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Founder Earl Brown is a freelance environmental consultant in Northern California specializing in Earl is a graduate of Fresno State University in California, 1978, with a degree in education. He is a fifth generation Northern Californian whose hobbies include guiding wilderness whitewater trips, skin and scuba diving, philosophy, cultural anthropology and visiting wild places. He studies with Joanna Macy, leads workshops in her work "The Work That Reconnects" and is deeply committed to the Great Turning. He is a facilitator for the Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium created by the Pachamama Alliance, based in San Francisco, California, and is a public radio volunteer programmer for KMEC Radio, in Ukiah California, his home town. He is currently developing workshops that build a trusting and safe environment where participants learn to honor their pain for the world, the pain of others and to transmute this energy into committed action for positive, non-violent, social change. A large component of this work is to connect with and encourage men to become aware of their social programing for violence and separation and become more deeply in this healing work. Our women are way ahead of us men in promoting sustainability and healthy communities and they need our help. It is his belief that without a foundation of trust and love in our communities from which we can make our actions there will be no lasting positive change and more probably social collapse. In 2003 Condor People founder Earl Brown went into the Ecuadorian rainforest with a small group of travelers organized by the Pachamama Alliance. The Kapawi Eco-Lodge is in Achuar territory near Ecuador's eastern border with Peru, along the Pastaza River, in some of the last remaining pristine rainforest in Ecuador. This trip marked the second significant step in a magical and deeply spiritual journey that began at a workshop with Joanna Macy in 2002 and continues to this day. Moved deeply by the experience with the Achuar and their culture Earl returned from the trip, liquidated his possessions and volunteered to teach English in the Achuar community of Pumpuentsa. Since then Earl has returned to Ecuador twice and traveled by bus, boat and foot into Shuar territory in the Morona Santiago Province of southeast Ecuador. On his last trip he and friends at Fundacion Omaere, an Ecuadorian NGO, negotiated the purchase of 200 hectares (approx. 500 acres) of primary rainforest and established a ecological reserve. |
erosion control, salmon habitat development and watershed management. Earl contracts with private landowners, agricultural and industrial operations and local governments to help them address their compliance with environmental regulations. He also applies a blend of ecological psychology with social activism and group activities that honors our pain for the world and reconnects people's senses to each other and the natural world. Continuing since 2003 Earl has been visiting the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest to visit and live with the Achuar and Shuar Peoples, two "upper river" groups searching for techniques, methods, myths and other cultural tools with which indigenous people use to live in balance with nature. In Ecuador Earl has lived and taught English in the Achuar community of Pumpuentsa, volunteered at Ethno-Botanical Parque Omaere, in Puyo, helping build their volunteer lodging, helped build a schoolhouse and volunteer quarters at Bosque Protector Arutam, north of Macas and is purchasing 500 acres of primary rainforest as a eco-reserve in southeast Ecuador. He is currently working on developing the infrastructure of the reserve and while in Ecuador provids funds for food, medicine and medical transport.