This lesson introduces farmers to ways they can begin to market, brand and tap into progressive marketplaces and enterprises aimed at connecting them with conscious consumers and communities.
During this session, Trinity Asing will introduce us to Mauka Market, the world’s first regenerative marketplace created to connect and support local businesses using regenerative practices. As part of this presentation, sheʻll share some of the ways theyʻve started to partner with farmers in Hawaii. Following her session, Matthew Lynch will introduce us to the concepts of a ʻregenerative enterpriseʻ.
Throughout this cohort, farmers have refined the ways they build soil health and restore on-farm ecosystems. Growing food and creating value-added products using regenerative practices is important to conscious consumers and our greater community. This is an interactive session that will help farmers in the cohort start to think about ways they might expand their farm business to create a regenerative enterprise. Matt will dive into some of the ʻecologiesʻ that support a regenerative enterprise and will help farmers think about ways they can take some first steps.
Trinity Asing is the Co-Founder and Market Director of Mauka Market. She began her journey in 2019 when she was a part of Nalukai Academy, an intensive tech and entrepreneurship camp for highschool students. From there she was asked to join the Purple Prize competition, where she met Christine Johnson, Joey Valentine and Matthew Lynch, the Albizia Project team, and collectively they came up with the idea of Mauka Market. They have backgrounds in entrepreneurship, architectural design, systems change, and business. In the winter of 2021, they realized their vision of building a regenerative e-commerce platform stimulates local economies and provides quality jobs which support not only the sustainable use and management of natural resources, but the repair, restoration and regeneration of peoples and places. Their long-term vision for global impact is to generate equitable economic growth by creating a transparent, localized, and regenerative supply chain around sustainable resource management and biodiversity initiatives.
Matthew Kamakani Lynch, Co-Founder of Mauka Market and Director of Sustainability Initiatives at UH Manoa, has worked in a broad range of community-based sustainable development projects from Laos to Mongolia to Vanuatu; from building rural community resilience through farmer trainings, to sustainable economic development, to catalyzing institutional change through policy work and collaborative leadership. Matt’s talent for energizing communities and individuals has re-humanized urban and institutional systems in the developing and developed worlds, and works towards restoring & regenerating the ecological systems upon which these social systems depend. Matthew currently serves as the Director of Sustainability Initiatives for the ten-campus University of Hawaiʻi System. He also serves as President of the Board of Directors for Kahumana Organic Farm, and Sustainability Measures Co-Chair for Hawaii Green Growth.