#33: Scaling Ministry Sustainably
Episode 33 | 52 Minutes | April 8, 2025
What if the true measure of success in missions wasn’t about how much you did? But rather, how much you enabled others to do for themselves?
In this episode of The Lasting Change Podcast, hosts Michael Proctor and Danielle Kelly sit down with Brandon Weidman, Director of Development at One Collective and the founding catalyst of the organization’s work in Nicaragua. Brandon shares how a short-term mission trip turned into a long-term commitment—and how that commitment sparked a sustainable model of ministry that continues to grow today.
From launching a chicken farm and a coffee company to empowering local leaders and navigating political unrest, Brandon walks us through the challenges and lessons of building something that lasts. Now, as the Nicaragua team prepares to expand into a neighboring city, they’re looking for the next catalyst—a leader ready to live in the community, build relationships, and help shape the next chapter of holistic, sustainable transformation.
Whether you’re in ministry, missions, or just passionate about doing good in a healthy, sustainable way, this episode offers real-world insight into how lasting change actually happens—and how you might be part of it.
In this Episode, You will learn:
How short-term mission trips led to long-term community transformation
The story behind the founding of One Collective Nicaragua
What it looks like to empower local leaders and avoid dependency
How a chicken farm, coffee company, and a pineapple farm became tools for change
What “kingdom calculus” is—and why 1 + 1 can equal 3
How the catalytic model works, and what it means to be a catalyst
Why Papagayo, a remote pineapple farm at the edge of a jungle, might be the perfect launching pad for the next wave of change
How YOU (or someone you know) might fit into this story of growth and lasting impact
-
Brandon Weidman is the Director of Development at One Collective, where he leads global fundraising efforts and champions sustainable, community-driven change. Before taking on this role, Brandon and his wife spent nearly seven years in Nicaragua as catalysts—helping to launch locally run initiatives like small businesses, farms, and nutrition programs. His passion is to empower leaders on the ground and ensure resources are directed where they’ll make the biggest long-term impact.
-
Hi everyone. I'm Scott Olson and welcome back to the lasting change podcast. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. Stepping in as hosts are Michael Proctor, our podcast producer, and also Danielle Kelly, who's our area director for One Collective in Europe. They've got a great conversation lined up and I 📍 think you're going to love it.
Today, We have joining us Brandon Weidman, and he is The director of development here at one collective, but he also has a long history of being on the field in Nicaragua with one collective as a catalyst. And today we're going to hear his story and hear his experience. in Nicaragua where it started, where some of the challenges along the way, how it grew and then where it is going now and how you could hopefully get involved with it. And so Brandon, welcome to the show.
Yeah. Thanks, Michael. And hey, everyone.
Yeah, so to get things started. Can you give us a broad, overview of who you are, how you originally got connected to one collective andkind of set up the story. , where's Nicaragua? What is the setting like? As if I don't know anything about it. We'd
love to know.
Yeah, happy to. I have to sort of clear out the cobwebs to get back that far. But I am. Yeah. So Brandon Weidman. And I'm from Columbus, Indiana, just south of Indianapolis. I grew up with very little cross cultural exposure or interest, but married someone who always knew they were going to be a missionary. And so, obviously, as I was interested in her, I had to become interested in the things she was interested in. And, we, early on in our marriage, I think probably our first year, uh, our first full year we got involved with a church that had small groups, as we engaged with them, we found out they were doing short-term mission work in Nicaragua. And so they were like, Hey, you guys ought to come along with us sometime. Not knowing a whole lot about it, um, I was reluctant to sign up for a trip other than the fact that they said they were gonna be doing some construction, right? And so I was like, oh, hey, I have a construction background.
I was an architecture major and was working for a home builder. The fact that they caught me with something that I felt like I could add value to, I was like, okay, great. My wife will go do the missions thing. I'll go build something and I'll be happy.
Nice.
Yeah. Very practical.
And I think probably
there's a bunch of us and a bunch of people listening that would resonate with.
Um, I remember pulling up in the missions bus to this rural Um, community in Nicaragua and being in shock about how much, uh, I didn't know about the rest of the world. Everything was visually audibly interesting, colors, sounds, smells, everything had my full attention. That trip woke me up to the desire to see the rest of the world. Um, I don't think it was a calling or anything like that at that point. It was simply like, wow, I'm really interested in all this stuff. And yes, we did some construction on that trip. But there was this really pivotal moment for me.
Pivotal Moment for Brandon (Begining)
We built a house for a family that lived in very poor conditions. And then we went back six months later and found out that, You know, we're so excited to go spend time with this family again. We had shed tears together and, and laughed together and everything. And when I got there, I found out that mom took a job two hours north and dad took a job, two countries south, and we were like, so who's with the kids?
And they were like, that's the problem. There's no mom and dad with the kids anymore. As we started to unpack that, realized this house that we had provided gave the parents the confidence. to just know their kids could lock the door at night and they could go get jobs and provide for their kids, which is really what they wanted to do all along. And so that was my introduction to When Helping Hurts.
Wow. Yeah.
actually went back and read the book When Helping Hurts, which somebody suggested as I, you know, processed my experience down there and realized even with our good intentions of helping this family have better living conditions, we actually weren't quite to the root of what they wanted. Which was to provide for themselves have a safe place to lock the door at night go work jobs and be providers like we all desire to do. From there I started to have a lot of conversations with people about, uh, this idea of helping the poor and doing international work. And, one of the people I was processing that with happened to be. The son of Scott Olson, who's the CEO of one collective here. And he said, Oh, my gosh, you sound so much like my dad. He's always talking about this stuff. And I said, Well, what's your dad do? And he goes, I have no idea what he does.
Classic.
think he does that like what you're talking about.
I think that's what he does. And I said, Cool, would you introduce me to your dad? And, you know, similarly, just puking out this bad experience that I had in Nicaragua to Scott, um, he kind of looked across the table at me and said, you know, Brandon, that's a story that so many people could tell.
It's so relatable. So many people have gone on a bad missions trip. Let me tell you who you are from my vantage point. I was like mid twenties and very anxious to know who I was. I said, yeah, please tell me who I am. And he said, I think you're a catalyst. And I said, tell me more.
What is a catalyst? And he said, basically it's someone that goes in to a community exactly like Mazatepe, Nicaragua, the place that you're describing. and identifies not only the broken families and the needs and the poverty and stuff like that, but actually the families that are there doing something about it. We need people like you to go out into the world and discover these stories bring people together and take those well intentioned churches that are sending people like you overseas and help guide them to a better way forward. That was my introduction from, meeting my wife thinking I was going to build a house to realizing I maybe destroyed someone's family to then finding a global missions organization and saying, they have a better way of doing this than our church does or that I could come up with on my own.
And I would like to go tap into their knowledge and experience and their people. In their model and see if we can't do this better.
I think a lot of people can really relate to The experience of a short term team where they go somewhere, have an experience and then 📍 📍 📍 like, what did I actually do though? Like in the longterm. And I had that experience. I went to Haiti, in 2018, I think.
And that was my first time ever went abroad. And. 📍 📍 📍 I helped mix concrete 📍 📍 📍 and build a church, we laid the foundation of it. But like more realistically, what happened 📍 📍 📍 is when me and like my team went, we also raised a bunch of extra money to like hire a bunch of Haitians, buy the materials to the actually build a church.
So 📍 📍 📍 it was maybe kind of helpful that we brought all the money to hire these people. 📍 📍 📍 but the work that we actually did there, I honestly have no idea what it did. It didn't really seem worthwhile to go other than I got to see a third world country.
And that radically changed my perspective. The value to me was huge, but the value that I offered, I don't know if there's anything, I think a lot of people probably have had that experience. I've talked to a bunch of people in WinCollector that have had that
experience
missions tourism, if you will.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Although I'm really, I really love that instead of just beating yourself up about it and feeling guilty and then washing your hands of international work, you really explore different options for what, how could we do this better? Are there people already doing this better and how can I partner with them?
I'm really excited to hear the next piece of the story of how you got there and realized this idea of what a catalyst is and did it a different way the second time.
At that time there was this real movement towards when helping her. It's the book and the workbook. And the fact that all the churches 📍 📍 📍 were trying to ingrain this in their missions programs. I was kind of screaming back at everybody. There has to be a book called, When Helping Helps, or How to Not Do When Helping Hurts, know, whatever, and there
we could do this better.
Helping Without Hurting, um, for that very reason. Because a lot of people threw their, you know, to your point, Danielle, they just threw their hands in the air and said, we agree, this is wrong, this is consumeristic, or paternalistic, or whatever. But I don't think that was the right response either,
um, because I think we're called to do something. And holding both thoughts at the same time, we got to keep doing this thing to keep people interested, and yet we can do it better, and not at the expense of the local communities. Um, yeah, there was a lot of reading at that time, and there's so much good stuff out there.
If you're curious, there's so much good stuff about,
how to help without hurting.
Yeah, I'll put a couple links in the
yeah, we should. It's not a story we need to go rewrite ourselves. There's been a lot of people that have gone before us. I do think you have to have this awakening experience a little bit.
You have to be shocked into doing something and then shocked into realizing what you did may not have helped. Each step in this journey of becoming a little more aware creates in many of us a desire to do more. And not just walk away from it.
for me, there was a real turning point.
We were down there on our fourth mission trip and had developed some friendships with some Nicaraguans across those four trips, probably in two years time. They asked us on the fourth and what ended up being our final short term mission trip before we moved there, they said, Hey, Is there any way you could stick around for a few days when the Americans leave and see what it's like when you guys aren't here?
Hmm.
And we were
like, yes, Yeah.
like that is exactly what we want to do.
We stayed for three or four days, on the ground after our team left. It felt sort of terrifying and liberating and all the things, because we were in the middle of this place all by ourselves we were no longer being toted around in a bus and going into a compound that was gated and all that stuff.
We were like in the community and restaurants hanging out with our friends in their homes and it was definitely eye opening to see everyday life and to listen to everyday challenges but also to hear ideas from people about why they were excited that the Americans were there. Because at the root of their excitement was something that they were trying to do, right?
Like, we love that you guys come in and pour fuel on the fire here, because we're desperate for that. Like, we just need opportunity. And yet, we already have these things we're dreaming of doing, and we would love to show you those things. And 📍 📍 📍 so,
It was a fun, you know, where I was, there was a furniture industry, and they were, artisanal. Weaving and, woodworking and things like that. We got to go in and see all these small businesses. 📍 📍 📍 andlater into my time in Nicaragua, I got to hear a group of Nicaraguans describe themselves to a group of Americans. And the number one word that they each went back to was industrious. So we were in this real deep poverty context. Um, Nick Rug was the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Uh, second only to Haiti in, dirt roads, dirt floors, dirt poor, sort of poverty and yet industriousness is like one of the traits that they would use to describe themselves.
And so what does that mean? Um, you know, resourcefulness, entrepreneurship, making things happen, making something with very little, all that comes to mind for me when I think of the word industrious. Um, certainly not lazy. And,
or, without ideas, that would be the last way I would describe them and that's not how I heard them describing
I'm kind of curious. I kind 📍 📍 📍 of want to z 📍 📍 📍 oomback out. and y 📍 📍 📍 ou said you went on multiple trips there, with short term teams. 📍 📍 📍 what was the purpose of doing short term teams in Nicaragua? I don't know anything honestly about Nicaragua other 📍 📍 📍 than like you said it's the second most impoverished country in the Southern hemisphere. What other reasons would, they need support in different ways. How did you start to like integrate that and do that whenever you move there as a catalyst?
I think there's two sides to the coin that you just brought up. One is, why are we doing missions there? And then the other is, why did they do them? Um, and I think
were there on the premise of launching a church, so we were involved through a Nicaraguan pastor who had lived in the states and was called back to his home country to launch a church and our pastor had pastored with him here stateside and sort of drew us in that way through, we're going to build this community.
Since then, you know, we've gone in and, you know, my wife and I moved down there in 2012. And, we were full time in Nicaragua for, almost seven years. We also implemented a short term teams program, into the heart of our ministry. And it was multifaceted. I think one, resourcing ideas is one of the key roles of being a catalyst.
I am your doorway to this. place of opportunity. Once you step through you're going to see lots of things that you might want to get involved with. And when those things are needs, they suck resources dry really fast. And when those things are opportunities, they take those early resources and sort of multiply them and maybe possibly make them sustainable for years to come.
And so we saw an opportunity to bring resources through American church teams university teams and some businesses that sent teams to basically say the resources we steward as Americans are worth a lot more down here. Our dollar goes a lot further and means a lot more to them than it does to us.
And yet 📍 📍 📍 we think if you come invest a dollar with me in Nicaragua, I will make more of that dollar than anybody else anywhere in the world can. That was kind of my commitment. I'm gonna do the most with this dollar that I can because we're in this land of opportunity You know this industrious place where you can really do a lot you can employ people and make things happen and there's all this opportunity teams were a source of ideas people team members obviously funding
And, um, to the Nicaraguans, they were sitting on ideas that were not fundable. Here in the U. S., we have an idea, we go get a loan for it, or we raise some money from friends and family or get 📍 📍 📍 on Kickstarter There's all these ways to take your idea and, and fund it and get some energy behind it and bring people together, um, to help you with it.
And, and a lot of these impoverished countries, that's non existent. And so they see us as a potential source of, The thing that they've been missing.
So as part of the goal you're saying that you can multiply, resources. And so I'm curious is part of that goal to help them understand how to do that themselves like if you were taken out of the equation,
would that seven years produce something in them that made it so they could be like you in The ways that they can catalyze their ideas and resources and
are
the questions that you start asking yourself after you dig in. Um, am I creating dependency? I love this analogy of windows and mirrors. I don't know if you guys have heard this one, but basically people come from the outside and they Show you the world that's out there.
They say, look over here and look at this great big world that's out there. In the business sense, that is, the global marketplace, the world economy in the spiritual sense, that is God's kingdom and all of these believers around the world. And so we provide 📍 📍 📍 this window otherwise they've been in such a small context that they haven't had a window out. At the same time, there is the mirror, who is somebody who has come out of their context and made it somehow, found the blessing, and they serve as a relatable reflection to what could be possible in God's kingdom, those two things combined expand someone's worldview in a way that I think is healthy. Um, but, you know, I talk about this being 1 plus 1 equals 3. It's kingdom calculus, it make sense. But for some reason there's this coming together of ideas and people and worldviews cultures, and it is more than the sum of its parts. Um, and so our catalytic model, when you're in the role of a catalyst, you're trying to find the mirrors. The people that have done something in their community and you're trying to stand them up in front of other people as an example, and then you're trying to find these outside resources, the windows and here's what you could do if you got outside of this context. And I
don't mean leave go somewhere else.
I mean tap into all that there is in this abundant, kingdom view.
Something else and in two different directions. But, Yeah.
bigger or having the, like we, I remember one of the first things we did was a small business, but it was cool. We hired the coolest kids we could find in
town who were also believers. And then it became where the cool people would hang out. Later I got invited to go teach entrepreneurship at a local high school. I had to do it in Spanish and I clearly stood out. We were in a place with no Americans, no tourism, no English.
And I stood up in front of this class of high school kids. I said, Hola, mi nombre es Brandon. One of the kids in the back just cut me off. He's like, we know who you are. I was taken back. I said, please tell me who I am.
And they said, you're the one that started Beto's Coffee Company and this space. That has given the rest of us the idea that we can do cool things right here in our own community did that I didn't know that it meant that to these high school kids.
That was just sort of like this benefit. That came along after the fact but we spent the next semester unpacking their ideas more than half the room told me throughout the course of that semester Before you guys came here and started doing cool things right here. We thought We had to get out of Mazatepe in order to go chase our dreams and do meaningful things in life.
And now we all want to, do it right here in Mazatepe. And to me, that's
That's
Dang. Bro. That's so freaking powerful.
Literally like transformation, like you inspired 📍 📍 📍 that community there. What else 📍 📍 📍 did you do when you 📍 📍 📍 were there? How else did that 📍 📍 📍 community get transformed and how has it grown since then?
We Did a bunch of things that I never thought I'd do. And I think that's probably the thing I look back on the most fondly. For example, we ran a chicken farm with 2, 000 chickens. People always assume you do stuff that you have expertise in or you studied or whatever. If you're really doing this catalytic model thing that we're talking about, you're going into a place and trying to discover things. And therefore, you're listening to ideas and looking for opportunities. And when they show up, you actually have to do something about it. Otherwise, it was all kind of pointless.
And so, at one point, we met a chicken farmer, and then we met some American organization that, that was, trying to get more eggs into more preschool mouths around the world. And, and they said, hey, would you be willing to do this in Mazatepe? And then, you know, eight years later, we've given away something like two million eggs to local preschool kids. Um, so you end up doing these things, we later bought a farm and moved the chicken operation onto our own property. That farm was a drug and alcohol rehab facility that a different non profit had launched and, and shut down. And so we rehabbed a rehab center, if you will, and moved a chicken farm into
Nice.
of this was what I thought I was going down there to do, but all of it showed up as resources and assets right there in front of me. The local community was saying, we need this, we want this, we want to help you with this, and be a part of it. We kept saying yes, and we built a team, one collective mobilized, um, workers to join us, we ended up having about 15, one collective workers on staff. As we would launch these initiatives, we would, do some stuff ourselves and then usually hire Nicaraguans to come in and operate and run them. Then we would move on and launch new things. After doing that for several years, we ended up with, probably 45 Nicaraguans on staff and 15 Americans.
It got pretty big. Um, and, it's almost like, the snowball effect. It just kind of kept gaining momentum and favor and it got easier and easier to find resources and we were getting more attention locally so more opportunities were coming at us and it was really rolling up to be something bigger than, uh, we had originally envisioned and we were having the time of our lives. My wife and I adopted our first son from Nicaragua, then we had our first biological child there. So we were kind of in that season of life, building a team, building our family, calling this place home.
And in 2018, there was some civil unrest there. We weren't really sure what was going on because it hadn't happened in a long time in Nicaragua. But in short, we were, very quickly in the midst of a, War, Nicaraguans rising up against their own government and in the streets and guns were going off and we decided it would be a good idea to get out of town for a while and let them sort that out. Um, we were in the crossfire literally. So we left, and asked our entire American team to step out and our Nicaraguan team to step up. And fill in the gap while we were gone. And, what we thought was going to be maybe a few weeks or a few months turned into a permanent departure for most of us. It took longer than we thought. Life happens. We ended up with all the stuff that was going well in the hands of Nicaraguans, which it was designed to be that way. We were doing this empowerment model and finding local, like local believers that had local ideas and getting them to do that.
And so it made it pretty easy to hand it off because there was a lot of ownership on their part. But it was actually pretty wild to watch it happen in real time because it kind of felt like, we were down there busy and working hard. How could it possibly go on without us? Um, and yet it was. And we got into this really interesting season of, them saying to us, please come back and us kind of saying, but you're doing such a good job.
Why would they come back?
Yeah. Why do you need us? For me, the learning of that season was we represented hope for a better future. Even though they had all this stuff and things had transformed, people had come into this, model and we're carrying it forward there was still sort of this beacon. Aspect that we represented that now was missing and they felt like if you guys just come back in, we believe there's more still to come.
I was not able to move back down there. By this point I have had four kids, and, a lot of other things in life pointed to us staying stateside. So I took a different role with one collective in our development team. You introduced me as the. Director of Development, I've had a number of hats across the last five years here stateside working for our home office, mostly Today, I'm our chief fundraiser.
That's my job raise money for things going on all around the world But my heart is still to see that money deployed into community level initiatives that give people the opportunity to go build the things that are in front of them, but also for them to go instill and resource the local changemakers that are bringing ideas to them and showing them sort of where God is already at work in those communities and where the natural resources are um, so we rebuilt a small team in Nicaragua of Americans. We have three couples down there now
Nice.
I was going to ask about that. What does the team look like 📍 📍 📍 now after how many years has it been since that civil unrest, like 2018,
2018, yeah,
six years.
Next year we will roll over to having now been home longer than we had lived on. Um,
of course that happened like that. It's pretty crazy.
Um,
we have been blessed with, you know, God just provided a bunch of people that care a lot about this thing. I'm the founder, and so I like to think I care more than anybody else.
Sure.
truth be told, probably the people that are down there grinding every day, keeping it going care quite a bit,
um, as well. And so we have this small team down there. There's another catalyst. So 📍 📍 📍 I still have some involvement as an area director, and, sort of a co catalyst or a founder role, where I still, you I still have a lot of relationships and influence. And thanks, partners and donors and, you know, what not. So I stay involved quite a bit, they have continued on with most of those things that I described, the chicken, the exit of the preschools, the farms, the coffee business, short term teams. All of that is still, um, going on under their leadership and with our Nicaraguan team mostly still
Nice, that's cool. Yeah, how has the team grown since you've 📍 📍 📍 left You know, six people down there now, three couples, has it been growing now that like, people like stateside are back there 📍 📍 📍 catalyzing development there? Or,
What does it look like now?
Well, it's a lot harder now than it was five years ago. So we're, we're, embracing that reality as we look at what's realistic.
What do you mean? Do you mean by harder? Harder to mobilize people there or harder? The work there is harder. What?
Yeah. So the model that we're describing as this catalytic model really depends on a lot of partnership and empowering locals. mining out local ideas and stuff. Unfortunately, and this is not unique to Nicaragua, this is the case in so many parts of the rest of the world. The government picked up in 2018 on the fact that some of the unrest was funded by nonprofits and foundations. Of that funding came from developed nations who were in support of the government being overthrown.
And so they came through and audited. Everybody. We were part of 10 percent of the non profits in the country that survived.
90 percent of the non profits that existed in 2018 no longer exist.
A good time to be a non profit in Nicaragua.
Dang.
And understandably, so from
their standpoint,
they watched people try
to overthrow their country, which is, most of us would call that terrorism.
Right, when somebody comes tries to take your country over, they're not in favor of that.
And so
They have created a lot of barriers to operating as a non profit, moving charitable dollars into the country, and deploying volunteer teams and churches, a lot of that has been made a lot harder, lot more scrutiny, and then lastly, if you're a Nicaraguan and you partner with one of those American funded organizations, you get scrutinized now 📍
as an imperialist, you know, and they are afraid, the Nicaraguan people are afraid to be labeled in some way that hinders their family's well being when there's so little opportunity
in the country as it is to get some sort of label that closes doors for you.
Um,
doesn't
yeah.
Dang. That's like so hard. 📍 📍 📍 Because, ideally, all these non profits are the ones 📍 📍 📍 actually creating more opportunity, for individuals. But when the non profits are labeled as something that hinders that,
That really sucks.
And it almost seems like Nicaragua is then 📍 📍 📍 in a way, shooting itself in the foot hindering its own growth. From that understandable background and like
I mean,
there probably were NGOs that were
mixed up in all of that and supporting some of the stuff that they are being accused of.
Danielle could tell us stories of the history of Greece and how their economy,
right,
has gone through a lot of this stuff and a lot of it is self induced this is the nature of doing hard work in hard places.
we think they're shooting themselves in the foot as an American viewpoint.
they're impeding progress, and they're saying progress isn't the goal at all,
right? Like, you have a different idea of what progress looks like. And so, we are guests in their country. On any given day, we're trying to gauge the temperature of the people, uh, who are our neighbors friends staff and, partners. The views of their government, aren't always aligned just like our views, aren't always aligned with our government. And, , and, and learning we're here as a guest and in support of the people, but we have to do it in a way that is, allowed by the government and allows us to get in and do sustainable things.
We don't want to just send down a bunch of cash and put it all under a mattress, because you can only do that for so long. We want to
create systems that work within that system and go do things that could create lasting impact.
Um, given the hard ship of, how things are structured.
So, uh, yes, it's gotten harder and that's impeded growth, um, and yet, my measure of growth is just longevity. Now when I was there, we had only been there, you seven or eight years or whatever. Now we've been there 12 years. I watched many of the things we gave birth to turn 10 years old last
August. I mean, the odds are against those things to survive that long. And so the model becomes reinforced in its ability to be durable in hard times. If everything was just always going well, you really aren't proving any points because it's
just, you have a bunch of favor and tailwind everything's easy. When you endure hard times, you become relatable this plane.
And so I find it, to be, growing in the depth sense, and yet probably the next thing we're going to talk about here is we're also all of a sudden faced with an opportunity to grow in the expansion sense,
and so there is growth,
Yeah.
No, I definitely 📍 📍 📍 want to ask about that. And 📍 📍 📍 I also really 📍 📍 📍 appreciate you checking me and 📍 📍 📍 how you define success in this specific type of community? 📍 📍 📍 Cause I very much 📍 📍 📍 so. I'm immediately cast 📍 📍 📍 in my American idea of what success looks
like there.
So I like really value you're 📍 📍 📍 like no, think about this more deeply and in the context of culture here and how it is different. I think I, along with a lot of 📍 📍 📍 other people need to be checked like that more often. So I appreciate that a
Yeah.
In all honesty, I have had my assumptions checked for me the way by people
who have gone, Hey, your goals aren't our goals.
And it's, yeah, humbling. Yeah. But
yeah, thanks for saying that.
Growth / Casting vision
Of course. 📍 📍 📍 so with that redefinition of what success looks like and what growth looks like. And now that you've been there longer term, what does growth and expansion look like there in the context for Nicaraguans in that specific community?
Yes. So, we have, um, all these growth metrics that you and I would think of from our American cultural view. More jobs, more sustainability, adding new initiatives or more people hearing the gospel, you know, all that stuff. We actually have put a model around this, at one collective and we call it ICT, Integrated Community Transformation.
we break that down into four
phases, um, that kind of happen in cycles. And so first phase is enter and the second phase is evaluate. My wife and I went in and. Met these people and they kind of showed us these things what we didn't know was we were actually a part of a model that has been, um, tried and true around the world.
And we were entering and meeting people and then evaluating their ideas and deciding where to get started. Do we do a coffee business, with a community center? Do we do a chicken business with a rehab farm? All these things were coming at us through that evaluation , phase.
And then we did a few things. So we engaged. That was when we built our team and all that stuff. And so the, the, those are the first three E's, the, of this ICT model that we, that we believe in. And the fourth one is, expand.
And we don't have a lot of experience with that phase of ICT across the world.
We're an organization that's in 40 countries. Um, we have several hundred people out there doing this stuff, and then even more partners and local changemakers. And yet, we don't have a lot of clear cut examples of what it means to expand, but we think we know, what it looks like. Which is kind of just this basic belief that, if we do good things in one place for long enough, eventually the people on peripheral, the periphery of that will invite us into their communities and want to see it replicated?
And so we see expansion as an organic growth, element to ICT and, and you're keeping your antennas out for it, all the time as a catalyst, but trying not to push for it. If you push for growth, you'll end up going to places that you probably shouldn't have. There's no local ownership.
And you end up doing your own thing.
We've seen before.
Yeah, which is the common tale, the pitfalls of global missions. And so, um, I described this hard 2018 civil unrest and all this stuff. A lot of NGOs went away. We stuck around. We were, one of the select few to pass the audits. We always did things super transparently.
We have an in house accountant. We do everything, over the table. Because of that, we didn't know we were doing it to pass some future audit after civil unrest, but come to find out, we were.
Um, and we survived this really hard time, and a lot of people went away. Well, all of those people had things they loved and had built and believed in and they're now desperate to find someone who can steward that and carry it on.
In 2020, sort of in the midst of the COVID era, we were invited to take over an existing ministry, about 40 minutes away from Masa Tepe, um, that had been built by a different, missions org. They were forced to leave and, needed to hand this thing off to someone that could still be there and operate it.
Papagayo
And so, we call that place Papagayo, which is a word for a parrot in Spanish. This place borders a national park, that is called the Chocollero, which is basically like a parakeet reserve. And so at night you're sitting there on this piece of land next to this national park and about a hundred thousand parakeets fly over
and go roost. and they go
roost in a waterfall. Next door. And so pretty wild, very jungle ask, you know, howler monkeys and 10 ft snakes and all that stuff.
Um, and yet to get there, you're gonna go through this big city and then you get on a dirt road and then you just go down the dirt road for a long time.
And you're passing houses with, black plastic tarps wrapped around tree trunks. And that's home. And, you're going down this bumpy dirt road. You can only go about five miles an hour. It's the kids with dusty faces that are barefoot running around kicking soccer balls and plastic bottles.
And it's everything you kind of picture when you think of, uh, international missions in a hard place like Africa, rural poverty, that kind of thing. And then you get to the end of this road and all of a sudden it's like paradise. It's quite a juxtaposition. You go from city to dirt road, rural poverty to like paradise, all in about 15 minutes of driving.
Wow.
And so we said yes, to taking this place over in 2020 and it became sort of our expansion into a nearby community, which is called Tequantepe. So we're in Mazatepe over here and about, 20 miles, north is Tequantepe, the next city.
Okay, So originally another mission org built this, Papagayo. What were they doing and what did they ask you to start doing with it? Have you guys developed that? Is that something you're doing? Have you expanded there already? What is that looking like now?
Yeah, the people that built it were good friends of ours. Just like some of our best friends when we lived in Nicaragua. They poured 15 years of their life into this place, raised their kids there all the way out of the house.
And we're planning on retiring there.
So this was, they put everything into this place, and we used to spend all kinds of time out there with them. Our kids spent time out there with their kids, so this was a place that was near and dear to us. Their missional model was to bring, church teams down and invest in that rural community that I described. We call it the Valley. There's a community there called Los Rios, and it's that dusty valley I described,
uh, between the city and the national park. And so they spent a lot of time building churches and improving the lives of people that live there in the valley. Not so much like a catalytic model of, creating businesses and job creation or, sustainability they were just pouring in and pouring in.
Um, and so, what that resulted in basically was when they pulled out and they had to shut off because of what happened in 2018 and what then followed with COVID, they had to kind of shut off the stream of resources
that were
flowing in from
and they no longer had a valid funding model because it all depended on outside funding We would come in and look at it with a slightly more upside down approach. What are the resources there and how can we get it to sustain itself? So it's never dependent on these outside things.
How could we take what they built and turn it into something more sustainable and focused on local empowerment? And, um, probably the very first obvious answer was we have to zoom out a little bit more.
So when you talk about Drawing a circle around a community and calling it where you work. You want to make sure you include some resources. Because if all you do is draw it around a dusty little valley that's dirt poor, you're on your own. You're going to have to provide everything. Uh, just because there's no, there's no natural, 📍 And so we want to zoom, we want to draw that circle a little bit bigger and encompass the city of Tijuana Tepe, which is like 50, 000 people, maybe 45, 000 people.
I consider, I personally consider that to be like a sweet spot for the ICT model because you have resources to begin with people wanting to do something for their own community. Um, and all of the ecosystem or the infrastructure to support sustainable change. Um, 000 people is a great starting point.
Get to a million and it's too big.
You know, Danielle's in Athens. It's this massive place. It's hard. You have to carve out almost like
Neighborhoods.
Like,
cause
just a million,
a million or more people way too much to answer your question, Michael, that's where we see the growth opportunity right now is this thing that is, next to the national park.
It's about a 30 acre pineapple and, dragon fruit, plantation,
uh, literally looks like paradise and, they had built rustic cabins, To host all of these teams and these retreats and events that were going on there. So it's
really like a retreat center. We have the capacity to host 60 people at a time
and We do one to two local events a month and one ish international hosting a short term team kind of a month.
And so it's just sort of a revolving door of people both local Nicaraguan churches and businesses sending people for retreats. And people coming in internationally to plug into what we're doing. We take them to Masa Tepe, to put wind in our sails across all the things we're doing. I would call that a lead initiative. Like it is one thing that we do to help us have a, platform in that community to stand on and say, Hey, here's who we are. We want to get to know you have an identity, you're a neighbor, you're there. But that local initiative is not the purpose of us being there.
The purpose would be to do ICT, Integrated Community Transformation, in Tijuana Tepe, the city of 40, 000 people. And so,
it becomes, um, the enter and evaluate platform where we go do that thing while we're trying to figure out what other things God's already doing there that we can start to plug into and resource. As we get started in engaging with a new community, a second community. And, lastly, we have this group of people in Mazatepe already to use as leverage to go do that. And so we're not
starting over. We're basically, um, stepping outside of where we already have an established thing and pulling from their expertise, their local entities, their ability to employ people, To get money in and out of the country and all that.
It's all in place already and that stuff takes a long time to establish. And now we just get to leapfrog that whole process, use them and their established team to launch into another place.
So, when you're talking about expand, It sounds almost like, uh, the expanded new community Is not doing the enter. So when you have a catalyst that signs up for it, what does their landing look like? That's different than the original one. And how does that feed into this idea of making something sustainable and not colonial?
We don't want to
come in and say, okay, we've got this initiative and we know best. What's the sustainability piece and, local buy in
What makes a catalyst (Sees opprotunity)
So, the kind of person that's wired to be a catalyst, I think, is the kind of person who sees opportunity and who relationally finds their way into the local scene, um, that could be joining a church in the city, launching a cafe finding community outreach opportunities. becoming a volunteer at the local clinic, or finding people that are doing, you know, cleaning, clean up the park and you go help them do that. Basically, you just begin network your way into people doing something in their own backyard. Most of us know how to do that in our own context.
It's harder when you go to a new place and have to figure out where to start. It helps that the, pineapple farm, Papagayo has some established relationships that become our guides. It's really a question of like, hey, would you introduce me do any of you go to church in Tijuana Tepe? And if so, can I come with you next Sunday? That's where it starts. It's very organic, and you're kind of making your way into the bigger picture. And, constantly, you know, asking for the next coffee, and the next, and to join the next volunteer thing, and just really organically, joining. The local community. If their identity is I put on the hat of running a pineapple farm, they're missing. You could just go do that in perpetuity, and you're going to run this pineapple farm for the next 20 years that thing is just there as a platform to launch you into this other thing.
And so do it well and steward it. But get that under management by locals and build a team and get yourself out there doing catalytic.
By meeting people and, finding interesting things that are ready to be, you know, to fan the flame, if you will.
📍 📍 📍 that makes a ton of sense and is 📍 📍 📍 📍 a really cool and 📍 📍 📍 unique approach to trying to enter 📍 📍 📍 into a new space to actually lift it up. How has that like practically working? Like, have you taken somebody has somebody from like Mesotepe? To Papagaya and started running that what does that look like?
Have you found like a local 📍 📍 📍 to run that and become the catalyst there?
Or
yeah,
are you going with that?
The short answer is we took some of our local staff and sent them out there and we took some of our American team if you join us as a staff to the team, As an American, we give you a champion role, typically. So we have a farm champion, we have a short term team coordinator, and we have a catalyst.
And all of them have reach over that project. Farming aspects belong to the farm champion, the team and hosting aspects belong to the team coordinator, and the catalyst is responsible for the strategy. We happen to have so much going on in Masatepe that the catalyst feels like there's so much to do there and so much more ahead that He's saying you should go find a second catalyst because there's that much?
Oh, see.
Yeah.
and so we've not really done the the catalytic work if you will We've done the hardest Stuff in the beginning is just getting it sustainable this thing Cost a lot of money to maintain and you know, you've got something Uh, 70, 000 pineapple plants and 10, 000 dragon fruit, and it's a big operation. Uh, six cabins, you know, all the stuff. Staff, night security, you know, and so just figuring out how to get it to sustain itself and not be a drain on resources.
Um, a lot of that work has been done, and now what we need is just someone living there. So nobody lives there currently.
Um, so somebody living there and overseeing that initiative could be a champion of, it could be the Papagayo champion.
They could be a hosting. Coordinator, they, could be a farming related, champion. And then the catalysts themselves, their focus isn't to come in and figure out how to run a pineapple farm. That's kind of been done already. Their job is to figure out how to now launch us into the inter evaluate stages
Oh, I gotcha. So you haven't actually entered into this new community
yet. You like have the foothold. It is sustainable. It is like literally all you need is somebody 📍 📍 📍 to be planted there
and then like take the resources and run and do it that's super cool.
yeah,
If I could be the one doing it, I would have already been down there doing it.
Yeah.
What I started 📍 📍 📍 with was nothing, no business, no platform, no NGO, no team, no money, no, like, this, place is, like, you know, like, been propped up by 15 years of investment from our friends who poured into it and now the last couple years of us switching the model to local sustainability and you have all the stuff in Masa Tepe the team there all the short You know, we bring down about 10 short term teams a year
Yeah.
Through both communities I would be drooling if I was a catalyst and had all this stuff at my Fingertips, there's a lot of good And this is just a quick overview of the work that could be done with what's already going on. Less pioneering and more developing and building.
Gotcha.
And yet, you it's still early so there is a pioneering aspect to it as well. So I envision this person being a catalyst over Tijuana Tepe having Papagayo one initiative they oversee and a team there. and then some other stuff going on in the city where they're developing another team and some secondary efforts and, you know, quickly you As a catalyst there, you would have a, a small team under you, pretty much
right out of the gates.
Yeah, pretty cool opportunity.
And I would love T.
Kwon Tepe, and our work in Nicaragua to be on the leading edge of proving out this expansion model.
This idea of organic growth, you imagine you're in 40 countries and you got to go get into 40 more. It's going to take decades. And so if you're in 40 countries and you have a hub and spoke growth model where the hubs, those 40 hubs that already exist spoke out into two or three communities each, which is what we're starting to see.
Um, you can see how you go from 40 to 120 in a way that's not so hard and not so resource intensive.
Gotcha. , it, this is like super cool that like you are expanding along some of these other communities and like kind of proving the whole one collective model, which I've talked about. I've personally marketed it a bunch, but. Um, seeing 📍 📍 📍 it really practically happen and hearing the story directly from you, I haven't heard many stories like this yet.
And I definitely want to go and like tell more of those, what would it take or what do you need? What does Nicaragua need 📍 📍 📍 to start moving resources here? Or have somebody start stewarding these resources and growing into this new community and becoming a spoke of Mesa Tepe.
So, when we took this over, I was like, this is gonna be the easiest place ever to recruit people to, because it is so amazing when you're out there. Anybody that's ever been there on a short term
mission
I'm like, you talking it up, I'm
like, I wanna
I'm like, I have my own work, but
I can
do this other thing. Paradise?
Yes.
When you see the footage you really can't experience it without being there, but we're gonna do our best job to capture that.
I thought this was gonna be really easy because everybody I've ever known that has stepped foot on that place was like, tell me when I can move in. And I just think that it's harder than that. Opportunities like. Papagayo, where it is more amazing than you can imagine.
And it's, there's more, like, transformation at the tips of your fingers than you could ever want in a missional capacity.
That's out there, but you would never know it. Like, this stuff, there's no, Angie's List for missions opportunities, or something like that. And so you have to engage with our mobilization team. If I were a young person wanting to go serve somewhere in the world, I would be going to one collective mobilization, coach and saying, Tell me about the coolest places that you have a need in today, right? Me about the places that are ripe for impact today. And I think most of us get, um, limited. By what we can imagine or envision is what we go do and yet there's a great big world of opportunities out there so you know go have that conversation with With someone and and and have your eyes open what's out there go on a vision trip and see it yourself And so I think that's where we're going right now with nicaragua we need to show Everybody how amazing this really is and tell the story that we're telling right now in this conversation you're sort of taking the baton from a runner who's got it this far and running it forward from here.
You're wired that way, to run with something, this is an amazing opportunity to do that. We're ready, today, and, in our world, recruiting people takes a long time because you have to come in and train and fundraise so, you know, if we find the right person now, it's still several months before we get them on the ground the need
is pretty immediate to identify people, so,
you know, maybe you're watching this, um, you know, someone's watching this, and they're not looking to move abroad, but they can think of two or three people that are, just sharing, like, coming up with a way that we can share these opportunities visually, tell the story, I think it's going to grab the attention of people that have a stirring And then, maybe you're a missions pastor at a church. And, you know a bunch of people that have fallen in love with, you know, God's kingdom out there, across, you know, across the globe. And they're just waiting for something to come around that calls them off the sidelines.
And I think this is the kind of
that would speak to
lot of people. Yeah. Maybe you're funding somebody somewhere or you're giving money to missions around the world and we love that support that people are out there writing checks and making this possible. But there's so much more you can be doing, like praying for these kind of opportunities to be filled, spreading the word to your networks and saying, Hey, you know, posting it to your social media or taking it to your church, to the missions pastor and saying, this is really important.
This sounds amazing. For the S. T. A. L. T. I. N. C. E. I would support somebody if they went and filled this role. You know, all of us are in a position of influence. As long as you feel like you understand the opportunity, you can speak to it. Do is kind package this up, uh, let the world know what the opportunity is and then spread the word.
And maybe it's not Papagayo Nicaragua. Maybe it's Athens, Greece, or Ukraine. Or there's just stuff going on all over the world that is. You know, if you 📍 📍 📍 go to the, opportunities on the One
Collective website, um, we are in need of people. Go check it out, raise your hand, get in, you know, contact me, and if it's, if it's in my part of the world, you know, Danielle oversees all of Europe, so she's a great person, to have conversations about opportunities.
We have a mobilization team who can pick up the conversation at the beginning stage and help direct you into what this looks like. How do you raise money? And how do you get trained? And how long does it take? And all that stuff. It's, It's,
Those processes have been written and we have people in place.
For sure.
Yeah, I'll add, a bunch 📍 of resources in the show notes.
So if anyone is interested in learning more, or, chatting with Brandon, Danielle, or our MOAB team, the show notes, all the links are there.
📍 Yeah. raise your hand, ask for a conversation with our team in Nicaragua. The catalyst there, Brian Waters is his name, he's happy to talk to people about what it's like to live there, um, and, yeah, there, there are a million ways to raise your hand for that initial conversation in a way that's inquisitive and, we love that.
We love having those conversations and finding out what God's stirring in people's hearts.
Well, thank you for sharing, Brandon. This has been so cool. I really want to go
visit now, Nicaragua. Like you painted such a good picture of it!
Like I really want to see it.
Well, thank you, Brandon. And thank you, Danielle, for taking an hour out of your day and sharing. Um, it was been super cool. If any of you listening, want to get involved, want to learn more, check the show notes, all the links are there. We would love to chat with you and figure out how you can become a part of, spreading the love of Jesus and building the kingdom up for his sake.
So thank you all. And hope you enjoyed this episode.
-
Schedule a Call with a Serving Coach:
Have a no-pressure conversation with Carly or someone from her team.Social Media Links:
Follow on Instagram @BeOneCollectiveShare This Episode with someone who is considering global non-profit work!