Emergent Ventures Grant Update

Over the past year after receiving the grant (March 2023), we’ve done the following:

• Set up a physical base and office in Japan
• Ran residencies in 3 different areas in rural Japan to build community and scout for property
• Sourced, negotiated for, navigated the real estate process for, and purchased a house in Komoro, Nagano
• Officially incorporated as a non-profit based in California (and have a connected bridges / ops that allow us to operate and own assets in the real world, like bank account, EIN, email, socials, domain, etc)
• Dispatched volunteers in our network for working on organic farms
• Built a steady group of contributors + core team
• Raised additional $3,000 in donations (Gitcoin grant in summer + Zuzalu)
• Spoken at a fair number of well-known conferences
• Hosted workshops in 3 different cities
• Have been featured in various articles, theses (business and architectural), and podcasts
• Gotten our first donations from people finding value in our operational playbook

Some photos of our new house + plans from our project architect below:

Some photos from our workshop below:

Next, we are planning our renovation via build weeks at the site for the next 6 months.