By Jondi Gumz
Câmbio comes from a time when Taylor Lahey was working at the Celo Foundation some years back, from a story company employees told that made a big impression: The Curitiba Green Exchange.
It’s a true story shared by the Global Genius Trust about how the impoverished capital of Paraná, Brazil, whose wealth was in farmland, leveraged untapped resources to support environmental cleanup, job creation and city restoration.
City residents lived in shantytowns, where streets were not wide enough for garbage trucks. So garbage piled up on the street.
The mayor, architect Jaime Lerner, had an idea. He ordered large trash bins for the edge of the shantytowns. Anyone depositing a bag full of pre-sorted trash got a bus token. People collecting paper and cartons got a plastic token exchangeable for locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables.
Tens of thousands of children picked the neighborhood clean. Parents used the token to ride the bus downtown, often to find jobs. Soon bus tokens were accepted at local markets to buy food.
Eventually more than 70% of the households got involved. Over time, the 62 poorer neighborhoods exchanged 11,000 tons of garbage for nearly a million bus tokens and 1,200 of food.
Lahey, 35, who now lives in Aptos, was hooked by the story.
He pitched writing a book as a company project and then pitched a research trip to learn more.
He visited Curitiba in December 2019, met the exchange director and a city planning representative, and interviewed people.
Lahey, a designer and visual communicator, created a version of the book without words, but after Covid arrived, he set the project aside.
By 2022, he was ready to start his own business, Taylor Lahey Studios, and work on the book again.
Taylor Lahey, left, partnered with Ryan Matias to produce the children’s book, Câmbio.
He partnered with Ryan Matias, 35, an illustrator and character designer he met at The Animation Collaborative, a school in Emeryville.
Matias went on to work for Pixar, Netflix, Nickelodeon, and Disney TV but the friends kept in touch and Matias was ready to pursue work he could call his own.
Lahey committed to writing and designing the book and Matias agreed to illustrate it.
Lahey told Aptos Times, “I went through many written iterations of writing but the vision of the story remained just about the same. You have to understand that I’m not a writer by trade so I received a lot of help along the way. It was Nicholas Tolfa, the editor of Câmbio that really brought my tone, structure, and eloquence that I had in mind.”
The bold and colorful illustrations complement the story of Câmbio, which is told for kids age 6 and up.
Lahey says the story was written to encourage intergenerational reading in groups.
The 14-page paperback book is priced at $12.
Asked why he moved his business to Aptos, Lahey said, “On a hunch, I moved my girlfriend and I to my father’s house in Aptos from San Francisco. After getting through the pandemic together, we decided to lay down roots in Aptos and begin calling this town ‘home.’ We love it here.”
He doesn’t have speaking dates yet but he said, “Very soon, I hope to become a part of the programming of the Santa Cruz Public Library, Bookshop Santa Cruz, and any educational programs (public or private schools or Cabrillo College).”
He said he’s prioritizing Santa Cruz County and Contra Costa County where Matias lives.
“I want people here to be able to check out the book and meet me in public spaces and events,” Lahey said. “I never grew up knowing an author or artist and I wish to provide that by being accessible to people in Santa Cruz.”
Find the book at www.cambiostory.com