Introducing myself and the Casa Verde Journal

Simply wanting to change the world is a solitary, often frustrating experience. Setting out to find a way to do it is the type of thing that builds community, character and culture.

Before founding Casa Verde I traveled to nearly every corner of the globe to support causes that would change lives, inspire others, and tangibly improve the world.

It started with a guided trip to Germany when I was 15. I set out with nothing more than a backpack, a pristine passport, and a passion for education peace, and conservation. My arrival in Europe was a catalyzing moment, and I soon found myself crisscrossing Europe, Latin American and Asia – sometimes alone, but often leading other young people..
Sometimes our work was maddening (like the community center job in the Czech Republic, which turned out to be an EU money laundering scheme), sometimes it was demoralizing (like the time we worked for hours to clean the thumbs of Salvadorans who knew they had just voted in a fixed election), but often it was awe-inspiring. Each time I face a struggle at Casa Verde, it is easy to remember that extraordinary group of high school girls who spent the summer with me in the jungles of Guatemala, or the children I fed as they arrived at school on horseback without breakfast, or the thank you letter I received, scrawled in Kanji, five years after parting ways with a student.

Each new place, each personal encounter, and each incremental improvement in social justice was a small, but decidedly positive, step forward. Each step effectively washed away a bit of modern life’s chronically adhesive white noise and revealed a brighter, better-defined vision. Glimpsing a million possibilities of what could be, I found myself learning how to be both intentional and successful in a world that only opens its doors to the rare few who know where and how to knock.

As the summers and seasons spent overseas turned to years – and then a full decade – I began to understand that establishing roots and fostering community is the true path to lasting change. Through community I could better help others to go beyond those fleeting glimpse of what lies beyond those closed doors and instead teach them how to build a gateway of their own – and then open it wide to others. Roots create opportunities to grow towards essential goals like, universal education, environmental sustainability and global partnership.

And it is in Nicaragua, that this founding story stops looking backward, and moves indelibly forward. It is here that, after many years of looking, I found Limon. It here that I traded my passport and backpack for a shovel and the deed to 31 acres of dry tropical savannah.

In Limon, where the ocean spray blows amidst a pre-industrial community that carries cell phones and insists on wireless internet, I found a home. As Case Verde continues to develop and thrive, I count myself lucky to see the passion I felt as a young person in the German countryside extend to a new generation along the Nicaraguan coast. And it’s here that I have turned my efforts towards a task my mentors couldn’t have imagined, and in a world none of them could have foreseen.

Today, Casa Verde asks and answers questions like, “How do you inspire deliberate compassion, reflection and activism amongst a generation of globalized youth?” and “What will galvanize the raw enthusiasm of a new millennium with the power to change the planet with the click of a mouse or the purchase of a place ticket?

I answered these questions for myself by going out into the world, with a sense of awe and incredulity, looking for justice and friendship. Now, I have devoted my life to being a champion for this new generation of young people by empowering them to answer these questions and remake this world, for themselves.

This is how the world changes. The world is changing right here.