A biography in a nutshell

Roald Boom

Roald was born in 1977 in the Netherlands (Holland) but raised on the Caribbean island of Curacao. From the time he was a young boy, he was strongly drawn to nature, as nature always seemed to make sense and reflect a harmony that humanity seemed to have lost.

His love for nature was always obvious, as he spend every minute he could in nature: fishing, snorkeling, boating, surfing, building treehouses and camping out in nature amongst the animals and wildlife. His father was a self-made entrepreneur, responsible for the creation of several housing developments, counting thousands of lots and a large resort with the first 18hole golf course in Curacao.

Due to the relatively inadequate schooling system, he left home and went to Florida at the age of 15, to finish his high school and after that, studied pre-med at the University of Miami. Pre-med was not practical enough for him, so Roald moved to Holland and studied International Business School, but quickly changed to Outdoor Business school, a business school specially made for entrepreneurs with the aim to go into the outdoor business.

It was his dream to move to New Zealand and start his own company with outdoor activities such as hiking, camping and outdoor training. However, as a young adult, and now husband and father and fresh out of college, the financial hurdle, along with New Zealand’s stringent immigration policy, made migration a to New Zealand a difficult step to make.

In search of warmer weather, Roald and his family moved to Malaga, in the south of Spain, where he worked for several years for an outdoor company, giving outdoor corporate trainings and jeep safari tours.

In the meantime, his wife Mireille, was working in real estate, and the housing market in Spain was booming. So, Roald decided to take a few months off to buy and restore an old home in the small town of Alhaurin el Grande.

After 10 months of hard hands-on work, he finished and they quickly sold their first house. In the process, Roald had a better income than the previous 2 years working at the outdoor company and he was much more free to schedule his own working day and hours. This got him interested in real estate, which then led to several years of buying, restoring, building and selling real estate and eventually opening a real estate agent and interior design company with Mireille.

When the housing bubble popped, Mireille, their two sons and Roald, moved to the Caribbean, to Bonaire, the most southern municipality belonging to the Netherlands.
Here they started the qualitative family owned housing development, called Bona Bista Island Estate, which is a 26 hectare residential property.

Roald’s autodidact abilities proved handy on an island so isolated from other more developed countries and forced him to quickly learn many skills, amongst which are the architectural and construction skills, that enabled him to be self-reliant, efficient and effective with this large residential housing development.

At Bona Bista, together with his wife, they make up the team responsible for every component of the development. From the sales and marketing, to the design and construction of the infrastructure including the amenities and roads, as well as the design, construction and interior decoration of the homes they build.

Phase 1 - Bona Bista Villas consists of 84 lots with the highest quality infrastructure, situated next to the Seru Largu nature reserve. Bona Bista Villas was received well and sales went well, even after the 2007-2008 economic recession.

Roald was curious why such an economic recession was still possible after hundreds of years of finance and banking, so did some research. To his surprise, he found that the financial, banking models and the creation of money, were unfair, to say the least! This led to more research into the food and farming industry, the medical and pharmaceutical industry, the media and educational industry, and many other components of our societal structures. Again, to his surprise, all of these industries were obviously corrupted. This quickly led him to the research and then the implementation of sustainable practices such as: permaculture, hydroponics, aquaponics, aquaculture, composting, water management and beekeeping.

The implementation of these practices was a success and quickly people started to come by and ask if he could teach them how to achieve similar results. This led to the creation of URD Solution, Roald’s initiative aimed at empowering, first the Bonairian community, to take back control and responsibility for their mental and physical health by decentralizing many of the essential components of our lives and taking back responsibility for aspects such as the production of clean healthy food, and in that process, reducing expenses and detrimental environmental impacts, while preventing disease.
URD Solution obviously implies that ‘You Are The Solution’ to the majority of all complications facing us today on a micro and macro level.

URD Solution’s cooperation and collaboration with local initiatives and companies, amongst which are Bonaire Duradero (funded by the WWF), Magazina di Rei, Kriabon, Krusada and Greenlabel, has led URD Solution to organize many different hands-on courses and events, both teaching and promoting sustainable practices such as: permaculture, hydroponics, aquaponics, aquaculture, composting and beekeeping. Our efforts at URD Solution, have resulted in, amongst others, the only sustainable commercial farming practice on Bonaire, implementing hydroponics, and resulting in locally grown, 0 mile, organic produce for the people.

To promote health, they became Bonaire’s distributors of Living Fuel, the incredible superfood product line from the USA. To promote hydroponics, they became the local distributor of the Autopot watering systems, hydroponic nutrients and hydroponic necessities ,selling through the largest garden store, Greenlabel and Kriabon, the local farmers co-op.

Our cooperation with the Florida Department of Agriculture concerning beekeeping has led to an exciting amount of new beekeepers on Bonaire, who are now all supporting and protecting these essential and magnificent creatures.

At URD Solution we have taught hundreds of participants and students how they too can “be the change they want to see in the world,” through the application of practical and affordable technologies and innovations. At URD Solution, we understand, that in the web of life, your success, is our success!

By 2012, Bonaire’s real estate markets were effected by the recession, and sales at Bona Bista was slow. To try to encourage sales and integrate these new sustainable practices with the housing development, they launched a sustainable concept called “House plus”, a concept where clients could choose one of their house models, plus several sustainable practices, like: permaculture, hydroponics, aquaponics, aquaculture, composting and water management.

But the economy was still in recession and the market was not ready yet for our new concept, so whilst home sales and construction at Bona Bista was a an all-time low, they were forced to create alternative sources of income, resulting in several other ventures.

One of which became tattooing. RB Fusion Tattoos came from Roald’s passion for all kinds of arts and crafts and the search for a meaningful place to place such art, such as in homes, but also on the human skin. As a self-taught tattoo artist, his passion for abstract drawing, such as Polynesian, Maori and sacred geometry styles, merged into a particular fusion style. Roald still designs, draws and tattoos from time to time.

BOOMBOOM Handmade Furniture, had already been supplying both the Bona Bista Villas and the local community with beautiful and qualitative natural furniture, from reclaimed and recycled timber, since 2010. Now, with more time on their hands, these activities were significantly expanded.

Untamed Passion is another venture and the result of the untamed passion for all kinds of arts and crafts. For many years Roald made and sold his hand-made jewelry on Bonaire. Beautiful natural materials ranging from stone and wood to bone and metal, make up his intricately designed jewelry
Pen turning is another skill he learned and many pens were made and sold, although most were given away as gifts. Often buyers of Bona Bista lots and homes, were given one of Roald’s handmade pens to sign their deeds and practically every deed that has passed at the local notary over the last decade, was signed by the notary with pens, made by Roald.

Roald’s passion for arts has veered off into many directions, ranging from wood carving, pyrography, sculpting, pouring, painting, drawing and many more. In the meantime, Mireille had turned her hobby of giving fitness classes, into her own company, One Tribe Sport Academy, where Mireille and several other instructors gave many different types of fitness classes, such as Less Mills, cross fit, MMA, kickboxing and several other fusion fitness classes.

By 2014, the recession had still not passed. Demotivated by slow circumstances, immobilizing their residential development, and they decided that we wanted to move to a country with more potential and a greener, more progressive future.

After several visits to Ecuador, in an attempt to start an eco-village, it became clear that the complications that most south American countries face, make for a difficult and risky business model.

Researching alternative countries, with more promising futures, the dream to move to New Zealand re-immerged and in 2014-2015 they visited New Zealand for several weeks to get a good feel for Aoteroa. All four of them, fell head over heels in love with New Zealand and upon return, they immediately decided to sell their remaining real estate in their residential development.

However, Bona Bista is one of the biggest developments on the island, the recession was still not really over and selling the entire property, proved difficult. With one foot still on Bonaire and one foot in New Zealand, they were stranded and after 2 years of trying to sell the development, decided to take it off the market and move on with the next phase of their development, for which now the world seemed more ready than ever.

Phase 2 - Pure36 is the 2nd phase of Bona Bista Island Estate and consists of 36 modern, minimalistic, luxury smart homes, that are pushing the boundaries of housing into a new way of life. These smart homes represent new frontiers, demonstrating the new way of life and serve as prototypes, that help motivate, both short and long term movements of deep, positive and lasting change.

They call the concept: L.I.F.E. (Living Intelligently with Food and Energy).

In Januari of 2019, sales at Pure36 have commenced and the construction of the first of these amazing homes has begun. All 36 homes are integrated with many sustainable components, such as: sustainably designed for energy efficiency and environmental optimization, sustainable and durable construction materials, 100% solar/battery powered, solar water heating, rain- grey and black water management, edible garden design (Permaculture principles), centralized community composting and smart technologies. (smart solar, smart lights, smart alarms, smart locks, etc)

These 36 homes are the most innovative and sustainable homes ever build on Bonaire, and stimulate inclusivity and integration of both ancient wisdom and modern technologies, into a synthesis that pushes the boundaries of innovation and stimulates our community of global change makers to nurture the collective wellbeing.

At Pure36 they are pushing the boundaries of innovation, by motivating cutting edge perspectives and implementing alternative ways of living, stimulating the creation of new and practical templates, for essential solutions to the global imperative that we are facing as a planet.

By aligning and integrating sustainable values and models at Pure36, they are encouraging systemic change and hope to motivate the unique and diverse qualities of people, to help metamorphose the global challenges we are confronted with.

It is essential that humanity moves beyond the outdated models of the industrial era of exploitation of our natural resources at the expense of the whole and evolves into sustainable and restorative models of regenerative abundance.

These much needed societal systemic changes are all possible, given the fact that, in the duality construct that is our existence, all polarities are born simultaneously, thus both the problem and the solution is always here.

The competitive model of greed and shortage is outdated and it is time to set our creative ideas free into the fertile soil of human ingenuity.

At Pure36 they are:
- composting the old models into new organic soil,
- helping to plant the seeds for innovation, and;
- watering both, by “being the change that we want to see...”

Phase 3 - Wara Wara Landscape Lodge is another segment of Bona Bista Island Estate and sales are planned to commence late 2019, with a resort/hotel/lodge and is currently in the design phase. The plans are for a landscape lodge with 55 resort units and a fully off-the-grid solar mini-grid, rain-, grey- and black water management system and indigenous landscaping.

So, what has this all led to and where do they go from here?
Keep an eye or two open and find out for yourself….