Sustainable Solutions for Our Future: GSC at CIS
Earlier this month, Guåhan Sustainable Culture (GSC) helped welcome local and visiting attendees to the 2025 Conference on Island Sustainability (CIS). Throughout the week hundreds of guests from across the Pacific region and around the world gathered at Hyatt Regency Guam to share about and collaborate around solutions for our future. Situated between the check in table and a row of community partners, GSC greeted guests with gifts of farm fresh produce, basil seedlings, and an array of locally-made salts, soaps, and honey.
Thinking beyond the typical “swag bag” one would expect at most conferences, and CIS is not most conferences, we wanted to welcomed guests with things that represented the wealth, abundance, and talent that Guåhan is capable of producing when we invest in our own sustainability and resilience. Our produce bags - filled with calamansi, aga’ (banana), pipinu (cucumber), and more - showcased the diversity of crops grown on Guåhan. The basil seedlings represented abundance by providing access to (virtually) unlimited fresh herbs. And the value-added products - offered to our off island guests who couldn’t take produce or seedlings on their flights back home - highlighted the tremendous talent of our local entrepreneurs who source and produce their products right here on Guåhan. Offering these gifts to opened the door to so many conversations, creating and renewing the points of collaboration where sustainable solutions for our future are found.
Folks got the chance to come down to Yona to tour our Food Resiliency Hub and taste some of the diverse fruits growing there. Lead down our nature path, folks learned about how how our vision for the Hub is already empowering our work towards strengthening food security on Guåhan, by creating a space for educating our community, cultivating diverse crops, and collaborating with our community partners.
Our team also had the opportunity to invite local CIS attendees to join our Composting in Every Village program. In a room filled with over 30 folks eager to contribute to solutions for our island’s future, we talked about how beneficial composting can be to nourishing our gardens, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and saving taxpayer money by prolonging the life of our limited landfill. Participants were given free composting systems to take to their homes, ranches, and farms, in exchange for collaboratively collecting data on food waste diversion from the landfill.
Throughout CIS, GSC got to lead, listen, and learn from leaders on sustainability. From panels on sustainable solutions in the community to discussions on how we finance our Pacific innovators, to workshops on eco-storytelling through our typhoon tales, our team got to learn about and contribute to innovative work already happening to make our island communites more sustainable, resilient, and prosperous.
