COVID-19 is like a major jolt to our systems. Unlike a fire, flood, hurricane or other natural disaster, what is being destroyed here are human-to-human connections due to social distancing and our health and economic systems. Ironically, one is protected and preserved from the same behaviors that deteriorate the other.

We all know and understand the trade-offs of our health in exchange for economic viability. In this case though, our economic system is being destroyed as if by rapid fire. Property is not destroyed, no buildings burned, no cars flooded, no trees uprooted by high winds. We did this to ourselves to flatten the curve, and we can undo it in good time and in a manner that won’t jeopardize our health.

Resilience Relies on Complex Systems Coming Together to Self Repair

So what does COVID-19 teach us about our living systems, especially in the tourism business? Specific to resilience, when we look at resilient systems, the question is how quickly can they self repair. When you think about a fire, how quickly does a forest regenerate. I remember visiting Yellowstone National Park after the great fires of 1988, and while the forest was a desert of charred dead trees all silver and black, the ground was greener than it had ever been and full of life. Not all the trees were burnt. Where small trees couldn’t find new light, now they had plenty of sun to grow big and strong.

I was in North Carolina after the devastation of Hurricane Hugo, and the morning after the storm, as we walked around surveying the damage, the sound of chainsaws cleaning up the damage was already echoing all over.

We know that living systems can self repair. They do take time and energy. They may not be exactly as they were before the devastating event, but they do bounce back.

Build in Redundancy and “Save for a Rainy Day” (Disaster)

How quickly a system bounces back is an important question to ask ourselves about the systems we are part of. How can we make them more resilient in the future? For example, in the case of the U.S. medical system’s capacity to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, we had to flatten the curve because we did not have enough respirators, hospital beds and hospital personnel to handle the volume of cases that was expected. What are the points of failure in the system and how can these points of failures be strengthened? What would happen if we had more ventilators, had more beds on reserve, could bring up a reserve of health care workers?

If we had to flatten the curve to reduce the impact on the healthcare system, where that line is on the graph might alter how much the economy really needs to be impacted. The healthcare system and the economy are individual systems, which are inextricably intertwined. So building in redundancy reserves and “dry powder” in one system reduces the impact in the other, impacting the entire system.

Planning, Preparation and Disciplined Deployment

COVID-19 in particular is a shock to the human-to-human system. As we can see from Main Street and Wall Street, this crisis affects some businesses more than others. Businesses that rely on people coming together are particularly impacted by COVID-19, including events (sports, music, festivals, conferences), restaurants, bars, and especially travel. Who wants to board a plane full of people to breathe the same air when someone might be infected? Who wants to go to a hotel where they will be in close proximity or in the same room as someone with COVID-19?

This is where we need to take lessons from some countries in Asia that responded with aggressive testing and contact tracing. In this case, technology was used (and good old fashioned detective work in some cases) to limit the impact and allow for a more balanced approach rather than severely disrupting the economy through quarantining the population at home. Countries that had recent experience with other viruses (like SARS) had developed systems for rapid response.

COVID-19 teaches us that planning, preparation and disciplined deployment can make a huge difference in limiting the effect of a disaster on systems.

Flexibility, Reallocation, Creativity and Pivot

When watching how we in the U.S. are responding to COVID-19, what has been most interesting are the “feel good stories” and how much we rely on good news to get us by. A common thread in many of these stories is how a factory that once manufactured X is now making Y, which is needed more when global production and trade are also impacted. Flexibility, creativity and responsiveness are also key lessons.

When considering our hotel on Mexico’s Pacific coast, Playa Viva stopped hosting guests as travel came to a halt for our international and domestic markets, but we kept our farm fully functional. The key was to maintain production in a manner that kept our workers safe and food production hygienic. While the hotel rooms were vacant, the chickens were still laying eggs, the pigs still needed slop, buds were coming out on the trees, and veggies still needed to be harvested. Having this related but tangential business allowed us to keep our staff employed and fed while we focus more energy on the farm, while other areas of our business can wait. By relocating resources, one system could be strengthened while the other sits “idle.”

While hindsight is 20/20, and it will be more so after the events of 2020, we can learn some quick lessons from COVID-19 that we can all hopefully apply to our endeavors.

Read on for the full article in Regenerative Travel on “Why Regenerative, Why Now: Co-Founder David Leventhal on Ethos, Service, and Luxury.”

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, it is estimated that 9 out of 10 children around the world are currently out of school. For most students in the U.S., this means distance learning, with students studying online on tablets or laptops.

Here in Juluchuca, school is also out of session, but with little technology to support distance learning. It’s easy to wonder, what are these children doing all day?

Why Distance Learning is a Challenge Here

When Mexican quarantine measures were put into place on March 20, schools were notified five days prior that classes would be cancelled through the Easter holiday. Those measures have now been extended until April 30.

In Juluchuca, school closures included our four local schools—the kindergarten, elementary school, middle school and high school. The government’s advance notification gave teachers time to prepare printed homework packets for students to work on during the closure. Though some families in Juluchuca have wireless internet in their homes, few have more than a smartphone to work with, which makes any formal online learning programs virtually impossible.

Further up the watershed, there are three additional elementary schools, also without online learning. In communities like La Ceiba and Las Placitas, there is no phone service or wireless internet at all. For this reason, school leaders have resorted to printed homework packets for students to work on during the closure.

How Children are Spending Their Days

As we all know, children can only sit and do their homework for so long. In Juluchuca, this means that a large part of each child’s day is spent outside—whether playing marbles in the street or rummaging through the recycling for materials to build a homemade kite. Other kids are learning to ride a bike or play loteria, a local card game, with their cousins. The teenagers can often be seen biking to our local beach to test their luck fishing in the lagoon or the ocean.

While many parents are trying to keep their children socially distanced, it’s proving challenging in a small, close-knit community like Juluchuca. This is a place where neighbors and families are used to spending a lot of time together.

For parents who are fortunate enough to still have jobs, their children are often seen tagging along as they head off to work. This is the reality for

Brayan and Luis, two brothers whose parents both work on a nearby mango plantation. All four of the family members pile onto the family motorbike to head to the huerto, or farm, each morning. Brayan, who is in 6th grade, helps with the harvest and keeps an eye on Luis, who is in the 1st grade. Both Brayan and Luis are in our Adopt a Student Program, an initiative Playa Viva started this past October to support students and their families who struggle to pay school inscription fees, afford school lunches and manage other associated expenses.

Another student, who is also in our Adopt a Student Program, Sara, is using this time to practice her reading and her English. Sara is 13 but only in the 5th grade since she didn’t attend school for several years. Thanks to generous donations from Playa Viva guests, we had several teen novels in Spanish to give to Sara to keep her occupied. Ariel, our education coordinator, often passes by Sara’s house and shouts his greetings.

Her response? A return yell full of the details about what’s going on in the books she’s reading! As for English, with our usual language classes cancelled, Sara didn’t want to forget what she had learned so far. By using the internet at her neighbor’s house, she was able to download an English language learning app on her small cellphone, full of games and activities to keep her mind active.

More Family Time—Sound Familiar?

For other students, this chapter of school closures means more family time. It means longer meals, card games and afternoons at the beach. For the families up the watershed, it means they have their children around to help with household chores like hand washing clothes, grinding corn for nixtamal to make fresh tortillas, and tending to their farm animals. For everyone, it means more hammock time.

With the recent Easter holiday, families still gathered to share a meal and give thanks for what they have. While families remain optimistic and are taking advantage of this time to spend together, the economic impact of this crisis is still causing stress for many residents.

For those school children enrolled in our Adopt a Student program, we are supporting their families with a monthly food basket since there are no longer school lunches. For those students who will be graduating this year and enrolled in the Adopt a Student Program, we are still able to cover the graduation fees thanks to so many generous sponsors in the program.

If you would like to learn more about our Adopt A Student Program, you can email Colleen at colleen@playaviva.com. During this difficult time there are many other residents in our community who would benefit greatly from a food basket, so we also are working to expand their distribution.

And if you would like to purchase a food basket for a family in need for $40 USD, please visit our GoFundMe donation page make your contribution. Upon donating, Colleen will follow up with information about the family you’re helping to support. Thank you for your efforts and contributions toward Juluchuca’s students and their families.

For anyone who has been to Juluchuca, it’s easy to tell that it’s a vibrant town for a community of just 500 residents. The morning rush is usually the busiest time of day, with parents shuffling their kids off to school and heading to work themselves. Then there’s always the midday lull when the sun is hottest before things pick back up in the evenings with youth soccer practices, English classes and adults running errands around town.

As has happened in towns and cities around the world, COVID-19 has upended daily routines and community interactions in Juluchuca. At first, many residents didn’t believe in the virus or take it seriously. With mosquito-borne illnesses such as dengue and chikungunya a relatively common occurrence around here, people saw COVID-19 as just another affliction to add to the list.

Yet over the past few weeks as the number of cases continued to rise globally, locals have begun to view COVID-19 more somberly as a potential threat to their community. And this is despite not having a single confirmed case in the nearby cities of Zihuatanejo or Petatlan, which speaks to the communication channels of our era. Mexico isn’t necessarily following the same path as the U.S., but there are parallels to be drawn.

THE REALITY RIGHT NOW FOR JULUCHUCA RESIDENTS

Today, our local stay-at-home measures are very similar to those in most of the U.S. In Juluchuca, the new government guidelines have forced all nonessential businesses to shut down, including the coconut candy factories and many of the roadside shops along the highway. Many of these shops sell local products such as artisanal salt (harvested just down the road) as well as local honey, coffee, and homemade tamarind and sesame sweets. With less traffic on the highway, there are fewer potential customers.

While there is not much enforcement of the quarantine measures in small towns like Juluchuca, the community is taking the guidelines seriously by generally following the recommended precautions. Local schools and universities are all out of session. Our local beach, Playa Icacos is closed, with a few exceptions made for those who need to fish or those who do exercise on the beach. A few local dinner restaurants are also still open, with most of the customers opting for takeout. Tourism, both international and local, has come to a complete halt, affecting the livelihoods of many. This includes our beloved Johnny, who recently started his new tourism business, Johnny Adventures, and the Gutierrez family who received income from Playa Viva tourists who would visit their cacao and coffee farm.

How You Can Help Feed Families

With no unemployment insurance, families facing job insecurity are struggling to get by during this hard time. A number of previous Playa Viva guests recently reached out asking, “How can we help people during this crisis?” Our response: Sponsor a dispensa (food basket) for a family in need. With your $40 USD donation, we can order these dispensas from the local grocery store and supplement them from our permaculture farm. Colleen, our social impact manager, will work with the mayor of Juluchuca to make sure these get to the families who need them most. Colleen will also make sure you get a photo of the family who received the dispensa.

These food baskets include nonperishable items, such as rice, beans, milk, sugar, coffee, cereal and cooking oil. There is enough of each item in the basket to feed a family of four for one month. And with the addition of products coming off our permaculture farm, such as eggs, fresh greens, tomatoes, and eggplant, we will bolster the dispensas for these times.

In fact, the first of these baskets were distributed last week. They only included some of the farm products heading into the community, but we were able to introduce residents to new types of greens, such as arugula and kale. People here are eager to try new immune-boosting foods while also adding color and flavor to their regular diet.

Resiliency Remains Evident

It is in these small, now socially distanced interactions, like distributing the dispensas, that we feel most like a community. While we may not be bumping into each other on our morning commute, we are still saying hello from afar, checking in with our neighbors to see how they are doing, and sharing the harvests that we are especially grateful to have at this time. Like many communities grappling with changes due to COVID-19, Juluchuca is not so different. People are losing their jobs and losing income while prices of basic goods are going up.

At the same time, however, we know our community is resilient. Residents remain optimistic at this time. They have been through hurricanes, earthquakes, and financial and political crises before this. People here come together to support those who need it most. Residents are out harvesting mangoes and coconuts, and fishing on our local beach. Our mayor is already applying for government funding for dispensas for residents who lost their jobs. But we are not sure when this government support will arrive. Another uncertainty added to the list.

In the meantime, if you would like to be part of this movement to lend a helping hand, residents of Juluchuca and our other impact communities up the watershed would be incredibly grateful. To sponsor a food basket, please make a donation via our GoFundMe page for feeding Juluchuca’s families during COVID-19.

Together we can fill the gap until government assistance hopefully arrives. Let’s keep our communities strong, resilient and optimistic during these challenging times.

Juluchuca is home to one of the only recycling programs on the Costa Grande.   

Why is that?  First, as with many services that many residents of modern cities might take for granted, the reality of a small community in rural Mexico is that local residents must come together to organize services for themselves that might be provided elsewhere.  But secondly, Juluchuca has this recycling program because of the tireless work of members of the community. 

Our project, called Juluchuca Limpio, was developed with Ernesto “Pato” Leon Sandoval,  an environmental advocate on the Costa Grande and resides in Troncones, a small surfing town about 1.5 hours from Juluchuca. The goal is to not only clean up and recycle waste in the area, but also raise awareness about the waste we create and how we can reduce our environmental impact.  As we enter 2020, Juluchuca Limpio is thriving!

“There’s a lot less trash littering the streets,”

Over the past year, we have:

• Recycled over 675 kilos (1400 lbs) of plastic bottles from our impact communities
• Hosted twelve environmental workshops, 
• Organized over 40 beach and community trash clean-ups; 

 We have also hosted several combined public turtles releases and beach clean-ups that ended with a visit to Playa Viva. A key component of Juluchuca Limpio is also the creation of art — using recycled materials to make signs that go up around town to raise awareness about trash and recycling. 

using recycled materials to make signs that… raise awareness about trash and recycling. 

There are currently over 20 bins for plastic bottle recycling in Juluchuca, Rancho Nuevo and La Ceiba. Residents use them regularly and they fill the rim after a week or two. Adriana Palacios is our local leader of the project. She and her family are dedicated to emptying the bins and storing the bottles until they can be sold to the recycling plant. They are supported by three other community members – Candido, Lazaro and Tomas – who are working at Playa Viva through the Jovenes Construyendo el Futuro Government Program. They assist Adriana and her family with emptying the bins, cleaning up the town, and making sure the plastic gets sold.  

The money from the sale of the plastic is reinvested in the project, oftentimes dedicated to the purchase of additional materials to construct bins and paint supplies for making signs. Every three months we make about 40USD from the sale of the plastic. The other operating expenses of Juluchuca Limpio come from generous donors from within the Playa Viva Community. 

Another key component of Juluchuca Limpio is to involve the local youth, and inspire a new generation of environmental advocates.  In 2020, we plan to continue Juluchuca Limpio’s aim of reducing plastic waste through recycling while emphasizing the importance of reducing single-use plastic consumption. Lorenzo (Turtle Sanctuary Volunteer Coordinator)  and Ariel (Education and Community Volunteer Coordinator) are working in the schools to teach “the three R’s” – reduce, reuse and then recycle. Each school group gets to come to Playa Viva to visit the farm, the turtle sanctuary and see the hotel installations. In this sense, Juluchuca Limpio begins by engaging students with the importance of clean communities and then slowly builds upon that idea to show how clean communities are connected to healthy bodies, healthy ecosystems and a healthy planet.  

Over the past year, residents of Juluchuca and Rancho Nuevo have already taken note of the program’s advances. “There’s a lot less trash littering the streets,” said Eli, the head of housekeeping at Playa Viva who lives in Rancho Nuevo. Her daughter participates in weekly trash clean-ups in her town with Ariel and the other children from the community.     

With Juluchuca Limpio, we’ve seen that progress is often slow and non-linear, but with the support of multiple local stakeholders, we are starting to see a shift in both mindset and actions in our communities. 

Colleen Fugate is the Social and Environmental Impact Manager at Playa Viva.  She lives in Juluchuca.  Learn more about her work engaging our local communities through our social impact programs.