Our Roots
the foundation of our work and the people Guiding and driving our programs and advocacies
“If you plant, you harvest
Kung may tinanim, may aanihin“
~ Tagalog proverb
Magdalena Arguelles
Magdalena Arguelles was born in Iloilo City,Philippines and immigrated with her family initially to Canada then to the USA in 1969. After finishing pharmacy school in Boston, she studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she received her BFA. She spent 2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bitam, Gabon where she taught science and english. Currently she works as a clinical pharmacist, has an active art practice and tends her garden. She and her husband live in Chicago and have 3 adult children.
She grew up watching her Tatay garden in Iloilo then later in Chicago where he raised asian vegetables such as upo, ampalaya, sitao, dahon camote and ube. Now in her own Itty Bitty Urban Garden (IBUG) in Chicago, she grows the same vegetables that her Tatay did. Over the years she has been saving seeds, like him, to share with fellow gardeners as well as to use for the next year’s garden.
Her practice of and interest in seed saving led her to the work of Vandana Shiva which eventually led her to the work of Global Seed Savers in the Philippines. She is excited to be a GSS board member and to be a part of helping create seed sovereignty on the local level and helping to support sustainable communities.
Philippines Address
Our local staff work remotely
from various parts of the Philippines (Benguet, Cebu).
To contact our Philippines team, fill up this contact form.
US Address
Located at
The Posner Center
for International Development
1031 33rd Street, Ste. 174
Denver, CO 80205
info@globalseedsavers.org
Our US offices are based in Denver, Colorado, which is the land of the Cheyenne and Arapaho and 48 other Indigenous Tribes and Nations who call Colorado home. They are the original Stewards of this stolen land and it is because of their successes and continued hardships that we are able to engage in our collective work of restoring the indigenous practice of saving seeds.