Clare Aryani
Clare develops the educational and podcast programming at the interconnect project. She is co-founder of Pepelakan Farm in Cisolok, West Java. The organic, community-based initiative provides farmers with sustainable livelihoods through crop diversification, specifically traditional and underutilized Javanese crops. Clare is a consultant with Grow Asia and holds a Masters in Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture from Exeter University, specializing in remote-sensing and multispectral imagery analysis to identify crop stress signals.
Arjun Swaminathan
Arjun leads the development efforts at the interconnect project. You’ll find him in Bangalore, India. Arjun has been working for several years with Indigenous peoples in the hinterlands to make stories on agriculture, education, water, and disability. He founded the platform Native Picture with the purpose of documenting the cultural practices that preserve our land, food, water, and air. His work illuminates the strength that lies in the diversity of elements that connect us. He has a saying that, “the only form of development is preservation.”
Marie Maryline Legoff
Maryline brings stories to the Interconnect Project from her home, Rodrigues, a special part of the Mauritius Islands. She is a social worker and entrepreneur, specifically developing local enterprises for women. Her focus ranges from crop cultivation, fruit and vegetable processing, and award-winning production of value-added goods. She uses fruits like citrus, passion fruit, pawpaw and other tropical fruits to develop and sustain her local community.
Caitlin Blood
Caitlin’s focus at the Interconnect Project is in organizational management and strategy. A former vegetable farmer and organic farm advisor, today she is an agroecological educator and curriculum designer for youth. Her writing builds public awareness of responsible food systems under the guidance of powerful counter-hegemonic worldviews in underserved and oppressed communities, with a specific emphasis on the role of Indigenous seed sovereignty.
Bison Singh
Bison is the lead video editor at the Interconnect Project. He is a self taught video editor who enjoys 'cut, copy, paste' more than anything. Bison writes, "Editing happened to me by sheer chance. But it’s something that I really enjoy and passionate about. When I was a kid, I used to go to with my uncle to the cinema he operated in Manipur. I watched films from the box - the burning carbons and the censored cut positive films. We owned a 16mm film projector and a ‘galata’ at home. My dad and uncle bought films to watch on our lawn with all the neighbors. So, sometimes I think, editing was just waiting to happen. And I’m glad that it really happened and wish to tell more native stories."
Dylan Harris
An integral part of the education team at IP, Dylan M. Harris is an Assistant Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. His work focuses on intersections of climate and environmental justice, energy studies, labor/debt, and storytelling. He is interested in the capacity of storytelling to effect transformative change, especially around complex issues. He is dedicated to bringing stories of environmental justice forward from underrepresented communities around the world, and is committed to mutual aid work in the community where he lives. At Interconnect, he is excited to listen to, learn from, and share stories from communities dealing with climate impacts firsthand, creating space for meaningful dialogue between communities that would otherwise not be able to connect.