while on track with the goal of becoming “the world’s most sustainable town,” kalu yala got hit by a four letter word that challenged their mission, while temporarily stymying respectability and enrollment at its educational institute. in the damp environment of a rainforest town, the four-letter word is not “rain,” but a more-than-devastating factor that started with the wet season in fall 2016.

this quartet of letters temporarily washed away much of the participation in this eco-community concept of real estate entrepreneur jimmy stice.

the word is “vice.” its creation, “jungletown.” “jungletown” is the product of filmmaker ondi timoner, a series filmed in fall 2016 featuring kalu yala through the dramatized stories of disgruntled interns at the remote, sustainable enclave in a hard-to-reach valley of panama.

once the “docu-series” hit the internet in spring 2017, kalu yala was berated with some image-crushing accusations, many baseless in the eyes of staffers at kalu yala. articles and posts online began to circulate, calling kalu yala founder jimmy stice a “conman” and “controversial” and kalu yala “neocolonialist” and a “cult” on reddit.

flash forward to spring 2018 and the enrollment is dramatically smaller. at an institute that would proudly host nearly 100 students, it was graced by only 17 young, new trainees this spring. but stice and the kalu yala staff see enrollment re-gaining traction for summer with an emphasis on student innovation.

tara mclaughlin, president of kalu yala, describes “jungletown” as “a great example of media gone wrong.” mclaughlin, who grew up in central america and now works with the students and residents of the town, harped on the role of media in kalu yala’s worldwide appearance.

at the institute, there are more than a dozen programs offered to the interns to give them hands-on experiences while contributing to the progression of the town. programs include engineering, political science, media arts, biology, culinary arts, and many more.

and this is where the media arts team comes into play –– this creative group at kalu yala acknowledged the dangers of having an outdated website while facing the internet onslaught of trolls, bad press, and hurtful words. they are launching a dynamic revamp of their website with new material produced by interns and staff –– a hard task to continuously conquer when relying on internet support powered by solar panels. ironically, vice contributed $60,000 for the creation of the panel array in the middle of the jungle during one of their filming sessions.

in a struggle to properly inform their audience with relevant information, mclaughlin lauds the work of the interns working in the media arts department at kalu yala. “the media content that we’re trying to put out there is solely to combat the negative crap that has come out of this ‘jungletown’ experience,” mclaughlin said.

“so, we’ve been trying to combat that through our own media campaign, that’s why the media program this semester has been so amazing, that’s why ruby got a standing ovation,” mclaughlin noted.

ruby foster is an intern who created this video for kalu yala during her internship in spring 2018. 

at the end of the 10-week internship program, students had the opportunity to present the deliverables from their student-led project in their time in panama.

“it’s like super bowl week for me,” stice said excitedly in passing, prior to the presentations. all of the hard work from every aspect, whether it be media, agricultural, work done at the distillery, educational efforts, etc., is put on display for the entire town to rouse excitement and forward progress as the semester ends.

the media team had their own presentation the night before, screening their videos and photographs taken during their adventures in the jungle.

the media team was led by kalu yala media lab director taylor epps for spring 2018. the texas native was the first “completely unaffiliated” director for the media lab department in the town –– she arrived at the town only a few weeks prior to the new students. she knew nothing about “jungletown” at this point.

“when i first came on, i realized very quickly that there were some people that immediately associated me with ‘jungletown,’” epps said. “because i was media, i had that ‘media’ target on my back and so that made people uncomfortable so i had to work a little harder for people to trust me.”

she discussed the role of their media in the environment, particularly about how to understand the dynamic between producing media while being conscious of the sustainability of the project.

“that was the biggest part of our journey: how your voice is affecting your environment, knowing what that voice is, why people should be listening to it,” epps added. “you have the product, but tell me more about how it affects the environment…what’s the tangible outcome we’re working toward.”

epps said that she did not want her students to go forward without being able to identify the tangibility of their outcomes, particularly their carbon footprint.

jessica wiegandt is a junior at brevard college who came to kalu yala to satisfy her interest in outdoor journalism while in search of a media internship. at college, she is majoring in wilderness leadership and experiential education and english with an emphasis in journalism. during spring at kalu yala, wiegandt worked on stockpiling blog posts to promote an active blog even after the students complete their 10 weeks.

a barrier the media interns dealt with was working around their environment, as the town is solar-powered and sometimes faces challenging weather, which is not easy for a team focused on electronic equipment. while at kalu yala, the question of sustainability plays a key role in the work done by interns and residents.

“when you’re working with media, a lot of your stuff is just going online and so it’s not really taking up a lot of space –– it’s not going to rot away back into the jungle,” wiegandt noted. “the projects we’ve done: is it sustainable? yeah, because it’s going up on a blog to be shared and reshared… and as soon as it goes away it’s just a megabit out in the internet.”

for a small town in a panamanian valley, the internet, and the trail it makes online play immense roles. the stories that come out of kalu yala have a widespread reach, as the staff has discovered in light of the release of “jungletown.”

“we just had to admit the power of video,” founder stice said. “and second of all, third-party perspectives are worth a hell of a lot more than first-person perspectives.”

“and that’s where, for me, the students are the secret sauce, because if ruby foster was being paid by jimmy stice to make a video about how kalu yala is, i would think the video is pretty much just propaganda,” he said.

for stice, the work produced by the media team was not only impressive, but it also will help combat the internet trolls, while the town regains a credible voice online.

“vice pretty much invalidated me as a character –– my voice has a lot less weight than it used to have, so i need people to speak for me and the best people who can speak for you are the ones who aren’t on your payroll,” stice said.

the next steps for kalu yala are to utilize the student-produced work to create an understandable, actual portrayal of the eco-town with a mission online while drowning out the “trolls” and bad press about the place through search engine optimization (seo).

“right now we are recovering. we got punched in the face by a monster 10 months ago – vice took a very direct shot at us,” stice said. “i have learned a lot about media and online and content value and seo and reputation offenses.”

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about the author: medill student colin boyle can be reached at colinbphoto@u.northwestern.edu and on twitter: @colinbphoto.

can startups save the world? jimmy stice and his employees think so, and their answer is kalu yala, a startup “eco-city” in the panamanian jungle.

although stice isn’t a silicon valley entrepreneur or a typical venture capitalist, he’s encouraging disruptive models for water conservation, farm to table culinary and housing without walls to build a very different product: an ethical real estate business in panama’s tres brazos valley.

stice’s model, often called social entrepreneurship in the u.s., seeks to harness the free market to do good, letting businesses solve social problems in profitable ways and trying to meet consumer demand in ethical ways. stice, kalu yala and the business program – one of several internship programs in the community – focus on something they call the “triple bottom line.” instead of just aiming to make profit, they say, a business and institute (like kalu yala) must also promote the interests of people and the planet in its work. stice said he tried to find a career that would make value for the world, make him happy and pay his bills. that idea of “making value” for entrepreneurs and the world is fundamental to kalu yala’s mission.

to further this end, kalu yala also founded a business incubator in the first half of 2016. kalu yala’s incubator, which incubator director megan vose claims is the first in panama, seeks to help triple-bottom-line-focused companies get started to provide services for kalu yala, the neighboring town san miguel and even panama city. overall, according to the head of the business incubator megan vose, its job is to help figure out how sustainability can create jobs, both in kalu yala and in the wider world. while the financial benefit package it offers to its clients is still being worked out – “the incubator is still very much being incubated,” vose said – it provides housing, marketing, business advice and a test market (the town of kalu yala) as well as low-interest capital loans to the six businesses it is currently cultivating.

the incubator’s first beneficiary is willie dale, an american with a background in brewing and distilling. dale came to kalu yala from brooklyn at the recommendation of a friend, who was first offered the job dale decided to take. once hired, the community members helped dale construct a living space far from town square where he could experiment with making rum as part of a closed-loop system which recycles wastes, such as methanol. today, dale is preparing to legally sell his miel de caña rum, dale (as in the spanish ¡dale!), in panama.

henry heyman, 21, has also received incubator support for his business tres brazos outfitters. heyman, a former kalu yala business intern from boulder, colo., was inspired to start a sustainable tourism business during his 10-week semester in the valley. heyman, a lifelong lover of the outdoors, noticed many of his fellow interns were not exploring the natural resources around them and sought to turn his experience hiking and guiding hikes into something profitable and sustainable. he started leading kalu yala weekend warriors trips for his fellow students. in late 2016, henry drafted a business plan, secured incubator support and returned to kalu yala, seeking to promote “adventure tourism” for travelers who want low impact, educational vacations.

of course, kalu yala’s directors of culinary, biology and farm systems are still learning how to work out the kinks in the model. for one, the triple bottom line isn’t incentivized by anything in the free market except for a business owner’s personal integrity.

authors such as gus speth and naomi klein have written extensively about how industrial capitalism has no motive for long-term environmental preservation. some interns come in ready to fundamentally disrupt the systems they grew up with, believing fully that “business as usual is suicide” for the planet, and are frustrated with the familiar systems that remain in place at kalu yala, said sustainability coordinator clare bassi.

esteban gast, dean of the kalu yala educational institute, said he’s often asked if kalu yala is a community or a company. he responds “we’re a company that builds communities, right, we’re a community-building company. communities don’t have payroll, so we have to operate as a company, but our focus when we operate as a company is how can we build really strong community.”

like any company, its community building services aren’t free. for the summer 2017 session, kalu yala will charge its interns $6,495, and tuition will increase to $7,495 by spring 2018. this tuition covers room and board, and scholarships are available to panamanians and other latin americans. as the town and program grow, their costs grow as well, posing barriers for some.

those who can manage to come, though, spend 10 weeks working on a project and final presentation in the town. the kalu yala institute’s business and entrepreneurship interns learn “startup tactics,” “financial modeling” and other techniques so they can “redesign traditional business models,” according to their website. under the leadership of entrepreneurship director zouheir al ghreiwati, interns create a product and business model that focus on the “triple bottom line.”

sometimes the sustainability of their ventures comes into question. heyman’s adventure trips cater mostly to wealthy westerners, not native panamanians, who must travel thousands of miles, mostly by plane, to experience the nature he hopes to preserve. air travel is extremely carbon-intensive, producing more co2 and carbon equivalents per mile than any other method of transportation.

heyman still sees his business as sustainable, however, because he focuses on teaching his clients about environmental concerns and living a less wasteful lifestyle while guiding them. “if you want to see central america, at least you’re coming on my trip,” he said, pointing out the excessive and wasteful resource usage in this demographic’s typical tourist destinations, like resorts. sustainability, he stresses, isn’t a straightforward goal. it is most often a series of trade-offs.

the goal of scaling up these business ideas also poses challenges. scaling a business model to serve a much wider market is a shared goal of tech companies in california and the entrepreneurs of kalu yala, but it’s hard to do in ways that are good for the people and planet. kalu yala is seeking to grow in the valley – stice has already sold residential real estate in the town – but it uses its media and marketing teams as a lower-footprint form of scaling. gast said the point of kalu yala’s “start up-y messaging” is to reach people outside of the valley. “we have this global mission because we believe we’re doing all these small changes that have a really big impact. so if we figure out a really interesting way to deal with compost, then that’s something that we want to tell the world,” he said. “so we think very startup-y in the way that we say ‘can this scale? can we have more people living like this?’”

manufacturing is an especially tricky field, where environmental concerns can often be a roadblock for new companies hoping to produce goods quickly and cheaply. shipping is another issue entirely. “i don’t think a lot of social entrepreneurship is scaled,” said al ghreiwati. “you can definitely set an industry standard and replicate it.” but he argues that effective, sustainable development, by definition, must be locally sourced and locally focused. for example, one of his spring interns, gwen michaux, spent her semester developing a business to make “koozies,” – drink holders, usually for soda or beer – fashioned out of bamboo and crocheted plastic bags.

“she’s able to tell people ‘hey, here’s a product that could be useful in your day to day life, and this is how it’s made,’ versus a koozie company in the states explaining ‘hey, here’s all the stuff we dumped into the water to make your koozie, these are all the ink dyes that are being buried and this is how much co2 emerged. it’s tracking not only your profit but also your waste,” said al ghreiwati, her supervisor.

sometimes what consumers demand and what the planet (or a society) really needs are two different things. the kalu yala staff aren’t worried about this, though. al ghreiwati believes that eco-consciousness is more than a market trend and educated consumers will continue gravitating towards products and businesses that are good for the earth. “you vote with your dollar,” he said.

stice echoed this, calling kalu yala’s mission “seducing people who might not care into caring,” then educating them about climate change, environmental issues and sustainable living. according to stice and al ghreiwati, once people know about the issues and fundamentally understand the challenges the planet faces, they will be inspired to take action – one dollar at a time.