Storyteller |
Ariel Reyes Antuan & Jess Reyes Barton
Jess Reyes Barton is a community organizer, Iye Creative co-founder, and entrepreneur born in BC, Canada. For the past 7 years, Jess has been involved in various anthropological and archaeological research projects that favour long-term and respectful relationship building with First Nation communities.
As a community builder, she loves connecting with knowledge keepers and creating alternatives based on global ancestral practices to solve local, and modern unbalances.
Aside from Iye Creative, she works at the Indigenous Mentorship Network of the Pacific Northwest (IMN-PN) as Network Coordinator.
Ariel Reyes Antuan is a community connector, Iye Creative co-founder, and entrepreneur born in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. Ariel for the past 10 years has been involved in coordinating at the highest level, optimizing, and managing various community projects and grassroots initiatives that favour long-term, reciprocal and respectful relationship building for communities in Cuba and what’s currently Canada.
As an Afrocuban in the diaspora, Ariel has worked in culturally diverse environments, cities, and countries developing initiatives. He deeply understands community issues and how important it is to develop holistic and strategic community-based partnerships in order to plan around the needs of disenfranchised groups to provide them with tools that empower their own liberation.
Iye Creative
At Iye Creative the framework is about building communities and connecting alternatives based on global ancestral practices to solve local, modern unbalances.
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May 2020: Palenke Greens is an educational initiative, empowerment tool, and an opportunity to foster long-standing relationships and mentorship while fulfilling the most basic need to feed oneself and one’s family with healthy, organic food. Palenke Greens prioritized all persons of African-descent, those facing food insecurity and have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and supported 50 barrier-facing families in Victoria with some essential greens, in addition to creating a food sharing network.
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September 2020: Palenke Produce Box: is a farm-fresh food box program sourced locally from Vancouver Island-based offering free fresh produce bi-weekly. This initiative is aimed at supporting our communities' access to nutritious, fresh, and delicious food while also re-invigorating our connection to the lands we live on, our relationship to where our food is grown, the resilience of our communities, and the vitality of our bodies.