Our COMMON Foundation

07/24/2026

UKRAINE UNDER FIRE wins an Emmy - We are incredibly proud to congratulate director Jordan Campbell, editor Mike Herbener, and the entire team on winning the 2026 Heartland Emmy Award for the documentary UKRAINE UNDER FIRE.

WATCH NOW on PBS - Link in comments

As the Fiscal Sponsor for this film through Our COMMON Foundation, I have had a front-row seat to the immense grit, personal sacrifice, and unwavering dedication Jordan poured into this project. He has been relentlessly dedicated to the people of Ukraine from the outset.

He made a promise to elevate the voices of the heroic Ukrainians on the frontline, and he risked everything to ensure their stories were told. This Emmy is a profound and hard-earned validation of his vision and leadership.

At Our COMMON Foundation, our mission has always been to empower visionaries to do the heavy lifting of social and environmental change.

We are honored to be the Fiscal Sponsor behind the film and to have provided the structural platform that helped Jordan and his team bring this vital documentary to the world.

Congratulations, Jordan. Bravo!

Here's more from Jordan:

This documentary film began as a simple trip into eastern Ukraine. What followed became a promise to my Ukrainian friends—and to a nation under attack—to champion their voices and document Russia’s ongoing war of aggression.

Since our world premiere in Washington, D.C. on Feb 24, 2025, UKRAINE UNDER FIRE has experienced a remarkable festival run—earning numerous festival awards including audience choice, best short documentary, best short film, special jury and impact—making its European premiere at the Ferrara Film Festival in Italy.

As an impact documentary, we’re also honored to have received a national Anthem Award for Humanitarian Action in Documentary Film.

UKRAINE UNDER FIRE

(Film Credits):
Editor: Mike Herbener
Director of Photography: Oleg Avilov
Executive Producer: Susan Dalton
Story Producer: Michael Campbell
Senior Producer: Cathy Flowers
Archival Producer: Patti Bonnet
Cello Score: Michael Fitzpatrick
Featured Musical Artist: JKLN
Fiscal Sponsor: Matthew Wilburn King, Our COMMON Foundation

Impact Producers: Price, Hope Yanling Yin, PCC

Special thanks goes to Ramro Global® | Worldwide Humanitarian Action & Crisis Reporting Advisory Council: Jennifer Franz, Michael Carter, Adam Mark Jachimowicz PhD, Dan Martinez, Marcelo Cardarelli, MD, MPH, Christina Tobias-Nahi, EdM, MAIR, Ajume Wingo

Huge gratitude goes to the brave Ukrainians whose courage and voices guide this film: Olga Butko, Igor Polivenok, Alona Lievashova, Iryna Karagan, Pavlo Vasianovych, Valeriia Kolomiets, Commander Kurt and our film’s hero — Peter Fouché (RIP 6.27.24).

07/15/2026

06/26/2026

A Living Landscape between Two Historical Legends - Washington and Lincoln. Let's ask ourselves; what would Teddy Roosevelt have done?

Come on America, let's be creative. Here's my pitch | A Living Landscape between Two Historical Legends - Washington and Lincoln. Let's ask ourselves; what would Teddy Roosevelt have done?

My wife and I lived on the Tidal Basin along the Southwest Waterfront in D.C.. I spent years watching the daily, shifting pulse of Washington’s tides, not to mention innumerable people, boats and birds coming in and out of the marina.

We tend to view the National Mall through the old myth of separation—as a series of stone monuments frozen in cut off spaces in a performative landscape of concrete troughs and manicured odes to Greek and Roman architecture. It's much more than that.

Look closely and you'll discover a dynamic, living coastal estuary.

D.C. is in an estuary or wetlands, also known as a swamp. Swamps aren't meant to be drained; they're vital to healthy humans and nature.

The city of D.C. was built on a low, filled-in tidal landscape. We literally drained and filled in the swamp to build a city. Twice a day, 250 million gallons of the Potomac River rush into the Tidal Basin to scour away sediment and keep the channels clear.

Right now, our monumental core of D.C. keeps its waters trapped behind brittle, hard stone edges that are actively being undermined by rising tides and subsidence.

We treat the Reflecting Pool like a decorative, static box, relying on artificial pumps to keep it from turning toxic, warm, and stagnant; a breeding ground for algae.

We care for the landscape like we do the monoliths that are built on it, over cultivating a living landscape between two historical legends, Washington and Lincoln.

When you look at the terraced basins and living marshes you are looking at the dissolution of our antiquated thinking about our relationship to history and nature. We need to begin aligning the city with the natural ecosystem, the tidal basin that surrounds it.

The Rhythm of Flow and Recovery

In nature, as in our own systems, control converted into isolation leads directly to stagnation. A shallow pool left to sit under a humid city sky suffocates and turns anaerobic, hence the toxic algae.

Continuous, gravity-fed water movement changes the entire story:

Circulation is Life:
Allowing water to spill across linked basins and cascading stone shelves mimics a natural, regenerative rhythm. It oxygenates the system, disrupting algal scums and staving off stagnation without mechanical intervention.

The Sponge Landscape:
Instead of a rigid barrier that breaks under pressure, a living edge is built to absorb. Terraced wetlands and engineered sponge soils hold heavy storm surges and high river tides, slowing the water down and acting as a safety valve for the entire basin.

Natural Purification:
Passing water through vegetated shelves and constructed marshes sets up a living filtration chain. Native plants and microbes clean the sediment and strip out pollutants before the water is recirculated, replacing heavy chemical treatments with organic, regenerative approaches.

One Inseparable Ecosystem

The walk from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial has always been a visual mirror between the nation's founding ideals and its conscience. But stone icons alone are an incomplete reflection of our nation and its history.

By transforming a sterile water feature into what it is, a natural estuarine ecosystem, we can transform this landscape back into what it always had been, a continuous habitat and wildlife corridor in the center of the city that is connected to Rock Creek Park. This conceptual design accepts the ecological truth of where the Reflecting Pool exists in nature, a Tidal Basin that is extraordinary when it has life.

The Riparian Canopy: The river birches, willows, and emergent wetland trees framing the walkways are exactly the species that thrive in low-lying Potomac floodplains.

The Living Filter: The prominence of cattails (Typha), rushes, and deep-water lilies in the stepped cascades represents a highly accurate "natural water treatment train." These are the hyper-accumulators used in constructed mid-Atlantic wetlands to strip out excess nutrients and prevent the exact toxic algae blooms we see.

Faunal Indicators: The presence of the great blue heron and active waterfowl signals a functioning estuarine ecosystem rather than a sterile, chemically policed trough of wasted resources.

It roots our national narrative—freedom, unity, sacrifice—directly into the health of the entire system, earth and water.

The monument and the marsh become an inseparable, regenerative whole: a reminder that democracy, like any living system, cannot survive behind hard edges or isolated from the ground that sustains it.

Our lives and the living world are deeply interconnected; maybe the reflecting pool should reflect that back to America on its 250th birthday.

(NOTE: The AI image was created by me, simply to illustrate what can happen if we use our imaginations and align with nature.)

04/17/2026

April 26 marks exactly 40 years since the Chernobyl disaster.
What happened then did not end there. The impact of the Soviet Union on Ukraine did not end either. It still shapes lives, systems, and the reality people are living through today.

In collaboration with The Colorado Sun, join us for an evening of three films that trace this history, from the Chernobyl catastrophe to the present-day war, told through real footage, lived experiences, and firsthand perspectives.

The program includes:
• Chernobyl (HBO, Episode 1)
• Children in the Fire
• Ukraine Under Fire, a film project of Our COMMON Foundation
followed by a panel discussion.

🗓 Sunday, April 26 | 3 PM to 9 PM
📍 Rocky Mountain Public Media Center
2101 Arapahoe St, Denver, CO
🎟 $25 adults (includes all three films and 2 drinks)
🎟 $15 students (includes all three films)

All ages are welcome, but please note that some content may be difficult to watch. Parental guidance advised. Children attending must also purchase a ticket due to limited seating.

April 26 marks exactly 40 years since the Chernobyl disaster.

What happened then did not end there. The impact of the Soviet Union on Ukraine did not end either. It still shapes lives, systems, and the reality people are living through today.

In collaboration with The Colorado Sun, join us for an evening of three films that trace this history, from the Chernobyl catastrophe to the present-day war, told through real footage, lived experiences, and firsthand perspectives.

The program includes:
• Chernobyl (HBO, Episode 1)
• Children in the Fire
• Ukraine Under Fire
followed by a panel discussion.

🗓 Sunday, April 26 | 3 PM to 9 PM
📍 Rocky Mountain Public Media Center
2101 Arapahoe St, Denver, CO

🎟 $25 adults (includes all three films and 2 drinks)
🎟 $15 students (includes all three films)

All ages are welcome, but please note that some content may be difficult to watch. Parental guidance advised. Children attending must also purchase a ticket due to limited seating.

🎟 Tickets: https://buytickets.at/ukrainianscolorado/2168636
Also available through the link in our bio

26 квітня виповнюється рівно 40 років з дня катастрофи на Чорнобильській АЕС.

Те, що сталося тоді, не закінчилося в минулому. Вплив Радянського Союзу на Україну також не зник. Він і досі формує життя, системи та реальність, у якій живуть люди сьогодні.

У співпраці з The Colorado Sun запрошуємо вас на вечір трьох фільмів, які простежують цю історію від Чорнобильської катастрофи до сучасної війни через реальні кадри, особисті історії та досвід людей.

У програмі:
• «Чорнобиль» (HBO, 1 серія)
• «Діти у вогні»
• «Україна у вогні»
та панельна дискусія.

🗓 Неділя, 26 квітня | 15:00–21:00
📍 Rocky Mountain Public Media Center
2101 Arapahoe St, Denver, CO

🎟 $25 для дорослих (включає всі три фільми та 2 напої)
🎟 $15 для студентів (включає всі три фільми)

Подія відкрита для всіх вікових категорій, але зверніть увагу, що деякі матеріали можуть бути емоційно важкими для перегляду. Рекомендується батьківський контроль. Дітям також необхідно придбати квиток через обмежену кількість місць.

🎟 Квитки: https://buytickets.at/ukrainianscolorado/2168636
Також доступні за посиланням у шапці профілю

03/28/2026

Boulder protests and history was made! With over 10 million people marching nationwide today, this has officially become the largest protest in U.S. history.