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reflections

大家好, kia ora koutou, greetings everyone,

We’re near equinox.

As the northern hemisphere tilts toward autumn, the days here in Ōtautahi Christchurch stretch longer. After months of grey, damp, and long evenings, I feel myself slowly emerging - still introverted, craving quiet, yet noticing (and rejoicing in) more light and energy. Winter has been a season of looking inward, catching old patterns, and gently - though not always - letting go of what no longer serves.

Our whare (home, pronounced faa·ree) has been an anchor. Jen and I are cultivating it steadily - hosting friends, filming conversations, making meals, deepening our love, and dreaming of our first edible garden as spring scratches our nostrils with pollen. Daily reflections and small rituals make us and the whare feel alive, more than walls and warmth. Most importantly, Jen’s health and vitality have returned, which fills me with joy every moment, every day.

This personal rooting has had me thinking about a broader, collective emergence. The way we’ve cultivated our home as anchor and tended to our inner lives mirrors what I’ve been reading on social change. We’ve moved past the initial disruption and are now in a pivotal time for coalescence - when disparate movements and individual efforts consciously connect, amplify, and align. Not through top-down control, but by realizing our individual “gardens” - local food systems, community spaces, healing, storytelling - are all part of a larger ecosystem. The time is ripe to move from scattered islands of coherence to a unified current, not just for survival, but liberation.

It feels fitting I’ve been widening my circles locally: collaborating with inspiring humans and applying for accredited employment here in Aotearoa NZ - part of committing to this whenua (land) and planting myself firmly. I miss the fulfillment of my years with Conscious Impact in Nepal: a team working toward a kaupapa (purpose, principles) greater than ourselves. It’s my intention to find this again with people who value me showing up fully and doing honest good here in Te Waipounamu (South Island), while trusting the process, patiently, persistently...

The freelance flow feels steadier as I heal my relationship with money - learning not to chase but to attract aligned projects and collaborators while practicing to say no. Alongside men’s group mahi (work) - listening deeply, sharing openly, facilitating - I’ve poured energy into Jen’s passion project, The Human CV, rebuilt my website-portfolio, immersed further into te ao Māori, and leaned more into self-care (saunas are fabulous).

It’s a full plate that is satisfying with worthy devotions that have kept the winter fire lit. What has been keeping your fire burning?

This edition carries that spirit of emerging from winter with buds forming, rooted in gratitude, while trusting that with patience and persistence, the next chapter keeps unfolding in flow. Thank you for being here with me.

Below are snippets from video + photoshoots Jen and I captured for my personal statement video (soon to be released) and to represent the 2025 me to potential employers and the world - absolutely thrilled with the results! 🥳

good news

Fact: Nearly all of us get inundated daily with sensationalised headlines of what humanity seems to be doing wrong (only).
My response: As I realised some years ago that countless GOOD is also happening but gets no spotlight, I’ve made a commitment to spread these ambers of hope and optimism through my humble little platform. It’s also my way of sustaining mental well-being especially working in systems change and thinking-acting far beyond my own generation. Most of good news come from the incredible folks behind Fix The News, also a beneficary of part of your patreon contributions.

• Kenya has eliminated its second tropical disease—sleeping sickness. Sustained rural screening, training local health workers, and pest control have resulted in zero cases since 2017. It’s the 17th African country to achieve this, part of a continent-wide goal to end it by 2030. WHO​
• Investment in clean energy now outstrips fossil fuels by half. A decade ago, oil, gas and coal drew 30% more capital; now clean investment will reach US$1.5 trillion in 2025, 50% more than fossil fuels. IEA​
• Wind and solar will meet 90% of new power demand this year, with nuclear and hydro supplying almost all the rest, sending coal into decline. Renewables are set to overtake coal as the world’s largest source of electricity by 2026—and possibly sooner. IEA & Carbon Brief​
• “It’s like finding a rainforest no one knew about.” At 5,800 metres below the waves, scientists uncovered one of the largest ecosystems of chemosynthetic life: organisms that thrive without sunlight, drawing energy from seabed chemicals. These vast communities in total darkness reshape our understanding of where life can exist. Nature​
• Four-day work weeks lift well-being—and companies are sticking with them. A six‑month global trial with nearly 3,000 employees found 52% felt more productive, and 90% of companies chose to keep the shorter week.
• Ethiopia planted over seven million tree seedlings in a single campaign led by its prime minister, part of a national reforestation drive. Communities joined in, building climate resilience, restoring soils, and pride. AP News​
• Fossil teeth from Ethiopia’s Ledi-Geraru, dated to 2.8–2.6 million years ago, suggest a previously unknown Australopithecus lived alongside early Homo. The find supports a ‘bushy’ view of human origins—multiple overlapping lineages rather than a single line. WaPo​
• Indonesia has cut poverty to 9.03%, the lowest in a decade. That’s 800,000 people lifted above the line in a year, thanks to village-level empowerment: micro-enterprise funding, women’s training, and local food security. ANTARA​
• Mexico, Guatemala and Belize launched a tri-national reserve of the Great Mayan Forest, a 57,000 km² corridor across the region. It’s the largest protected area in the Americas after the Amazon—home to thousands of species and deep cultural heritage. Associated Press​
  ​"This is one of Earth’s lungs, a living space for thousands of species with an invaluable cultural legacy that we should preserve with our eyes on the future." - Claudia Sheinbaum, President of Mexico
• Kazakhstan cut maternal deaths by 12% and infant deaths by 11% in 2024, with even sharper falls in early 2025. Revised health protocols, air ambulances, and free medications are credited. The Times of Central Asia​
• Colombia is training Indigenous youth to defend 1.2 million hectares of ancestral land in Cauca. They’re learning mapping, patrol skills, and constitutional law, turning oral knowledge into legal standing and breaking cycles of violence. AP​
• Afghan women are creating underground networks of resistance: hidden classrooms, encrypted online courses, robotics workshops in bedrooms. Despite bans, they keep studying, coding and inventing under threat of punishment.
• Billions of people have gained clean water, sanitation and hygiene in the last nine years. That’s not a typo - that’s billions, with a B. An astonishing new data dump from the WHO and UNICEF showing that between 2015 and 2024 humanity recorded one of the fastest expansions of basic welfare of all time: 961 million people gained safe drinking water, 1.2 billion gained safe sanitation, and 1.5 billion gained access to basic hygiene services, while the number of unserved fell by nearly 900 million.
• Botswana has eliminated mother-to-child HIV transmission as a public health threat. At the turn of the century, one in eight infants were infected at birth; today, fewer than 100 are infected annually. The Guardian​
• Shenzhen has become China’s clean-air hero. Between 2010 and 2020, major pollutants sharply declined even as the population grew by seven million, thanks to stricter vehicle rules, coal cuts and dust controls. Science Direct​
• Amazon fires in Brazil fell by nearly two-thirds in July 2025 compared to a year earlier—the smallest burned area since satellite tracking began. Over the first six months, fires dropped 59%, the steepest decline in a decade. France24​
• A major study has traced how humans evolved to stand upright. Fossils and embryonic samples show hip bones shifted orientation about seven million years ago, while existing genes switched on in new patterns to reshape balance muscles. Science / New York Times​
• From Sichuan’s misty mountains to Colombia’s coral-rich Pacific, six exceptional places have been added to the IUCN Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas. Read more about them (a prison island turned wildlife sanctuary! A giant salamander haven!) here.​
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original work

We featured episode 6 of Wilderness Within (WW) in the previous newsletter, and in this one, I am proud to present WW episode 7 with my sister from another mother, Alyson Noele Sagala!

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​Tune in on RSS and all major listening platforms, such as YouTube as previewed above.
Supporting patreon members have access to the extended video version!

Note: I will soon withdraw WW from Spotify and have boycotted them due to this recent realisation.

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In other light, I've been going all-in on interviewing, storytelling, and video production alongside my love, Jen, on her passion project, The Human CV. She has created a new YouTube channel, and we've finished filming season 1 with 12 unique guests (1 of them being yours truly 🙃). By the time you read this, we'll have started filming with radical new guests for season 2! In essence, The Human CV is all about:

I wish to highlight this conversation-interview between Jen and a dear friend + rockstar momma, Erica Austin:

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Please show aroha (love) to Jen and I by checking out the channel, subbing, and watching some of these deep-dive conversations that took place in our production studio that is... the beautiful living room! 😊 I'd be delighted to hear your feedback, especially if something really resonates in what Erica (and other guests) shared. 🎤

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recommendations

📽️ Videos:

For folks in Aotearoa NZ and Australia (or those who use VPNs 😉), these 2 series: Hua Parakore and Nomad.

• Hua Parakore "explore(s) the diverse ways in which Food and Soil Sovereignty is being realised in Aotearoa by Māori growers and communities around the motu (island)" featuring Dr. Jessica Hutchings, who I'd consider the Vandana Shiva in her own right.

• ​Nomad features Kahurangi, with whom I got to share space with at a wānanga (knowledge gathering) last year, and "explores the contemporary experience of people living off the land in Te Waipounamu (South Island), seen through the eyes of a young Māori nomad intent on living off the land like his tīpuna (ancestors) before him."

📖 Books:

• ​Shaolin Spirit by Shi Heng Yi​

🎧 Podcast (besides mine 😉):

• ​The Emerald, especially "On Powers, Great and Small"

🎶 Music:

• ​Be Svendsen, Poranguí, CloZee, Janax Pacha, Mose - their sonic creations have helped me heaps, adding motivation, moving energy, and providing me cosmic reminders. Music is MAGIC. ✨
• I urge you to boycott Spotify - this is why.

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gratitude & close

For those of you new here - 歡迎! Nau mai, kia ora! Welcome, and thank you.
Your time and attention are invaluable, and I sincerely hope you find value in this publication.

For this edition, gratitude is due for Jen, my muse, cheerleader, and inspiration everyday. Thankful for Alyson & John in opening up their home for me to visit and record a fireside conversation 2+ years ago under the stars that's turned into our episode on Wilderness Within (WW). Grateful for Erica & Tania from Hapori and Seeds for Change for an exciting opportunity to collaborate and learn from one another. I give thanks to friends and supporters around the world who drop me DMs, comments, reshare my podcast and other creations, and those who hire or refer me and my services to others. Their presence, engagement, and support warm my heart:

This newsletter publication is a labour of love and devotion. I create this because of my belief in radical self-expression and dedication to be a spreader of GOOD in our world. It has served as my sacred time to create and (re)connect with friends and connections near and far. Read previous editions here, and I invite you to share this with others.

This creation is possible due to patrons who pitch in regularly on patreon, which allows my creations to be ad-free, a rarity in this age. Every month, I give ~8-15% of those earnings to charities, changemakers, and creators that in my opinion contribute to a more beautiful world we believe is possible. For this edition, I am joyed and proud to present our latest beneficary, The Emerald Podcast with Joshua Michael Schrei​, and a needed hat tip to Paul Jones from Arthur Travel Health for renewing his annual patronage on patreon to keep supporting this newseltter and WW. Paul and I met in the jungles of Panama nearly 16 years ago now while attending a workshop on sustainable development.

Wrapping up with an important ask - perhaps the biggest ask I've needed in years - I am currently in search of accredited employment in the spaces of content creation, community weaving, systems change to pave the way for residency in Aotearoa New Zealand. I am committed. If you are able to help or know someone who may be able to, I'd be so delighted a connect! 🙏🏽

Mauri ora - to well-being and the living essence in us all, Reader.

-Kai J.