Help Feed The Kids and More!

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Help build a community Farm in Acapulco, Mexico

Food Independence Program

By Brent Kaufman of GuerillaHealer, 501(c)3 charity (Colorado, USA)

With support from Danny Sessom of The Crypto Show (Texas, USA)

Hi, my name is Brent Kaufman, otherwise known as Tio Brent (Tio means uncle in Spanish). I have been living in Mexico for about a year, volunteering at some of the greatest places on Earth, including the local orphanage and the local turtle sanctuary.

I created this fundraiser to help power my inspiration to help incredible souls have access to healthy greens.

Mission:

Build a farm to help support over 60 children to eat healthier and consistently!

Vision:

A diverse farm to grow fresh fruits & vegetables and grow enough food to support the community.

Education:

This farm will effectively serve as an Independence learning opportunity. We would love to work with a local University to support their students and offer college opportunities for the orphanage as well.

The children's home I've been volunteering at has been operating for 33 years under the sole care of an incredible woman who will turn 90 this year! Jovita became an orphan herself, as her family was killed when she was only 12. She currently cares for 67 kids, 2 cats, and a dog, feeding over 200 meals per day, solely from donations.

The bulk of their current diet consists of no fresh greens, bread, cereal, candy, milk, rice, and beans. After buying food for them, I realized it would be easier to grow some of what they could eat, rather than to solely depend on donations.

I even hired a professor to teach them how to fish in their backyard ocean, but they really don't have enough time to fish for themselves due to school and house responsibilities.

Just a little background on me:

I have been professionally growing medicine for well over a decade and in 2014 founded a charity, called GuerillaHealer, supporting patients with life-threatening ailments. I’m also an event producer and professional musician, and a few years ago I was invited to Acapulco to perform at some concerts. Danny Sessom saw some of the shows and later asked me to come rap for the kids at the home. I returned last year and have been at the home nearly every day since, helped build a garden, and began teaching the children English while preparing to build this farm.

Feeding 70 children is no easy task, and somehow Jovita has been doing this for 3 decades. Jovita always says, "God will provide, and taking care of those children is the best job in the world." To say providing over 200 donated meals a day is difficult, is an understatement, to say the least. They don't get fresh greens and are eating lots of bread, sugar, rice & beans, and other donated products from local stores. Usually, once a week they get eggs or meat. The truth is, they may even be more fortunate than some of the local kids in town who don't live at the children's home and don't get donations. This is why the local community can also benefit from this project.

Luckily, these kids have better genes than I do, though, needless to say, I am inspired to support their diets, and give them the best opportunity possible to lead and live healthy lives. Of course, eating healthier food helps children focus in school to prevent getting falsely diagnosed with ADHD, enjoy better health, and ultimately save the orphanage on associated medical costs.

So, with the help of my friend Tio Danny, we're intent on building a farm to grow healthy food, teach the kids how to grow healthy food with various modern techniques, and serve the community.

Jovita blessed me with the pleasure of teaching English to the kids while I'm here working on building this vision. Plus, teaching them English has been helpful to learn Spanish quicker. I now have 60+ students and also feel blessed they are teaching me how to speak their native indigenous language; Tunsavi, the language of the rain.

Being their Uncle is truly an honor, and I know Tio Danny feels the same. Danny is the reason I know about this place because he invited me a few years ago to perform music for the kids and I have been coming back ever since. Tio Danny has been supporting this orphanage for nearly a decade, has a super sweet relationship with everyone there, and truly is a blessing to them.

Curriculum:

Recently, Tio Danny and I built a verticle hydroponic system, which is currently working in the garden at the orphanage, which I built with my friend Alais Clay. Check out the video below of the project we did together last year.

(check out https://sproutsbysprouts.org for more info)

Right now this Verticle Hydroponic Tower is producing fresh vegetables for the kids!

The hydro system Danny and I built grows over 100 heads of lettuce in 1 square meter!

As you can see, we already started teaching them how to build the verticle tower,

and are already taking care of the garden themselves!

The plan:

1. Continue expanding growing opportunities to feed the home (building more hydroponic units, utilizing orphanage space + finding new host venues for our units)

1. Fundraise to purchase land.

2. Realize funds

3. Create Civil Association (charity) here in Mexico to legitimize the entity

4. Purchase land a bit further away from the ocean (less salty air)

5. Build a farm plan based on our land design/natural resources

We are interested in building an organic living soil garden to grow various fruits and veggies that aren't ideal for our Verticle Hydroponic Systems. We already have a prototype working at the orphanage, which grows 104 heads in 1 square meter, as you can see in some of the pictures.

More recently, a really cool sponsor reached out to us named Meteor Systems. They have committed to donating a state-of-the-art Deep Water Culture (DWC) system to grow many of our vegetables!

There is a lot to support here as we need to purchase land, build infrastructure, and systems, fund labor, purchase fertilizer, materials, seeds, build a nursery, solar power, etc. With enough donations, we can build a fully functional operation that will sustain the orphanage and help them purchase important resources that we don't grow.

We are offering you the opportunity to help these children

and sponsor this project.

We believe within 2-3 years time, this farm will be producing food, teaching many, and

creating invaluable experiences!

Help us prove that we can generate an abundance of food to feed the kids, free up tons of energy to focus on other important resources, and perhaps become successful enough to start the first fresh market in the area.

Fundraiser Plan:

Become a sponsor and help us either pay for and/or care for the farm

to become a reality and help this amazing orphanage achieve its independence.

1. Farmland - 1 acre in Acapulco - $60,000

2. Verticle Hydroponic Towers - $500 | 30 - $15,000

3. Farm labor - $10,000 / yr for a team of 2

4. Sponsor the farm Solar System - $5000

5. Sponsor the Organic Living Soil Garden - $3,500

6. Civil Association & attorney fee - $2500

7. Sponsored Deep Water Culture system build - $1500

8. Sponsor the Nursery & Harvest area - $ 1500

9. Sponsor the Tomato Hydroponic System -$1000

1. Farmland - $60,000

1. Farmland

While the orphanage is located right on the beautiful beach of Acapulco, the air is too salty for growing many foods. The ideal scenario is to purchase land away from the shore for better-growing conditions! We found an acre in secure development, complete with security gates for protection. Beautiful rich soil by the airport is ideal for less traffic and better security. Having our own land will help the orphanage be more independent, grow all the fruits and vegetables needed to sustain itself, and ideally raise chickens since they need 200 eggs per meal!

2. Verticle Hydroponic Towers - $500 per unit | 30 units

Also super efficient, medium maintenance hydroponic system built with customized PVC tubes to grow over 100 plants every square meter! Sponsor these units to support the initial build and annual maintenance of these systems and help create orphanage independence in just a few years' time!

Our goal is to build 30+ units to grow 3,000 plants every 6 weeks! This will help feed the home, launch a local farmers market, and support their ability to generate income for food, healthcare, school supplies, etc. Each unit costs less than $500 in total materials, building labor, fertilizer, seeds, and stabilization foundation. Sponsor these units to support the initial build and annual maintenance to help create orphanage independence!

3. Farm labor - $10,000/yr

Every farm needs hands. This operation must be able to take care of itself, so funding the labor will ensure we are able to afford a team to grow enough food to pay for our expenses. Luckily, using the systems we are happens to be much easier than working in the fields. While we will have various systems to maintain, our schedule will allow a team of 2 to navigate our farm smoothly, while enjoying support from the orphanage at least once a week.

4. Solar System - $5000

Building an independence program means being as self-sufficient as possible. Depending on the sun to power the farm will save us money on electricity and enable us to operate off-grid.

Our power requirements for the DWC system are pretty minimal. Each water pump is only 20 watts (2) or a total of .333amps, the air pumps are .56 amps each (2), and we would like to purchase digital water meters which don’t generate much power either. 30 Verticle Hydroponic Towers will utilize 12 amps of power. We will also want to power some garden tools from time to time, as well as any coolers that we have.

5. Organic Living Soil Garden - $3500

The orphanage uses tons of chile peppers, onions, and garlic. We will teach the children the method of growing based around the concept of providing plants with a healthy balanced soil, to help them understand how and why creating nutrient-dense food, which doesn’t require re-tilling the land, is important for survival, more effective, and way more efficient than purchasing plant-food or buying food in the supermarket. We feed the soil, not the plants; building and maintaining a balanced soil provides plants with everything they need to feed themselves. A happy soil ecosystem provides access to micro and macronutrients plants need to thrive.

Sponsor the living soil garden and help us build beautiful garden beds to grow organic vegetables in for the orphanage!

6. Tomato Hydroponic system - $1000

The orphanage uses tons of tomatoes, so we plan on utilizing an efficient hydroponic technique to grow nutrient-dense tomatoes in a soil-less manner. This will be the 3rd type of hydroponic system to feed & teach the children with!

7. DWC Deep Water Culture build - $1500

Thanks to our sponsor Meteor Systems, we are is blessed with the opportunity to install a super-efficient, low-maintenance deep water culture (DWC) hydroponic system. Utilizing customized floating raft boards to grow plants in shallow ponds, we can grow over 2500 plants every 6 weeks with this system!

Meteor Systems has committed to sponsoring 2 DWC pools.

This means they are donating over 120 raft boards, pond liners, specialized pumps, and growing tubes!

Our startup and fixed costs consist of building the pools, paying for the maintenance labor to hire 1 full-time worker and 1 part-time, purchasing fertilizers, seeds, and we will discuss the nursery below. Germinating, propagating, harvesting, cleaning, and checking water levels are the maintenance.

8. Nursery & Harvest Area - $2500

Every garden requires a nursery. Growing new plants, consistently, requires the right conditions. We must consistently germinate seeds to fill our hydroponic systems in order to maintain production efficiently. This means we need to build a specialized area to stack our germination tables on racks and provide lighting for efficiency.

The DWC system and the Verticle Hydroponic Towers will require consistent supply with new plants every 6 weeks. We can taper the planting schedule of our units so that we don’t have to plant or harvest all at once, and we can also refill the rafts or towers in case any plants perish. It is important to always have baby plants on hand, and always be ready for when we need to replant.

Of course, no farm is complete without a harvesting area. We will require tables, minimal packaging equipment, and cleaning equipment for sanitary support. Cold storage will help us store our products to market, so having coolers or building a walk-in will be crucial.

Thank you for showing your care and helping to make this incredible orphanage one step closer to sovereignty. Donate here or write us a message to BeneficialDiet at gmail dot com to contact us directly if you have any questions. Thank you for supporting our ability to take care of this home full of sweet, smart, beautiful children who could really use our help.