Dream of Wild Health
USA
Dream of Wild Health is an organic farm and seed bank dedicated to helping American Indian people reclaim their physical, spiritual, and mental health by returning to their own foodways.
Read Dream of Wild Health’s full story on Medium
The Hoffice Movement
Sweden
The Hoffice Movement is working to take on the loneliness that is sweeping through society in what they describe as “epidemic” proportions. Hoffice-ing helps people arrange gatherings to work, network, eat, socialize, exercise and more — simply by facilitating the establishment of group home offices in members’ living rooms and kitchens.
Read more about the Hoffice Movement on Medium
Hope for Health
Australia
The story of Hope for Health began in 2013, when Dianne Biritjalawuy, an Indigenous Yolngu resident of Australia’s Elcho Island, recovered from a serious health crisis by turning away from processed, store-bought food and returning to a more traditional diet. The experience was so transformative that Dianne raised AU$60,000 to bring twelve Yolngu women to a local health retreat, where they, too, experienced dramatic improvements in chronic health problems, and discovered a new vitality. Most recently, in August 2015, the cross-cultural education group Why Warriors, which aims to bridge the cultural gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, received grant money to train local Yolngu as nutrition and exercise coaches. These women are now providing the community with local-language workshops and classes in cooking and health, all based on the Yolngu traditional diet. They are also working to establish a Hope for Health Centre, which will sell locally-produced foods and teach traditional methods of food preparation, thus providing opportunities that can help empower the entire Yolngu community. To learn more, visit the Hope for Health website.
Pacari Network
Brazil
The Pacari Network is a medicinal ecology initiative in the cerrado (savannah) biome of Brazil, working with 47 traditional pharmacies to cultivate and catalog medicinal plants and preserve the ecology of the land in which they grow. Smallholder farmers, gatherers, agrarian reform settlers, women’s groups, people receiving immigrant and health benefits, coconut palm workers, and community organizations representing Afro-Brazilians and indigenous peoples are all represented in the network. In addition to supporting community pharmacies, Pacari has developed a set of standards for sustainable harvesting and quality control of medicinal plants, and has created the “Pharmacopoeia of the People of the Cerrado,” a database for recording known remedies, techniques for harvesting, and other bits of medicinal information which might otherwise be lost. In 2012, the Pacari Network won the Equator Prize, a biennial award given to community-based, rural sustainable development organizations. To learn more, see the Pacari Network’s Equator case study.
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