Unlocking Sustainable Change: A Journey to Empower Communities and Preserve Nature

KATHLEEN: Last week I said, I got some information from Spirit of how we're gonna do things a little differently. I'm gonna start the show with using three tuning forks.

KATHLEEN: One is to bring in the love vibration, one is happiness and one is to bring in a balance. Then I'm gonna introduce my guest, Dee Doheny. We will have her talking about what she's doing in her world and how exciting everything is. Here we go.

KATHLEEN: Today Dee considers herself as an investor, a facilitator and a change agent agent for the design and development of Nature Based Solutions in West Africa that mitigate the impact of climate change and support economic development.

KATHLEEN: She has decades of experience in project management and finance from large scale real estate development to the start up of New York based businesses that pioneered the development of the hybrid bond lease market. Ask what she considers her greatest asset. She offers her curiosity as the daughter of an English teacher and a world traveler de developed her curiosity from her mom's ethos to never stop learning.

KATHLEEN: Her curiosity has led her on multiple journeys of discovery, including her own personal development. Today, she is here to talk about her journey and how she embraces the opportunity to do what you can today with what you have. Welcome, Dee. Hi.

KATHLEEN: Nice that you came. Dee is my mastermind partner. I want you all to know because I've talked about her enough and I have been on this journey with her since she pretty well started almost two years ago now. It's a fascinating story. I'm totally amazed at what she has done in such a short period of time.

KATHLEEN: When we're in it, we're in it. I'm an outsider observing and I can't wait for her to share her story from when she started to where she is today because it's really remarkable what one person can do. Dee, I'm gonna have it go to you. How did you start this?

DEE: As you mentioned, it goes back almost two years and I was in a rather unfulfilling position in project management. I've done consulting and project management and start ups for many years and hit my 60th birthday mark. It was a time for something new and a good friend of mine who is, we consider family, extended, family became a traditional leader in Ghana.

DEE: He was a person who attended undergraduate school here in the US. Then he went to law school here in the US. After he got married in 2018, a couple of years into it, he was approached by some the local leaders for his domain and they asked him to become their king.

DEE: Another word for the king in that community is the paramount chief. There are many chiefs within Ghana, but there are much fewer paramount chiefs. They are the highest ruler for that particular domain where they rule.

DEE: He became a traditional leader January 2022. I had already started in this process. We talked about his pillars of progress that he wanted to work on in Accra in Ghana. He and I had worked before on some environmental projects. Environmental education, women's, empowerment, equality, those are all major pillars for his vision.

DEE: He asked if I wanted to help jump in and I said, sure. Our original vision was actually to establish a tech center in Accra. They have a lot of very well educated smart individuals who are young people who are very tech savvy and they speak English, that's their primary language, and they speak with a British accent because of colonialism.

DEE: We talked about it and we thought it would be a great fit. There's a lot of tech companies that are looking for alternatives to some of their call centers or for offshore support that they generally go to India for the the labor market is getting pretty tight over there.

DEE: We had thought that that would be our 1st stop. However, things change. As we have talked before, it's always looking forward but it's this be open to this or something better and something better just popped up.

DEE: I started to get very interested in the carbon markets and there is a huge push now for what they call and what we call Nature Based Solutions. Developing projects on large scale that will sequester carbon and also support local economic development, biodiversity improvements, something that supports nature.

DEE: We started looking at that and there are some tremendous opportunities throughout Africa. They have beautiful landscapes and a lot of open land but much of it now has become degraded because of over logging or for mangroves, for instance, they use mangroves for smoking fish and for fuel and it's easily accessible when you live on the water or along the coastline.

DEE: You have to understand the economic situation of individuals that live in these communities and they are quite disadvantaged.

DEE: They're poor and a lot of them in these rural communities aren't highly educated as opposed to the people that live in Accra and in the more developed cities who are many are highly educated. We started looking at some areas that have main growth and we ended up designing a project for the Volta River Estuary. It's about 15,000 hectares. Much of it would be reforesting.

DEE: The mangroves working with the Federal Forestry Commission as well as the community members and traditional leaders. It's been a really interesting journey. We have had many delays and many frustrations, but those frustrations all turned out to be quite positive because the projects have actually evolved from there.

DEE: Now we have multiple projects that are still in design. we're still waiting on funding, but I'm very positive about moving forward with them and these delays have actually helped us to further refine what will be beneficial to the communities.

DEE: That has been really interesting learning process for me. We have not just a mangrove project that is designed and there's pretty extensive interest from multiple investors. Blue carbon is what is the moniker for work in the coastal areas with mangroves. Sea kelp and salt marshes also come into that category.

DEE: We're particularly working on the mangroves in some areas that are already supposed to be conservation areas. But given the economics in the lack of infrastructure, it's very challenging to continue the conservation efforts in these communities and having had the privilege of being boots on the ground and seeing these things up close.

DEE: and in person, it's quite remarkable. I really couldn't, you can't, couldn't put it all together in my mind about why they're doing this with the mangroves and not conserving these areas that have been identified by global organizations as conservation areas.

DEE: It's simply economics. We can't fathom from the United States what it's like there trying to make a living and even just to survive. Having that privilege of being there in person and seeing the incredible erosion that has occurred already and how the ocean has taken away large portions of towns along the coastal area.

DEE: It was amazing and inspiring, which inspired me to do more and to really further refine what we're doing. We have business entities that are in Ghana and Nigeria.

DEE: These started organically, but as we moved ahead, we made the commitment that these are going to operate as social enterprises so that it's not going to be all about profit for us and for the other members of our team. Iit's gonna be the benefit for everyone and particularly for the communities.

DEE: That was one thing that came out of this or something better and just being open to that opportunity and to being open to what can come with additional research and experience and interactions with people. It's really been a great process and great road to go down for me.

KATHLEEN: The these communities are actually getting behind this as well, right? Even though they're poor and may not fully understand to the level and degree that you do, they're standing behind it because there's an opportunity for them to rebuild their communities.

KATHLEEN: Have a little bit more cash or whatever, it's all about preserving their way of life in a better situation instead of a poor situation. Is that accurate?

DEE: Oh, sure. It has evolved because there have been numerous nonprofits that have gone in and done various projects within these communities. Where they have a certain amount of funds that go in and try to structure whether it's clean water or waste management or some other type of system and everyone's on board.

DEE: When the funds run out then things collapse and they often go back to what it was before so that it's not sustainable change.

DEE: Other things that have happened is that people go in there from out of the country thinking, oh, I have this amazing idea and then I'm gonna make it all better and we're gonna make it all better for them and we can do this and this and this and, but the downside to that is that they weren't fully engaging the community to make sure that what they were bringing to the community was actually wanted.

DEE: There have been even just for the mangroves, there's been projects that have tried to teach people about the mangroves and why it's so important to preserve them.

DEE: It not only helps with erosion for their communities, which is a very critical issue for them, but also it dramatically impacts the nurseries for the fish and for the shellfish even, and for other endangered species, they have multiple turtle species within that community. They have manatee they have the Nile crocodile.

DEE: All of these are endangered but they depend upon one another and without having that optimal interwoven biodiversity that things can just collapse. They've seen with fewer mangroves, they've seen a significant decline in their fish population and most of these communities are fishing populations.

DEE: They also do shellfish and so they smoke their oysters or what they're harvesting. It's mostly oysters and they smoke the fish. But even so going back to that, they've had these interventions and they've had these discussions on a community level.

DEE: If you don't really address what the basic infrastructure challenges are or the economic challenges are, then there's no long term ability to sustain it. These people have to feed their families, they have to feed themselves and we can't fault them for doing what they have to do to survive.

DEE: It's very timely, actually it's been around for quite a while. But the UN through the Kyoto Protocol provided this mechanism for carbon credits which are valued at a certain dollar amount based on how much carbon this land is sequestering.

DEE: That large corporations based on a lot of social pressure, economic pressure as well as legislative pressure, like in the Eu and Australia, they have to do carbon offsets for whatever they can't manage internally to address what these organizations are contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.

KATHLEEN: We are meeting with Dee and she is talking about building her business in Africa. She was talking about the hectares and what that is to buy the land, I would say to help these communities come back and flourish instead of being impoverished.

KATHLEEN: Aside from all the political stuff she has to deal with and all of that, it's amazing what she's done. If you want to continue as far as how you've worked through a lot of those issues because I know you've had some political issues that you deal with sometimes as well how we get through something on having big dreams.

DEE: Yeah, there's definitely a lot of political issues but when I have conversations with people in Ghana or Nigeria, I tell them we have political issues here as well.

DEE: Some of their challenges are a little bit more overt and blatant than ours are. We have similar, similar challenges, but it's really a function of, patience. I have definitely have learned some patience over this time, things just take longer.

DEE: I met with a traditional leader when I was looking at some land and he was quite funny. He said to me, I know you think that we are crawling and crawling and crawling, but you have to know that in our minds we are running as fast as we can.

DEE: I thought that was so insightful. What his understanding was, we do things much faster and, so you have to step back and let some of these wheels move on their own without getting frustrated. We have a project that's in Nigeria that is, very convoluted.

DEE: It's large, it's 80,000 hectares, which is almost 200,000 acres. We're working on bamboo and regenerative agriculture, plans in this community or the multiple communities I should say for all that land. We are just now, at the mou point which is, a year later. I went there in Nigeria.

DEE: I was in Nigeria actually, in October last year and, met with the governor in this particular state where we're working and he was very supportive and then we met with their, commissioners, the next day and they were all supportive and they expressed what their requirements would be, which are perfectly reasonable. Then I went and met with the traditional leaders.

DEE: I actually had an opportunity to meet with the tort who is the king of this very large Christian led group that have people worldwide. He is the king of these millions and millions of people. Below him, he has some other sub kings. I met with some of them. They're also kind and welcoming and very encouraging about moving this forward.

DEE: But here we are now where we probably won't even have a signing until at least another month. That's just how it goes. They recently had elections in Nigeria. They have a new president and they have a new governor in the state where we're working and the way things work in Nigeria are very different than the way things work in Ghana.

DEE: You have to learn all those different pieces. But fortunately, in both areas, we have great team members who are native to the country and have a lot of insight and experience to guide me through the process. I'm the only non African in our team. That too has been very interesting and a privilege for me.

KATHLEEN: How do you manage, working with two countries like that, that are very different as far. I mean, they're similar, but they're different in what you're trying to accomplish because neither one of them are small areas that you're working with.

DEE: It's a matter of time getting to understand how the various players work. I have to depend on the team to give me the insight to the appropriate protocols for these particular areas.

KATHLEEN: How did you find all your team members? I was pretty impressed when I saw the website that you guys have put together. I was very impressed with your team members. How did you find all of those people?

DEE: Well, they actually found me. Standard Blue Investments is the company that I started with my extended family member, friend Bernard Bachu, who is the traditional leader of OSU in Accra. He and I put together a team based on a number of people that were already on his team for his royal duties.

DEE: We have people who are really very supportive of his goals and a lot of them didn't even get paid for the longest time. They were doing it out of their own passion for things, getting better. I was able to witness a lot of that in person on the multiple trips I've had over there.

DEE: Bernard and I talked about it and really discussed the people in appropriate positions for them based on their strengths. That was actually pretty easy. But the other organization that I work with is a Decarbonisation corporation and they already had their team set up.

DEE: I was one of the last people to the table and we met in this random opportunity that I had been working with another large corporation to talk about carbon credits. They manufacturing global entity that's based in Chicago.

DEE: In our discussions, they said, oh, I had a meeting with this person. It happened to be Doctor Victor Udo, who is the chairman of a Decarbonisation. We ended up connecting and I told him I was going to Ghana and we organized a sustainability conference that was held last August where there were multiple traditional leaders present and other government leaders were there.

DEE: After my second trip, when I went to Nigeria, that's when we were able to identify 80,000 hectares. They asked me to join them and be their chief operating officer. Things just kind of evolved.

KATHLEEN: I know every time we've had conversations and we go through things, we have issues at times with things we have to do, we're not thinking big enough. I remember having a conversation once where somebody told you, you weren't asking for enough money.

KATHLEEN: How did you handle that one? When somebody said that to you, when you thought you were dreaming big enough for what you needed, then somebody says, but you could go bigger.

DEE: Yeah, I got a lot of feedback from people on the investor side that we really need to scale. That was the common word scale. Scale in order for it to be impactful on an investment side. We're at the point now, actually, we revised our approach.

DEE: We've designed pilot programs both in Nigeria and Ghana and with the presumed success of those pilot programs, then we can go up and scale up. Roll out over the next number of years for the large scale, which is 80 to 100,000 hectares in both countries. I did have a conversation with somebody.

DEE: I said, you know, we're looking for a half a million to 750,000. They said, oh, you know, that's not enough. He said you, you gotta go to your friends and family for that, but I didn't have friends and family that had that kind of cash or were at least willing to part with it.

DEE: It's been a journey but there are actually a lot of entities out there that are interested in regenerative agriculture and they're very interested in blue carbon. They're very interested in everything that we're doing.

KATHLEEN: Are they finding you on linkedin? How are they finding you? Is it by word of mouth or some other way? I know that you've done a lot of work on linkedin, which is really amazing. What you have accomplished on linkedin for a social media place to meet people, right?

DEE: I actually credit linkedin with a lot of this journey because I participated in multiple webinars. I got to know key individuals in the industry and then I reach out to them and ask them to connect. I follow them and see some of the things that they're doing or their publications.

DEE: That has been really how I've learned a lot about what conferences do - I need to be at? Who do I need to connect with and what kind of funding is out there. I'm grateful for linkedin and actually, post COVID, there's a whole change in attitude about linkedin and that has been a major resource for connecting.

DEE: I think a lot of people have moved and opened themselves up to all that.

KATHLEEN: We are talking to Dee and we are going to shift just a little bit and talk about all the things that she did to stay

KATHLEEN: the course when things may not have looked as pretty or she got really frustrated or whatever happens on our journeys when we have a huge, massive goal. I know that there are times when you're all gung ho and everything is good and then it's stopped.

KATHLEEN: We know that patience is the biggest thing that you've had to learn over here, dealing with a totally different culture of people, how they operate in the world is not like how we operate in the United States.

KATHLEEN: How did you work through? Aside from the cultural differences, but how did you deal with your own struggles with wanting to move faster than you could and having to be patient?

DEE: For a while, I had times where I was frustrated and got angry and then had that little voice inside say, oh, this is stupid. Why are you even doing this? I think we've talked about that there's the four quadrants of life of vocation and, relationships and health and well-being and relationships and freedom.

DEE: This has been my vocation and I've been very focused on that and it got to the point where I was really noticing the frustration but there was absolutely nothing I could do about that on the vocation side because, if, for instance, in Nigeria they had their elections and the governor's elections weren't until March.

DEE: Because of their issues, it got delayed a week and then they don't install the new governor till May and then the new governors don't install their cabinet until the end of July. We're all waiting on this so we can move our memoranda of understanding forward.

DEE: I'm, ok, well, they have the information. There's not a lot more I can do. It's a waiting game. I consciously shifted to focus on other things. That was my relationships and, health and well-being and they actually merged together.

DEE: I made a plan to schedule walks or hiking with a friend, every single day. It was Monday through Friday. I would have, somebody to go walk this three mile loop. I do or to hike our local Hill Mountain that is a three hour adventure or so.

DEE: I was really happy that I was aware enough to let it go and now things are moving forward. I'm still working on the walking and the hiking because I've had this great opportunity to get to know, some of my women friends a lot better and then, and my dogs are very happy too because I get to take them on the walks.

KATHLEEN: I find that because I know that we always talked about, well, let's dance. I went to the gym and walked for a while and in doing dancing because those endorphins, especially when you're feeling that frustration or angst like nothing's moving and all of that.

KATHLEEN: I know that we both encourage each other when we have those moments because they're going to come up and it's how do you deal with them?

KATHLEEN: This past weekend I went down in my crawl space to deal with more of those moldy boxes and I hit a wall that I laid out in frustration of what was I thinking when I started awakening spirit with all these bottles and the boxes are ruined and the mold and it was so frustrating and upsetting to me on so many levels.

KATHLEEN: But what happened out of that was, my perspective changed. I had some dreams that were telling me about things and there's a marriage coming in and not a physical marriage on the planet. More of a spiritual marriage of things that are shifting and changing because of it.

KATHLEEN: I'm able to talk to people and help get the angst out sometimes because it was a big shift and then I read something where it said when things pile up like they have with my basement, they pile up be prepared because that means that everything else is ready to shift.

KATHLEEN: I've been saying that all this stuff is coming down and piling down, but it's how you deal with it, how you move through it and it's the prelude to something magnificent coming. I use that to hold on to things as well.

DEE: I think that that's right on and I'm glad you mentioned the dancing because that is such a benefit. I think to me individually and I would just encourage anybody that needs a break. You go and either put your headphones on or blast your music in your room and just go wild.

KATHLEEN: I bring my cats out and hold them and sometimes they're, really mom and other times they're, please put me down or it's, what is she doing? She's lost her mind. That makes me laugh because part of it you want to start laughing again and get that shit in your brain out. Laughing is probably the best thing.

KATHLEEN: I have four crazy cats in my house and they do crazy things at times. When I drag them into my little dance routine, the looks on their face and the energy they emit is comical. I love it. I get a kick out of it. I think that's funny when they give you a look because people don't think cats have personalities and oh my God, I have four cats that are full of personality.

DEE: They all do.

KATHLEEN: All of our animals have personalities and you have to be aware of that and realize that, they have a consciousness as well.

DEE: I think another thing, a tool I think that was very helpful was working on the gratitude for what we have. Sometimes it can be, I can be blinded if I'm frustrated and consciously taking that step back to really understand how grateful I am for all the things, all the people in my life.

DEE: All the these amazing experiences and there's so much. The grass is green and we've actually had a lot of rain lately but this is the first summer that we've lived here in 20 years and we haven't had brown grass, at this time of the year.

KATHLEEN: I know Wyoming and Colorado are completely green right now. It doesn't stop raining every day. We have rain and I think I've gone from the high desert to subtropical. Our soils are not prepared for this kind of water at all.

KATHLEEN: It's interesting to see how green Wyoming is because it's usually very brown and it's Wyoming, there's such a beauty about Wyoming. It's vast and these six hour drives have made you get appreciative of everything.

KATHLEEN: I know that there was a point that you talked about one of your trips to Africa and you expressed how poor these communities were and how they had just nothing and the emotion that you emanated at that time was - I felt what you were saying and it was, wow, there's so much that I even take for granted, even though I'm appreciative of what I have.

KATHLEEN: To hear how you described what these people go through over there was immense. That made a big shift in you because I could see your whole energy shift from that as far as, you have it, we all have it made in the United States.

KATHLEEN: I don't care how bad everything is in the United States we have it made because I've been to third world countries and I have seen poverty we do not have in this country, even though we have it. It's not like other countries.

DEE: We do have some places in our own country that are, deeply impoverished. I think it's different in Africa. They might not even have a bite to eat for a day or two. I think one of the most eye opening things for me was understanding that there's a market there that traffics children.

DEE: To go fishing, for fishing and for agriculture. There might be a, a family where maybe, the father is not there anymore. He's passed away or he's gone and the mother is trying to manage six or seven or eight children and somebody comes along and say, hey, I'm gonna give you 200 bucks if you'll give me your child to come work with me.

DEE: When I first had heard about this, I couldn't imagine it. How could somebody give away their child. You come to appreciate that it's a function of their survival. It's hard, horrible for the child especially.

DEE: That's part of why you have to get to the root of the problems, which is the economic issues and see what can be done to support change.

KATHLEEN: I think that's a really important to message. I don't think we ever really want to go to the core of the problem because of what we might find in the core. I've had this dream last week, about my own personal life and it was showing me something that I didn't, I accepted it because it was in my dream.

KATHLEEN: If I heard it any other way, I don't know if I would have believed it of how the message was being delivered about the abuse of my life and who it was and that it went further than I realized.

KATHLEEN: I was numb. I had no emotion attached to it. There's a reason I'm being shown this for something bigger. There's more to what happened besides to me that it went further with the person I didn't expect.

KATHLEEN: This is ok, I'm fine with it. I'm not going to do much about it because I don't know what to do. Besides she's dead. There's nothing I can do. The whole point was is, keep going deeper and learning so I can become that better person. If we're wounded people, we're gonna keep reacting to that wound.

KATHLEEN: It's about the healing of the deep traumas. When you're in a culture like that, there is a lot of trauma going on.

KATHLEEN: Dee and I were talking briefly about what we ended the topic with as far as dealing with the traumas and abuses.

KATHLEEN: The one thing she did mention is the infrastructure is what's really bad and the corruption that is actually in Africa, which is no different than the rest of the world. How she's trying to circumvent that and the plans of how they're going to try to help these communities without necessarily having the government take. Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit more, that'd be great.

KATHLEEN: It's about empowering the community.

DEE: Right and taking ownership of their land. You probably, I don't know, some people might have heard there's a lot of talk about making sure that indigenous communities have the input for their own direction and to respect the individuals within their communities, they have a wealth of knowledge and experience and they've been there for generations.

DEE: Going back to the mangrove issue, one of the things that we have in our project is that we are working with, one of the local universities, a tech university and they are going to be funded to go into the communities and then sample the mangroves because it's in particular, they use the red mangrove for this fish smoking.

DEE: Scientifically evaluate what it is, at least try to identify what it is in the mangroves that creates this unique outcome for the fish.

DEE: A lot of other times they've had these wood lots that were established so that people could use the wood lots for the fish smoking instead of the mangroves. But woodlots are too far away for them to get to.

DEE: People don't have cars and they can't walk that far and then carry wood back to where they live. Even if they did have the wood, it doesn't have the same unique outcome which is this really shiny, not blackened coating on the fish and it gives it a bit of a sweet, flavor.

DEE: When I learned all that, I was thinking, ok, we can't tell them, they can't use the mangroves unless we have there. There's no, you can never tell them actually.

DEE: If we're going to hope that they will stop doing that, then we have to work with them to find an alternative that's acceptable. Part of that is engaging scientists from the local university to identify what it is that's within the mangroves that creates that outcome.

DEE: One of the things that we're hoping is that maybe if we can even soak bamboo in seawater maybe it's the sodium coming from the seawater exposure plus the sugar within the plant and bamboo has lots of sugar in it, then maybe we'll have a similar outcome.

DEE: It's an attempt to figure it out. As part of that, we have designed the project to have various locations for different agricultural production so that there's an opportunity for the people who use the mangroves as their income.

DEE: They go and harvest the mangroves and then sell them in the local local market. To provide another opportunity for them to make money, you can't cut off their income supply.

DEE: We'll be working with them to to actually build 100 hectare lots, 50 to 100 hectare lots that allow them to grow bamboo and grow other relevant agricultural products that they can then sell and then hooking them up with this really cool platform that's in Africa right now called Farmer Line where they connect sellers with buyers and suppliers.

DEE: There's a lot of a lot of things happening. It's not just one thing that we can do, we have multiple multiple pieces for the solution and that's one of them. The heart of what we want to do is build capacity.

DEE: As I said, there's many people who are very well educated but they haven't had the experiences that maybe some of us have had. When we work with them and engage them, then they're gonna build that capacity. That's part of the goal.

KATHLEEN: What would you say to everyone what would be a word of advice to keep moving forward when you have a big dream?

DEE: Believe in your dream. You've probably heard that expression, conceive, believe, achieve and that you know, whatever your mind can, can conceive and believe that ultimately you can achieve.

DEE: I have a this saying here on my desk from goa and it's whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it and you have to keep, you can't listen to all those negative voices out there and even within yourself, I'm sure there will be negative voices that pop up but do something, do something every day that it's gonna move you forward.

DEE: Maybe it's you go on linkedin and look at some articles and read or you do a webinar or if it's your dream is to become fit and healthy, then do a walk around your block or, you gotta do something, keep, keep going.

KATHLEEN: Thank you for coming on to the show. I really appreciate it.