Happy Equinox BioFi Community! 🌅
The BioFi Project
A collective supporting the creation of Bioregional Financing Facilities, connecting financial resources & regenerators.
We hope each of you is tuning in to the equalizing days and nights at this beautiful time of the year and cultivating balance in your life. In this edition of our quarterly newsletter, we will share what we’ve been up to since the Solstice, including launching some exciting new resources.
We have been continuing to host rich discussions in the BioFi Community of Practice on topics including flow funding, BioFi as an antidote to disaster capitalism, and tech tools for bioregional organizing.
Our BioFi Cultivator program is now two months in, with 21 bioregional organizing teams from across the Americas participating. It’s been incredible to learn together and to see the progress in creating Bioregional Financing Facilities (BFFs) these teams are making. We’ve enjoyed learning about similar challenges faced across bioregions – including those spanning the Global North and Global South – as well as the uniqueness, complexity, and role of place-based cultural and spiritual traditions in bringing these BFFs to life.
It has been a joy to deepen our BFF Co-Design Partnerships with the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance (ASHA) and Salmon Nation CoLabs. Tyler Wakefield and I just returned from a trip to Ecuador where we spent time building relationships with Indigenous stewards of the sacred headwaters of the mighty Amazon River and their allies. We were hosted by ASHA – a historically unprecedented alliance of 30 Indigenous nations that is committed to permanently protecting 35 million hectares of some of the most ecologically and climatically important forest on Earth. Together with the ASHA staff and leadership, we co-hosted a two-day Bioregional Fund Design Workshop. We also joined a gathering hosted by SANE Futures on the potential to create a Regenerative Economic Zone in Ecuador.
We are constantly learning, from all of the regenerators we are in relationship with and from our direct experiences, how much on-the-ground, bioregional work can do to balance us. This work reconnects us with our agency, our communities, and the living fabric of our garden planet – even as so much around us feels uncertain.
How to get involved with BioFi:
In regenerative solidarity,
Samantha and the BioFi Project team
🐆 BioFi Cultivator
We are halfway through our 2025 BioFi Cultivator program, an initiative designed to catalyze the creation of the world’s first Bioregional Financing Facilities (BFFs). After receiving 50+ expressions of interest from bioregional organizing teams around the world to work with the BioFi Project, we designed this program and welcomed 21 bioregional organizing teams to join our first cohort.
This cohort is organized into two practice groups: 1) Central and South America and 2) North America and the Pacific. From the BioFi Project team’s perspective, we have learned so much through this journey so far. And the participating teams seem to be appreciative of the opportunity to learn and create BFFs together!
In June, participating teams will have the opportunity to present their BFFs to potential funders, investors, and key allies. If you or someone you know is interested in attending these presentations, please reach out to us! Additionally, if you are hosting an event in the month of June where you would like to invite bioregional teams to present their BFFs, let us know. Creating and capitalizing this new class of financial institutions is going to require a whole community approach and we will be sharing more invitations for you to get involved in the near future!
🌏 BFF Co-Design Partnerships
In parallel to running the 2025 BioFi Cultivator, the BioFi Project team is working closely with Salmon Nation CoLabs and Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance (ASHA) as its first BFF Co-Design Partners. Each of these partners is working across large-scale, and highly ecologically and culturally significant bioregions. Each is creating ripples in water, carbon, and nitrogen cycles, as well as, food, water, medicinal, and educational systems, extending far beyond their porous boundaries. Each is working to serve Indigenous Earth stewards spanning many nations and to build bridges with non-Indigenous allies. And each is moving at the speed of trust, with a deep awareness of the urgency to protect the precious life within their bioregions.
Since the Solstice, the BioFi Project team has engaged in in-person and virtual design sessions with the Salmon Nation team. Samantha and Tyler from the BioFi Project team just returned from a trip to Ecuador where they spent time building relationships with the members and staff of the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance (ASHA) – a historically unprecedented alliance of 30 Indigenous nations committed to permanently protecting 35 million hectares of some of the most ecologically important land on Earth.
The BioFi Project team was honored to spend time with these leaders, including through visits to Achuar and Sapara territories in the Amazon. We learned so much and felt very lucky to bring the gift of BioFi to support the realization of ASHA's detailed, ambitious, and deeply necessary Bioregional Plan. While in Ecuador, we also attended a bioregional Regenerative Economic Zones gathering hosted by our friends at SANE Futures. We wrapped up the visit with co-hosting a two-day Bioregional Fund design workshop with ASHA (pictured below). It was a fruitful and passion-filled gathering we will never forget. Thanks to so many friends and allies that traveled from long distances to be with us!
🧺 BioFi Resource Garden
With help from partners and allies, the BioFi Project is cultivating and organizing a ‘garden’ of multi-capital resources that we believe can support bioregional organizing teams, Indigenous communities, actors developing Bioregional Financing Facilities, BioFi-aligned technical partners, and the BioFi field as a whole.
This has been a long time coming, and with the help of partners and allies, we are curating tools, frameworks, and knowledge to strengthen bioregional finance and regenerative economies. And like any good garden, it will continue to grow over time, including with input from you!
Here are a few key resources already available:
📚 The BioFi Book - now in Spanish!
We’re thrilled to announce that the BioFi book is now available in Spanish! We are hopeful that this translation will help to serve more people in Central and South America and beyond in funding the biocultural regeneration of their places and transitioning to regenerative, bioregional economies.
🌺 Upcoming Events
🧺 Bioregional Bioneers Picnic Palooza
📆 March 28, Friday
⏰ 12:45 PM - 2:30 PM PDT
📍Crescent Lawn, UC Berkeley | Berkeley, California
Are you heading to Bioneers? Curious about BioFi or the bioregional movement? Join the BioFi Project team, members of the BioFi Community of Practice, partner organizations, and friends for a Bioregional Bioneers Picnic Palooza!
This is an open gathering for radical collaboration—a space to connect, share ideas, and explore how we can supercharge the bioregional movement together. Bring your colleagues, bring your friends, bring your baby, bring your dog, bring your own lunch —and most importantly, bring your ideas to supercharge the bioregional movement!
🐳 Join our Community of Practice
Are you curious about learning more about Bioregional Financing Facilities (BFFs)? Want to meet other seasoned practitioners and learn in a community around designing, capitalizing, and implementing BFFs? You’re invited to join our lively Community of Practice on Hylo and join our regular online gatherings.
The BioFi Events Google Calendar features events beyond the Community of Practice, some which are in-person that the BioFi Project is participating in, and also includes relevant events from partner organizations that we think you might find valuable!
📚 Events Hosted by Partners & Friends of the BioFi Project
🌲 Cascadia BioFi Conference
📆 May 16-18, 2025
📍Georgetown Steam Plant, Seattle, WA
How do we regenerate an entire bioregion? Join us at the Cascadia BioFi Conference to explore this question and co-create bioregional funding ecosystems that truly support regeneration.
This gathering will bring together leaders in finance, land stewardship, Indigenous rematriation, circular economy, community governance, and regenerative technology to design pathways for lasting impact in the Cascadia bioregion.
🍄 Stay connected
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