cohort.

 

Reprinted from BorderLore, e-journal of the Southwest Folklife Alliance (May 2018)

Story and photographs by Maxwell Gay

It’s an early afternoon in March in Nogales, Arizona, and the confluence of two nations is abuzz with middle school and high school youth. They unfold tables and chairs, pass out water bottles, and set up a small stage facing the nearly 20-foot-high steel fence that separates this town from “el otro lado,” the other side. There, in Nogales, Sonora, a similar scene unfolds.

This kind of gathering may seem out of place in a context associated mostly with inflammatory politics, violence, and security. But here, young people from both sides of the border have come together to nurture dialogue and share critical consciousness of how and why the border impacts their lives, divides their families and their city.

The event, Seeds Binational Border Youth Dialogue/Dialogo Juvenil Fronterizo, was organized by Seeds Semillas Youth Action, supported by VozFrontera, a new initiative of the Southwest Folklife Alliance in Nogales. Seeds Semillas, a binational grassroots group of 13 to 18 year olds, started as a gardening and food justice club in 2016 and has since grown into a full-fledged organizing team focused on creating critical conversations about issues that affect youth in Ambos Nogales. Their goal is to ensure that their community will be a resilient environment for their elders, themselves, and future generations.

The youth efforts dovetail with a number of new endeavors and organizations in Nogales, Arizona working to renew attention to humanity, community, and well-being. These efforts focus on food justice, local produce, heritage preservation and knowledge sharing, accessible housing, and affordable solutions to housing problems. Organizations like Seeds Semillas and the Nogales Community Development Corporation are building gardens, repairing homes, assisting residents with their income taxes, and creating subsidized housing.

The space created by Seeds Semillas is a crucial element of the change occurring in Nogales. That’s not surprising. Young people have been integral to many movements throughout U.S. history, including the anti-Vietnam war movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the Civil Rights movement, the East LA walkouts for Chicanx educational rights, and Black Lives Matter.

I’ve participated in several youth organizing groups in Tucson, and attended many radical political gatherings and protests. The level of energy, participation, and conversation I saw at the Seeds Binational Border Youth Dialogue is impressive. In my experience, creating a safe space for middle school- and high school-aged youth to publicly share their personal experiences with political and economic forces is not always easy. As young people, we are often systematically trained to believe that our voices should be kept quiet. It’s clear to me that Seeds Semillas is doing the work to dissolve those inhibitions and equipping youth with the necessary skills to fight for change in their community. The young people I saw organizing in Nogales are vocal, outspoken, and empowered.

Their work is a tangible response to inequities and oppressive conditions at play along the border. Their everyday movements happen amid the miles of towering steel pylons, clusters of high-tech thermal cameras, and a constant flow of agents in armored vehicles. Here, acts of violence loom large in the minds of young people.

Just a few yards away from this gathering, 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodriguez was allegedly shot in the back ten times by U.S. Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz through the border fence in 2012. José Antonio was on the way home from playing basketball with friends at a local church. An autopsy showed he was shot while his back was turned to the fence. Just this month, Swartz was found not guilty by a hung jury. After public response, the appellate court ruled for retrial, which will begin October 23. Painted hand prints and “Justice for José Antonio Elena Rodriguez” stickers on the rusted steel commemorate the event.

Today’s focus is on the power of connection, dialogue, and resilience. Chairs are arranged in a perfect circle, an effort by organizers to help encourage non-hierarchical conversation. This circle, however, is bisected by the border wall. Roughly half the youth sit in the United States, and half in Mexico. Many of those can’t cross north, and the strategic positioning of this event at the border allows them to have radical dialogue with one another in a way that would otherwise be impossible.

Their conversations cover life in a militarized zone, the presence of migration in their community, the threat of violence and constant surveillance, division of families and the arduous wait to cross the border which some of them endure daily. One middle school student from Mexicayotl Academy, René, shares that he’s been getting up at four o’clock in the morning since he was five years old to cross the border and get to school on time. Older students comment on how increasing militarization has changed the process of crossing for them.

Over pizza, they exchange ideas about how these systems can be counteracted, disrupted, and shifted by young people; about how they can build a community they want to live in, even within the reality of border militarization and politics. Seeds Semillas is building hope for Nogales, hope that the power of young people can indeed create change and shift the greater narrative about the border.

Maxwell Gay is a Tucson-based photographer and a former intern at the Southwest Folklife Alliance. He is also co-founder of Ojalá, a cooperative of “artists, criminals, and digital revolutionaries.”

Resources

Learn more about Seeds Semillas on their Facebook page.