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Stories about bold people changing the world.

[music playing] Puerto Rico is a place near and dear to me.

My wife is Puerto Rican, and over the past 30 years, as her family has become my family, I have had the privilege to visit, explore, and above all, fall in love with this little island over and over again.

With its lush rain forests and pristine coasts, Puerto Rico is a place of staggering natural beauty.

Everywhere you go from the capital San Juan, to the Western coast of Colorado, you find unique welcoming communities.

And yet many mainlanders don't even realize it's part of the United States.

And despite having over three million residents, more than many states, it remains an unincorporated territory.

The island itself has been greatly threatened by climate change for decades.

The devastation by Hurricane Maria in 2017 impacted communities across the island, and many of them are still in the process of recovery.

We set out on a journey to hear those stories.

[music playing] We're first traveling East out of San Juan to Lewistone, a unique community that's ground zero for coastal erosion, another component of climate change.

Ada Monzon would like us to see that first hand.

She's the first female meteorologists from Puerto Rico, and the founder and president of the Eco Exploratorio science museum of Puerto Rico, which focuses on science education and climate change awareness.

Her accomplishments in the science world are too many to list here, and she's agreed to meet with us at Luisa to discuss how climate change is impacting Puerto Rico across all fronts.

Every time I come here, I see less sand space, and that is very sad.

This is irreversible.

The sea level is rising, and there's nothing that we can do to control.

It I think one of the things that everyone loves about Puerto Rico is just the natural beauty.

God gives you all of this and then he gives you a hurricane.

[laughing] Yeah.

We have hurricanes, we have earthquakes, we have tsunami.

We have volcanoes nearby.

I mean the Caribbean is never bored.

Maria, the first category five hurricane in 100 years devastated Puerto Rico and the surrounding islands.

It has been blamed for nearly 3,000 deaths, and almost $100 billion in damages in Puerto Rico alone.

What happened right afterwards?

I mean, were you guys able to broadcast?

How do people get their news?

We were lucky, because we had a very big antenna tower.

Right.

Where we had some of the capabilities to communicate, but there was a point with when we ran out of diesel, and so the generator was not working, so we had to stop.

And then you have a desperate external diaspora, who cares about their island, and just trying to figure out-- sort out what's going on.

It was very difficult.

First of all, because you have that traumatic event.

You are still recovering from what you just suffered after 36 hours of tropical storm winds and hurricanes, and then you're faced with destruction.

There's not one leaf in any of the trees, and then you see damage, and then you hear desperation.

You lost your main lifelines.

You lost electricity, and then you lost the communication capabilities.

So everybody needed a hug, everybody needed water, food, they needed help.

What I realized in visiting a lot of people is that you found help next door.

You know, so many of the communities kind of came together themselves.

The heroes are the community leaders, and the communities.

The ones in the mountains they're harder to access, or the ones that had the most damages along the coast.

They had to survive on their own.

I'm not telling you something you don't know, but Hurricane Maria is not the last hurricane to hit Puerto Rico.

Is there any bright, you know, silver lining?

There have been positive steps to make sure that history does not repeat again.

As you may know, German watch declare Puerto Rico as the most vulnerable of the world.

So we are victims already of climate change.

Catastrophic events, to recover from that, takes years.

What really concerns me is that in this climate change environment that we are in, is not going to take another 100 years to get another category four or five.

It may be this year, or you may be next year, I don't know.

But I know we have to stress how important it is to be prepared, how to be resilient, and how to adapt to these changes.

It feels like it should be a priority.

Thank you for the work that you do on educating us and everybody.

Thank you thank you for letting us tell our story.

[music playing] As we continue out of San Juan, it's clear no areas of Puerto Rico were untouched by Maria, including my wife's hometown of Carlos, a place where like most of Puerto Rico baseball is King.

So we're being shown around the local stadium by Raoul, owner of the Caguas Criollos, and Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez, former Criollos player, and MLB Hall of Fame catcher.

The stadium itself, one of the oldest in Puerto Rico, and a community center in Cayaguas is still under repair three years later.

This still which weights a lot.

Right.

You know, just get up in the air, and fly away.

And you see the bolts popped out, or whatever.

The wind was 160 miles an hour, and gusting winds over 200.

Were you here in Cayaguas, or?

No, I was in Isla Verde, which is-- [interposing voices] OK. Isla Verde Yeah.

Isla Verde.

So we decided we were the whole family there, and we just decided everybody to be in one room, and we just stayed there the whole night.

We never went to sleep.

The building was going to be destroyed.

That's it's incredible.

160 mile an hour of wind.

Have you ever caught a pitcher that threw 160 miles an hour?

[laughing] Even with the destruction, they did manage to surprise us with some local baseball eats.

Pizza and panarilla.

This is chicken, and then this is a cheese dog.

Oh, that's a Cheese dog?

Yeah, that's a cheese dog.

[laughing] Pretty good.

[laughing] [interposing voices] Oh, we can try it.

OK.

I'm going to do the alcapurria de carne.

I better have that chicken because of my wife.

[laughing] She sees these, I'm going to be there so-- [singing] And everybody standing-- And then everybody is-- Everybody standing up over here, and sing.

That's what I love about Puerto Rico, because every town has its own thing.

Yeah.

Carnivale, they have their own mascaras, you have your musica, you have your own art.

As they say, Puerto Rico is baseball.

And according to Pudge, the fans are what make the stadium.

So it's no surprise that even after a decade of living in the States, and playing for the Texas Rangers, after Maria hit, Pudge returned home to help Raul and support the island they love.

I never forget this.

When we came on the plane that the pilot said, "I'm going to bring the plane 3,000 feet, we're going to run around the island."

So before we landed San Juan, and I'm not kidding you.

It was like a big ball of fire comes through, 50 years behind, we went like this.

And you know, they know more than us really, because we did not have any communication.

Everything was going to the states, but here, we just could not see.

When you came in the first time to the stadium, after-- with all this history.

Yeah.

Very, very sad, because of the stadium, but also the community, and it was destroyed.

Did you feel like it was your responsibility, because you are part of the heart and soul of this community?

Well, yes, we wanted to be there for the community, but we wanted to do it organized.

This man right here, right after, he went out to helping people.

And he's still doing it today, because even though there's three years ago, there is some places still in the island-- That needs-- that they need them.

That they've been suffering by the storm.

We drive by semis, like containers to the center of the island.

It's unbelievable how hard it is to get to places like that, and then when you get there with water, you can see the desperate of the people.

I mean, baseball is baseball, you know, and-- Cayaguas tastes like baseball.

Tastes like baseball.

[laughing] That's what we say, but there is a need for supplies, but there is also a need to strengthen the mental health of the people.

And it's not the same thing than I giving you these supplies, and Pudge giving these supplies.

That's why Pudge coming in, and going to the mountains, and going to the people, and giving the cases.

He's a hero in Puerto Rico.

And you get to see their faces and all that stuff, and-- I wasn't the only one.

I mean there was a lot of people, I mean looking there, Pusara and Laura his wife, Eric Hinating, and Carlos Degardo-- Carlos Degardo.

[interposing voices] All of us.

I think Revo, both you and Pudge, you've got to spend a lot of time as ambassadors to the rest of the world through baseball.

So something like this after Maria, what did you find out about yourselves?

That's a tough question, because we've always been working with the community, but what we learned was we don't know how fine our people are until we go up to the mountains and we saw-- we see what we saw.

They are in need, and that has to continue.

That's why Pudge said we have too look into-- This isn't a post Maria think, this is a now thing.

This is a now thing.

Puerto Rico is a family.

Because if you see Puerto Rico is 100 by 35, is very small, I wonder how his own family.

I got my own family, but Ravo is like my family, we all like so close together.

When you come inside, you say hi to everybody.

Everyone knows you.

Everybody knows-- You talk about the community and the family and stuff like that happens inside the baseball stadium, it happens outside of the community.

Is because that's Puerto Rico, that's how we are.

So I will say I'm part of the family now.

[laughing] No, seriously my Puerto Rican family they treated me almost from day one like I'm part of the family, and really on behalf of my Puerto Rican family, thank you Raul, thank you Pudge for what you do.

Thank you.

For this island, for the people.

I appreciate.

Did you know that they call him El Flacco?

[laughing] Why?

[music playing] Almost as important to Puerto Rico as baseball, is Coffee.

So when Maria wiped out 80% of the coffee plants, it is difficult to understate the catastrophic effect that it had on the island's economic infrastructure.

We went with Pudge to his hometown of Vega Baja to take a tour of his sustainable coffee farm, and to meet Ataman.

Here they've partnered with hundreds of local farmers to replant the lost coffee crop, and buy back the final product, effectively kick starting the post Maria coffee revitalization.

What you're seeing here is what we call here the chapela, some plants that came from the coffee beans.

Yeah.

We have over here some coffee beans sample of when they are raw.

Sample.

[laughing] And it doesn't smell like coffee at this point, that, then, it's already, and from there in about 60 days, we get to this point.

A lot of assumptions here on the island, right?

We drink a lot of coffee.

Is part of our history, and of our culture.

We've had coffee for 284 years we all have a family member who used to plant in the island, so for us and for Pudge's is so important to us to be part of this.

Very important thing for me, I drink a lot of coffee.

[laughing] Much of the success that they have, is due to integrating new sustainable technologies and practices.

We're using biodegradable paper.

We can reuse the trays, and the farmers have to use them to produce other crops, and also is very light.

We needed to plant a lot of coffee plants after hurricanes, because we lost about 20 million coffee trees.

If we were going to replant 20 million trees, we needed to do it efficiently, fast, and with good quality plant.

We just looked around for technology that was available to our crops, and we adapted to the coffee plants in the island.

It's surprising, there's a little bit more technology that one would think.

[laughing] That one, he's the boss.

[laughing] Take us through the rest of the-- [laughing] The efficiencies gained here critical, since a coffee plant takes about three to four years to reach maturity.

How many plants are we looking at here?

Here we're looking at about half a million coffee plants.

I'm glad we didn't have to count them.

[laughing] From seedling to the time that you actually have a planted plant is how many days?

From the day we planted in the sandbank to having a fully grown plants ready to be planted in the field, is about 160 days.

Our people, you know, they planted very carefully, because if the root gets bent when they plant it, that they will die about a year after it's planted.

OK.

This is why we take so seriously to do it right.

Post Maria, are you feeling a lot of pressure to get the coffee industry back?

We take very seriously the socioeconomic impact that these has in the mountains of Puerto Rico.

There's a lot of families that depend on coffee, and a lot of other crops that depends on coffee to be able to produce, and the whole economy of the mountain depends on coffee.

And what we did was, we donate based on buy one of my coffees in the supermarket, and we donate one of them.

We produce all this, because it was great to get help in the economy.

And we're very proud of that, because this year, we're going to start having-- picking coffee from those plants that were donated back then.

How many plants did you don't you think?

It's about 50,000, so yeah.

Wow.

Where we are right now is very special to you, because this is Vega Baja.

This is my town exactly.

I grew up right down the street, not far from here.

What does it mean to you to now be here all these many years later, and be able to support and be part of this.

Blessed.

Again, I mean, I'm really lucky to be involved, having this beautiful coffee farm here is just-- it's amazing to see.

And I think probably the best thing that we have as a group that we all get along with.

Yeah.

And when you get along good in one room, things like this happen.

It's going to happen.

It's a whole baseball analogy.

It's all about teamwork, vacation.

It doesn't matter.

It's nonprofit, whatever, business, there are always people who can help other people.

Basically that's the key about what we're doing as a company.

We help a bunch of other guys.

So for us, yes, and make us feel happy.

The sustainable community driven coffee farm is an economic boon to the region and critical part of the post hurricane recovery.

That night, we headed to Dorado for dinner at one of Pudge's favorite spots.

We were joined by the owner of the restaurant, an old friend of Pudge's.

We got to enjoy some amazing local seafood, and experience what it meant to be part of the Puerto Rican family.

[speaking spanish] [laughing] As we traveled farther into the interior, we saw what the future of community driven sustainability might look like in the remote mountain town of Adjuntas.

Casa Pueblo, a community self-management project committed to protecting natural, cultural, and human resources.

Alexis and Tanti founded Casa Pueblo over 40 years ago.

They now run it with their son Arturo, a passionate advocate for their story.

A story that begins in the 1980s with an unsustainable open pit mining proposal in the community.

Their grassroots effort to oppose it, and the single person they convinced to show up to their first protest.

One guy protesting.

One guy.

Not a popular idea back then.

We realize knowledge itself is not enough.

We know about climate change.

We know about global warming.

We have a lot of knowledge, but that's not going to change our reality itself.

We need to change our culture, we need people to understand to embrace the conflict to participate as a community to do something about it, and then you get transformation.

And this is the same mean square 15 years after, we were able to communicate, people were participating, and we succeeded.

The point is we evolved from protesting to proposing alternative to deal with all the realities of the community, and also to engage in building up those proposals.

And they made good on that their.

Little community organization effort has grown to include a school built in the first community managed forest, an ecology lab, and music room for community education, and art gallery, radio station, and even a cinema.

The amazing thing, all of this runs on solar power generated right here in the community.

They realized all the way back in 1999 that energy was key to community strength on an island threatened by climate change.

Maria was a perfect example.

You know, we have a total blackout from the centralized units.

The same thing happened with the earthquakes.

It's not only bad for the environment, it's very expensive for the community.

So what we have been promoting is energy generation at the point of consumption.

It's a metaphor for so many other things too, right?

Yes, you build it more resilient, stronger community, and you are democratizing energy generation.

Power-- energy as power.

[laughing] Energy is the a capacity to do work.

Whoever controls energy generation is controlling the means for production.

After Maria, many areas were without power for six months, or even a year.

Casa Pueblo remained an energy oasis, because they had the resources to repair damaged solar panels without waiting for the government to send help.

They even maintained one of the only functioning radio stations, which made them crucial in relaying communication during local disaster response efforts.

In the newly built solar cinema, an educational theater run on solar power.

Arturo explains what is different about their community led response.

Government responses, they are top down, but when you see bottom up approaches, is people putting their heart, their commitment, feel this sense of urgency and necessity, and that's the driving force.

And is not a single solution.

Is not a single response.

What you're going to see is a multiplicity of responses.

That also sustainable responses that can live on.

Is not to rewire what was there before.

But if you look at Adjuntas, you're going to see a lot of things happening that have changed the local reality, and it means that we are better prepared to confront future challenges.

We have our own culture, history, language, and yet we are a US territory since 1898.

What you see in Puerto Rico right, now is a model of dependency.

Part of our mission is to bring that model of dependency, and energy self-sufficiency is one means to break that.

Another thing is we need economical self-sufficiency.

And for Casa Pueblo, we don't get funding from the government, is from our own resources.

And Cafe Madre Isla, we process coffee as a mean to generate resources for everything we do.

Taking control of our own destiny is also a pathway for self decolonisation.

I love that.

So Arturo, you guys have been kind of expanding out into the community.

And I know in the Plaza, you guys have some things going on the Plaza and every Puerto Rican in town is kind of the center of activity, right?

What we're doing is changing the energy landscape of the community, and going to a La Plaza, it's like the capstone of what we're doing.

And the idea is we're setting a solar micro-grid to energize this central part.

The local business are going to see reductions in their energy cost, but most of the money and the resources is going to be wealth generated within that community to help low income families also reach energy security.

I mean after-- Social reinvestment.

You know, after Hurricane, you know, it happens in a couple of days, and then the damage the last years potentially, but with solar, it's sunshine in a couple of days later, you know, so all of a sudden, they're up and running again.

And they're able to sustain-- feels like you guys are much stronger today than pre Maria.

Oh yes.

That's right.

Now you have for me not only to decolonize, to deal with poverty, for economic activation, to build resilience for the community.

And as we show that we can do it for Adjuntas, this is something that can be replicated in other municipalities and we can do it for the whole country.

Yeah.

Why not the Caribbean?

I mean, what a long evolution that's happened from the time that your parents kind of came up with this idea.

So now that it's not so hard to get people to understand what it is that you're doing, because I've seen it.

It's a unity effort.

And we're pushing together.

When do you think about protecting the natural resources, pushing forward for local development, and energy for everyone that's a new scenario what people can come together, and actually agree on how to move forward for the better of the community.

It was a tremendous pleasure to sit down and have coffee with Arturo and his mother.

It was inspiring to see how their family had partnered with the community they belonged to in order to make it stronger, and more prepared for the future.

And this is what's so easy to love about Puerto Rico.

It's the vibrancy, passion, and pride that individuals working together have for their communities, a trait exemplified in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

These individual communities have taken their fate into their own hands to usher a more prepared, and resilient Puerto Rico into the future.

[music playing] There's so much more to explore, and we want you to join us on the good road.

For more in-depth content, meet us on the internet at thegoodroad.tv Here more great stories, connect to organizations, and make sure you download our podcast philanthropology.

Funding for the good road has been provided by-- [music playing] Every road is a good road, when you're behind the wheel of a Toyota hybrid, from the Toyota Avenza, and Sienna, the Highlander hybrid and RAV4 hybrid.

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Whether you're driving to work, school, or down the coast of Tanzania.

Proud sponsor of The Good Road, Toyota, let's go places.

Tomorrow's breakthroughs start with the determination and inspiration of today.

AMD help solve the world's toughest, and most interesting challenges by creating high performance computing technologies.

And by Uncommon Giving, the generosity company.

At Plow & Hearth, we believe that the place you are, it becomes the place you want to be.

Philanthropy Journal, stories about bold people changing the world.

[music playing]