From the soil
What the compost taught me about grief
Nothing is wasted. Every ending is the beginning of another body's becoming.
We Welcome You To A Place Of Return
Daisy's16 Desires
Where lineage becomes living infrastructure.
Our Mission
Not a charity. Not a brand.
A living practice.
Daisy's 16 Desires is a regenerative community development organization that helps restore the relationships connecting people to place, memory to purpose, and communities to the systems that sustain life.
Our work begins where land and people meet. Guided by ancestral ecological wisdom and community-led design, we support place-based projects that grow local capacity and help communities remember what has been interrupted. Together, we create systems of care rooted in reciprocity that nourish generations to come.
The lenses of Earth
Everything, everyone, and every place carries a story that speaks to its highest potential. We engage that story through different lenses — and as you move through this site, the light moves with you.
Light
What reaches for the open sky — growth, harvest, the visible flourishing of a place.
Ethereal
The water and the in-between — memory, lineage, the wisdom carried between worlds.
Dark
The soil and the parent material — where energy is transformed and every story begins.
Where would you like
to enter the story?
I · Remembrance
Origin
Where it came from — lineage, land, and the wisdom remembered beneath the soil.
II · Restoration
Our Work
The programs — SoilBus, AINGRI, and JF-1 — through which the whole grows its capacity.
III · Invitation
Request Access
Share your story, and join the living network of the SoilBus.
I · Origin & Mission · Remembrance
An ode to a matriarch.
A framework for remembrance.
An ode to a matriarch · A framework for remembrance
Daisy's 16 Desires honors a grandmother whose dreams moved through sixteen children — and has become a regenerative community development organization restoring the relationship between land, lineage, culture, and the living intelligence of communities.
16
Children
Lineages
Becomings
Lineages
Becomings
"Family, intelligence, hard work, resilience, and God's favor could take you anywhere."
The first root
She was the matriarch of the family — and the matriarch of a future her surroundings could not see.
Daisy was born in the early 1930s in a town in rural Mississippi so small it would not be considered a village by population. She lived through realities many people today only read about: segregation, racial discrimination, financial disparity, environmental degradation, and the hardships of rural Black life in the American South. We name these things with dignity, not spectacle. They are part of the field she stood in — not the measure of who she was.
The ancestral intelligence carried by African and Indigenous peoples — a way of building that never forgot the living world.
Daisy did not have access to extensive formal education. Yet she carried a brilliance deeper than what could be measured on paper — inner knowing, ancestral intelligence, intuition, resilience, discipline, faith, and lived wisdom. She taught her children that family, intelligence, hard work, resilience, and God's favor could take them anywhere.
All sixteen of her children went on to become successful academically and vocationally, carrying her dreams into places that would have seemed impossible from the outside. The founder herself journeyed from those humble beginnings to Los Angeles — working with one of the most recognized brands in the world, in spaces connected to global cultural events: the Grammys, the MTV Awards, NBA events, major concerts, and global entertainment productions. The lineage moved.
The Evolution
From one matriarch
to many living systems.
The name Daisy's 16 Desires honors Daisy, her sixteen children, and the potential of life beyond our wildest imagination living on through the lineage she left behind. But this origin has evolved beyond one grandmother and one family — what began as a commemorative ode became a living framework for remembering the intelligence carried by land, families, communities, culture, foodways, soil, rivers, and ancestral ways of knowing.
Daisy was the first root.
The work has become a forest.
Through reconnecting with other branches of family, community, land, and ancestral memory, the work expanded into a broader remembrance — of the lives, cultures, lands, and communities whose stories continue through living intelligence.
Mission
Our mission,
plainly stated.
Daisy's 16 Desires supports regenerative community development by helping communities remember and activate their own living intelligence — through soil regeneration, cultural restoration, living systems thinking, ancestral ecological practice, and community-led design.
We are not a charity, an aid organization, or a generic outreach program. We are a regenerative community development organization rooted in ancestral ecology and living systems thinking.
Our Values
Nine principles that move our work.
Remembrance
We begin by remembering what land, lineage, and people already know.
Reciprocity
We move through mutual exchange — never extraction.
Living Systems
Soil, food, water, culture, economy, and wellness are one ecosystem.
Ancestral Intelligence
Place-based wisdom is innovation, not nostalgia.
Soil as Foundation
Healthy soil is the floor of food sovereignty and community health.
Self-Sufficiency
Communities thrive when their own potential is reactivated.
Cultural Restoration
Story, language, foodways, and lineage are infrastructure.
Imagination
We design from possibility, not deficiency.
Thriving
Our measure is life — soil, families, ecosystems, and futures that flourish.
II · Our Work · Restoration
Programs that move with
the art of regeneration.
Each initiative is a different way of remembering — soil, leadership, story, land, and global relationship — woven into a single living network.
Four offerings · one living network
Mobile Program
The SoilBus
A mobile vessel for soil regeneration, community education, ecological assessment, and land-based learning. A moving classroom, soil lab, and restoration hub — knowledge traveling toward the people.
Explore →Global Initiative
AINGRI Initiative
African & Indigenous Nations Global Reassembly Initiative
A living systems framework for restoring relationship between people, land, culture, memory, economy, and future generations.
Explore →
Inner Development
JF-1 Program
An inner development, leadership, healing, and cultural restoration framework that supports the human side of regenerative community development — from rootedness to purpose.
Explore →
Strategy & Education
Consulting, Education & Living Systems Strategy
Founder-led offerings: regenerative development strategy, ancestral ecological consulting, soil microscopy, ecosystem restoration planning, partnership strategy, grant and proposal writing, and program design.
Explore →Cross-Cutting
Threads that run through
every program.
Soil Regeneration & Education
Microscopy, compost literacy, regenerative agriculture, and soil health as the foundation of food sovereignty.
Cultural Systems Restoration
Story, foodways, language, and lineage as essential infrastructure.
Community-Led Design
Communities as co-designers — never recipients.
Ecosystem Restoration
Place-based ecological repair planned with the land, not on top of it.
Partnership Strategy
Mutual, relational partnerships across the diaspora and Indigenous nations.
Program & Proposal Design
Frameworks, narratives, and grant writing that honor regenerative integrity.
Emergence
Toward the highest
potential of the whole.
What begins in the dark of the soil reaches, in time, for the open sky. This is regenerative development and design — ancestral wisdom re-emerging through the lens of our modern time.
The SoilBus · Mobile Program
A moving classroom.
A soil lab on wheels.
Knowledge traveling toward the people.
A mobile vessel for soil regeneration, community education, ecological assessment, and land-based learning.
What the SoilBus is
It is not just a bus.
The SoilBus is a moving classroom, mobile soil lab, community restoration hub, and a symbol of knowledge traveling toward the people — instead of asking the people to travel toward institutions.
On board: soil microscopy, soil health education, compost literacy, regenerative agriculture workshops, youth learning, land assessments, food systems support, farm visits, and restoration planning.
Under the lens
Reading the soil's
living world.
Footage pulled directly from the SoilBus microscope — protozoa, nematodes, fungal hyphae, and the mineral debris of a working soil. These are not stock visuals. They are what your handful of dirt actually looks like when it is alive.
▦ Microscope footage
Add your soil microscopy clip here
Add your soil microscopy clip here
▦ Microscope footage
Add your soil microscopy clip here
Add your soil microscopy clip here
Compost in motion
Where waste becomes
living soil.
Real compost work from the field — feedstock sorted by carbon and nitrogen, aerated towers built for community-scale processing, and finished compost full of millipedes, fungi, and the quiet engineers that build soil.
▦ Compost towers
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Why
Soil is the foundation.
Healthy soil is the floor of food sovereignty, ecological health, and community self-sufficiency. When soil is alive, water holds. Food nourishes. Economies stabilize. Culture has somewhere to root.
The SoilBus helps communities rebuild relationship with soil — as living memory, not as a commodity to extract from.
Experiences
What the SoilBus offers.
Soil Microscopy Sessions
See your soil's living world under the lens — fungi, bacteria, protozoa, nematodes.
Compost & Soil Literacy
Hands-on workshops in compost building, biology, and soil regeneration.
Regenerative Agriculture Training
Field-based learning with farmers, growers, and land stewards.
Youth Learning Days
Intergenerational programs with schools, churches, and community groups.
Land Assessment Visits
On-site soil and ecosystem assessments with restoration recommendations.
Community Food Systems Support
Connecting growers, eaters, and stewards into regenerative loops.
From the field
Living systems,
on the ground.
Real photographs from the regenerative land and animal systems the SoilBus learns from and supports.
▦ Coop & eggs
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Who it serves
Communities, farms, schools, churches, land stewards, and families. Many of the communities most disconnected from soil literacy are also the most distant from formal institutions. The SoilBus closes the distance — traveling to rural towns, urban gardens, schoolyards, faith communities, regenerative farms, and pilot sites.
How to engage
Communities, schools, farms, churches, land stewards, and local organizations can invite the SoilBus, sponsor a stop, host a workshop, or partner on a season of programming. Donors can sponsor the bus itself, soil testing supplies, microscopes, compost education, fuel, restoration workshops, youth programs, and land visits.
What the soil returns
Harvest as evidence.
When soil is restored, the harvest answers. Turmeric pulled from one plant; cucumbers sorted by the bucketful — the visible yield of an invisible biology.
▦ Cucumber harvest
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Support
Sponsor the SoilBus.
Move soil literacy across the land.
AINGRI · Global Initiative
African & Indigenous Nations
Global Reassembly Initiative.
A global framework emerging from local roots — restoring relationships broken by extraction, colonization, displacement, ecological degradation, and cultural fragmentation.
What is reassembly?
Restoring right relationship.
Reassembly means restoring right relationship between people, land, culture, memory, economy, and future generations.
This is not a political manifesto. It is a living systems framework for restoration, partnership, and future-building — grounded in regenerative science, ancestral knowledge, and community leadership.
Why African & Indigenous Nations
African and Indigenous communities, lands, cultures, ecological knowledge, foodways, healing practices, and regenerative development models were fragmented by colonization, extraction, displacement, and modern dependency systems.
The intelligence is not lost. It has been carried — through soil, story, song, language, lineage, and land memory. AINGRI is the relational architecture that allows that intelligence to reassemble and evolve.
Across continents
Living systems across continents.
Soil & Ecosystems
Soil regeneration, ecosystem restoration, regenerative agriculture.
Culture & Story
Cultural education, story reclamation, language and lineage repair.
Healing Modalities
Place-based healing practices alongside modern wellness systems.
Community Economies
Community-owned circular economies and food sovereignty.
Regenerative Design
Regenerative architecture, renewable systems, living infrastructure.
Land-Based Research
Community-led, place-based research and demonstration.
Pilots
Pilot demonstrations.
All pilots are framed honestly by their stage of development — emerging, developing, in formation, or envisioned.
Emerging
Tampa Pilot — Urban Regenerative Healing
A regenerative urban model integrating living systems design, regenerative agriculture, wellness, renewable systems, mixed-use community space, and modern healing modalities.
In formation
Rural Mississippi Pilot
A land-based ancestral ecological restoration model focused on soil regeneration, ecosystem restoration, food sovereignty, cultural memory, environmental repair, and community self-sufficiency.
Developing
Georgia / Decatur Living Systems Site
An emerging land-based demonstration of regenerative community development, soil restoration, ecological design, and living infrastructure.
Envisioned
Congo / Diaspora Bridge
An international relational bridge through cultural restoration, agroliberation, storytelling, partnership, and regenerative community support.
From the land
Pilot in motion —
Florida pasture.
Footage from the Florida pilot landscape — live oaks, Spanish moss, restored pasture, and animal systems integrated into a living ecological design. These are not stock images. Every animal, tree, and field shown here belongs to land the initiative is in active relationship with.
From the land · Yucatán
Seed, soil, water —
the living archive.
Field documentation from AINGRI's relational work in the Yucatán — cracking native seed, raising seedlings in ancestral soil, planting alongside community stewards, and learning from the cenotes that hold the region's water memory.
Dwelling & memory · Yucatán
Where people live,
where ancestors built.
Thatched earthen dwellings still in daily use, alongside the carved stone of Maya cities — a living continuity between everyday shelter and the ancestral architecture that shaped this land.
Ancestral × Modern
Ancestral ecology meets
modern innovation.
AINGRI does not romanticize the past, and it does not worship the new. It allows ancestral knowledge to evolve alongside modern tools, regenerative science, and community-led innovation — so the future being built belongs to the people building it.
JF-1 Program · Inner Development
The inner architecture
of regenerative leadership.
JF-1 supports the human side of regenerative community development — moving people from rootedness into creativity, confidence, compassion, voice, vision, and purpose.
What it is
A clear, accessible
developmental framework.
JF-1 is part of our broader belief that regenerative communities require regenerated relationships between land, body, culture, imagination, and purpose. The program moves through seven developmental stages that correspond to the body's energy centers — root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, and crown — while remaining grounded, accessible, and practical.
Sacred but not esoteric. Personal but not private. Designed for leaders, youth, organizers, healers, and community members ready to grow into purpose.
The path
Seven stages of development.
01
RootIdentity & Belonging
Grounding in lineage, body, place, and the felt sense of safety. The work begins where we stand.
02
SacralCreativity & Relationship
Restoring creative flow, emotional intelligence, and the capacity to be in honest relationship.
03
Solar PlexusConfidence & Agency
Cultivating personal power, discipline, and the ability to act from inner authority.
04
HeartCompassion & Reciprocity
Practicing care, repair, and reciprocity with self, community, and land.
05
ThroatVoice & Truth
Naming what is true. Speaking from lived experience and ancestral memory.
06
Third EyeVision & Discernment
Sharpening perception, pattern recognition, and the capacity to see whole systems.
07
CrownPurpose & Contribution
Aligning leadership with purpose, service, and contribution to a larger living system.
Who it's for
Youth, leaders, healers,
organizers, and community members.
JF-1 connects to youth development, leadership formation, cultural restoration, healing, and community contribution. It supports the people who, in turn, support communities — offered through cohorts, workshops, retreats, partnerships with community organizations, and integration with our other programs, including the SoilBus and AINGRI pilot sites.
Partnerships & Support
Reciprocity,
made formal.
Partnerships are reciprocity made formal — relationships that expand capacity in every direction at once. We work alongside funders, institutions, land stewards, and communities who understand that the health of one is bound to the health of the whole. There are three ways to move with us.
Partner
For institutions, funders, and organizations ready to build regenerative capacity together — pilots, research, and long-horizon collaboration.
Start a conversation →Give
Your gift plants Daisy's desires forward. Daisy's 16 Desires is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization; contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Make a contribution →Volunteer
Bring your hands, your skills, and your story to the field. Volunteers are how the work stays human and the soil stays tended.
Offer your hands →Tax-exempt status
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
EIN 86-3043184
Contributions are tax-deductible
The Founder
Diving through the lens
of my own origin.
"When we engage in ancestral ecology, it is a way of being that engages the whole — acknowledging every perspective and experience that lives within it."
My practice began at home — remembering the stories of those who came before, the people and the land alike. What I found there became this work: regenerative development and design, offered in service of the whole, and named for the grandmother whose desires set it in motion.
Founder: share your full name, title, and biography and I'll set it here.
Field Notes
From the road
Where the SoilBus has been
Notes from the communities who shared their journey, and what we built together.
From the ancestors
Reading a place the old way
On listening to parent material, water, and wind before ever breaking ground.
Field Notes is ready for your writing — send entries and I'll lay them in.
III · Invitation · Request Access
There is one way
to join the whole.
Share your story first. Tell us who you are, the journey that brought you here, and how you wish to impact the whole. This is how communities enter the SoilBus.