Over the years for the last half decade, the Rosebud Continuum has continued to fulfill its promise to the wider world by bringing our life-tested ideas around the globe and by bringing people from every corner of the earth to Rosebud for training and inspiration.
Most recently, as we gear up to host the annual "World Peace and Prayer Day" ceremonies with First Nation Lakota-Sioux Chief Arvol Looking Horse and others from "The 500 Nations", to take place between June 18 and 22, T.H. and Enas and Naigh have returned from an intensive 11 day sojourn to the Muskogee Nation Eco-Village "ekvn-yefolecv" in the forested hills of what is colonially known as central Alabama. There they built the first of three Puxin "domestic dragon" biodigesters inspired by the three we built at Rosebud. This is an example of a direct transfer of technologies and techniques by the Rosebud team outside of South Florida.
This model of direct assistance and partnership is also a culmination of alliances and work made and done when Rosebud founders Maryann and Sonny Bishop sent T.H. to Standing Rock to work with Tony Sutton (of the Maine Penobscot tribe) and Christopher Lindstrom (of the Clivus Multrum family) at the Oceti Sakowin, Rosebud and Sacred Stone camps in South Dakota and at the Tribal Council building at Lake Traverse Reservation at the North/South Dakota border, including a Home Biogas build in the basement of the Looking Horse home.
Rosebud's lived-in systems have also been used as the inspiration for the Serbian Royal Palace Sustainability Project, led by Serbian-American sustainability student Marko Bajic, who visited the Rosebud Continuum from Belgrade in the early fall of 2021 and then invited Professors T.H. Culhane and Brooke Hansen, whose USF students do their practical fieldwork at Rosebud, to come to Serbia to meet with government officials, professors, students and planners in November, 2021 and work on a technology/information and student exchange between our regions, growing our best practice field application centers hand-in-hand.
This overlapping ripple effect is part of a tradition going between Rosebud and international colleages for the last five years, starting with several visits by Haitian officials and teachers shortly after Hurricane Matthew devastated the island in 2016 when Rosebud sent Culhane to join the Solar CITIES delegation to the Heart in Haiti school in Port O Prince to continue a biodigester mission started by Kathy Puffer to alleviate pressure on the forests and provide 100% clean fuel and healthy fertilizer while eliminating the threats of cholera and indoor air pollution. After the Rosebud/Solar CITIES trip to Haiti we hosted two different groups to stay with us at Rosebud and learn the technologies first hand in a hands on way.
Workshop visits were made throughout the year by Jean Rony Toussaint of "ASHOG Caring for People and Orphans: La Gonave Island HAITI" and Father Herold and Peter from "The University of Notre Dame de Haiti"
Rosebud has, since its inception, been a place for graduate students from the USF Patel College of Global Sustainability to engage in research and implementation of projects such as native plant restoration and rewilding, invasive species removal, habitat reconstruction, renewable energy (including, solar, wind and biogas), aquaponics, hydroponics and aeroponics, food forests and regenerative agriculture, and has served as a field trip excursion for local high school, middle school and elementary schoolchildren and for community events and town hall meetings regarding sensitive and sustainable development where overdevelopment and bad development practices can be talked out.
It is also a place where high school students from as far away as Atlanta, Georgia have come for visits and where undergraduate college students from the Environmental Sustainability and Justice League (Envisaj) at Mercy College in New York have, several years in a row, come to spend their spring breaks getting field experience.
The connection with Africa goes even deeper through visits to Rosebud by African students and development specialists and government officials.
Rosebud hosted 18 year old Zambian student , Mphatso Simbao, winner of the National Geographic Explorer Award at Google Science fair, for a week doing regenerative agriculture training. Rosebud board member and National Geographic Explorer T.H. Culhane was one of the judges for the Google Science Fair for 7 years and has likewise brought Rosebud ideas to share at Google Science Fair, Sci Foo and Ed Foo events year after year, giving Rosebud the kind of prominence in international think tanks that increase the penetration of our ideas and solutions on a global scale.
With this kind of visibility Rosebud has attracted international visitors such as the advisor to the President of the Congo and their entourage, who were keen to learn how we run emergency generators on food-scrap-derived fuel, and members of the Patel Family Foundation, sharing ideas for inflation resistant, eco-friendly and healthy low-cost housing, as well as leaders from the St. Petersburg Eco-village and the Sarasota Climate Adaptation Center, who are working with the Elizabeth Moore Foundation to replicate some of Rosebud's solutions in Florida's "Cultural Coast".
Some of our latest cutting edge exhibits, such as the Rosebud Mobile Solar Resiliency Power Station, designed by Canadian engineer Mike Kozdras of NASP solar with the support of Elizabeth Moore, and the Rosebud Precious Plastics Hub, working with Matthew Grecsek and Robert Knighton of https://globe-eco.com/ have direct application in disaster relief and in critical environmental cleanup and environmental justice interventions, and the interest from visitors to Rosebud shows that we can operate as a powerful accelerator for game-changing technologies and ideas in these times of dire need.
We hope for continued support for the Rosebud Continuum so that we can continue our mission to bring effective global solutions HOME.
