We’re looking forward to introducing you to Yura Sapi. Check out our conversation below.
Yura, we’re thrilled to have you with us today. Before we jump into your intro and the heart of the interview, let’s start with a bit of an ice breaker: Are you walking a path—or wandering?
Right now, I find myself walking the path I have set out thanks to wandering.
Wandering always has a place in life. It’s so important to trust intuition, take a risk and go towards things without really knowing the details of why and how it will go. This is what led me to where I am now– a remote village on the pacific coast of Colombia called Nuquí. I wandered here and found something I didn’t fully know I was looking for: love, community, and connection to the Earth.
And now almost five years later, I have clear deliverables that need to be made for our businesses. There are strategic plans in place and tasks to get done. And we’ve just welcomed our first child which provides a clear path to raise him well!
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Yura Sapi, an artist, producer, and creative activist. I’m a serial founder of both nonprofit and for profit ventures and I love to coach others to help you succeed in your own brand and business.
In particular, I’m especially drawn in when you are also doing your work to make a positive impact on world.
If you’d like to hear more about my work as an artist, activist and coach, check out our last Canvas Rebel interview here: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-yura-sapi/
Today, your in for the behind-the-scenes of a new venture I’m working on– an alcohol brand for social impact.
How is drinking alcohol tied to making a positive impact on the world? I will tell you!
Through our farm and food sovereignty project Protectores de la Tierra This we’re supporting the Black Afro-Colombian and Indigenous Embera community of Nuquí, Chocó, Colombia, who experience the impacts of systemic racism, marginalization, and paramilitary violence affecting access to education, healthcare, water, food, livelihoods, and safety.
We’ve launched a new initiative to help fund our nonprofit work with our alcohol brand made of the juicy sugar cane that grows in abundance on our farm. “Viche,” a sugar cane based alcohol, is known as an ancestral and legal patrimony of the Afro-Colombian community of the pacific coast. It’s known this way because of the legacy of communities making it over the generations in a particular way, with the special juicy sugar cane of this Chocó region, where the rainfall per capita is one of the highest in the world.
It’s a cultural and agricultural phenomenon poised to take the global stage like the artisanal and ancestral Mezcal of Mexico has in recent years.
When the opportunity calls you answer. And we’ve answered as even the Colombian government has acknowledged the racial and social legacy of Viche and made it easier to get these necessary certifications to sell nationally and export internationally through a special new health code category for the Afro-Colombian artisans of Viche.
So with your purchase (and drinking!) of our Viche alcohol, you will also support our efforts to uplift our community in Nuquí with food access, job opportunities, and education programs that teach the next generations ancestral farming practices ways that are regenerative to our forests, helping combat climate change catastrophes while supporting the people that steward these lands.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
As a child, I very much enjoyed being outside– connecting to nature, playing with dirt and going to the beach.
But growing up in New York suburb, I became less and less directioned to a life in appreciation of nature and our planet.
I had to make a big change in my life to end up where I am now, living along a river, working on a farm, and being outside– feeling the fresh air on my skin for the majority of the day.
It was an important process to “rematriate,” or return to my ancestral lands in Ecuador and Colombia, where I also hold citizenship. And this journey of returning to land, led me back to myself and who I was as a child. It makes sense the two are connected because we are part of the land, we are part of the Earth as beings living here.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
With our nonprofit work at Protectores de la Tierra and in a country like Colombia, it hasn’t always been so clear how we are going to sustain our impact.
It may not be clear for you if you are also someone who wants to do good in the world and not worry about the dollars, the business, the capitalism of it all…
But then I learned about social entrepreneurship. An identity of leaders who are creating startups for products, brands, services that acknowledge a social impact need to fill. Many of them also turn to hybrid or even fully for profit organizations to finance the work. This community of individuals and a name to the identity helped me understand the role a Viche alcohol brand and other earned income revenues sources like tourism on the farm can play to advance the impact work.
Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? Where are smart people getting it totally wrong today?
Intelligence has nothing on relationships. This is coming from a A student, Dean’s List, Honor Society…
Sometimes the smartest thing to do is admit you don’t know the answer. And even if you do know the answer, ask for other perspectives because you never know what you don’t know.
The biggest flex I’ve been interested in lately is figuring out how to get the best possible team members to surround me and the work we do.
Currently we’re working on fill out our board of directors for both our nonprofit Protectores de la Tierra and our Viche brand with individuals who have skills and networks our co-founders do not have. This is also thanks to advice from a mentor of mine, Emily Cunningham of True Moringa doing similar work as a beauty health brand supporting farmers in Ghana.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I think of my son and the generations to come after his. I hope they remember me as someone who helped open the portal to a new Earth so that they could walk through and fully live it.
To be a founder in this time you have to be a bit delusional– believing in a world that does not yet exist. As a visionary, you see a world that does not yet exist and guide a movement to get there. You have to find ways to stay in this mindset so you don’t give in or give up.
So for those coming after me, I hope they are able to take the work we’ve done in this generation and go further, solving new challenges and living new ways of life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/protectoresdelatierra
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/protectoresdelatierra and https://www.instagram.com/yurasapi/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yurasapi/
Image Credits
Photos by Paula OG, Yura Sapi and Protectores de la Tierra
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
