Community Circles Program

The Community Circles Program  is a program initiated by the Institute and based on over 40 years of experience in the organic food channel - from growing to processing and selling both wholesale and retail.  The program is currently dedicated to reducing food insecurity, reducing poverty through the focus on food distribution and marketing in the United States as well as several international locations.  Below is a summary of our current project sites.  You can visit the Community Circles website at www.comcircles.com for project details.

The Community Circles program in Bay City is operating 2 greenhouses and over 20 acres in organic Urban Agriculture as well as featuring integrated rewilding and restoration of Saginaw River frontage.  The Community Circles Program in Bay City includes restoring 4 historic buildings for Storehouses, traditional neighborhood locations for inner city food distribution and sales.  In addition, the Bay City project is focusing on food processing and storage for the seasonal availability of local food.

The Institute has worked in Liberia since 2007, helping to initiate organic food production and to help increase quality of products for export into the international organic markets. Recently, the Institute initiated a new platform by starting the Fish Town project.  The new project features identifying local food production and analyzing what gaps exist in local food supply and providing for the most feasible way of filling the gap.  Additionally, the program is establishing 4  Storehouses with value added processing of local products for local consumption or export regionally or internationally.

The Institute is supporting a Community Circles project in Nigeria headed by Amede Achingale, an award winning entrepreneur.  The project includes the domestic cultivation of a popular wild mushroom.  Domestic cultivation allows the wild forest population to reestablish itself after having been overharvested for years.  The project trains producers, mostly women in the methods of cultivation as well as in the value added processing required to dry and package the mushrooms for sale regionally and internationally.  The training also includes the administrative processes of record keeping, best manufacturing protocols and product certifications, creating a diversity of jobs available in the community.

The Institute has recently begun activity in the DRC with the planning of a  comprehensive plan to reestablish the old trade routes from the Eastern Congo down the Congo River and its tributaries to the Atlantic side of the country.  The project will reopen Storehouses along the ancient trade routes, reactivating sales and distribution of Congolese produce to the Congolese people.  The program also includes the acquisition of several large forest concessions that will provide forest protection while also reorienting the economic activity of forest communities from logging and mining to other financially productive activities in the trade route.  Organic and regenerative cultivation, preserving traditional and local specialty food, prioritizing local sales and value added processing are the keys of the Congo work which will help reduce poverty, improve food security and greatly reduce the carbon footprint of the food supply to the Congo people.

The Institute has worked in Colombia with the Kogi Tribe since 2015.  The initial goal of helping the Kogi was to import the coffee produced according to the very enlightened protocols of the spiritual leaders of the Tribe, called the Mamos. The coffee was collected, graded and sold to the Whole Foods Market subsidiary Allegro coffee.  However, in a last minute move, the deal was canceled to everyone's disappointment.  The Institute has now determined to grant the Kogi an amount of funding to enable them to keep their own coffee for the local market, while developing local storehouses, a coffee shop and processing of other local food  for sale and storage. The new approach will enable the Kogi to be independent and not vulnerable to international corporate whim.  Furthermore, it will enable the Kogi to create a far greater revenue stream with which to buy back their ancestral watershed lands, their original primary goal for engaging in commerce. 

Community Circles work in the  ROC naturally arises from the overall Congo Basin plan and the reality of interconnected trade routes, tribes and geographical character that doesn't correspond to national delineations.  It is a privilege to combine the efforts between the two countries for the benefit of al the people and the basin as a whole.