Just like in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, Justice Ramos was given a name that intertwines with his destiny.
The 29-year-old grew up in Cortez to a mom who spent her childhood on the Navajo reservation, in the town of Rock Point, Arizona, (Tsé Nitsaa Deezʼáhí in Diné) about 90 miles southwest of Cortez. Ramos’ grandparents were both teachers in Rock Point, which also influenced his fate.
After graduating from the University of Colorado, he had plans to join the Peace Corps. But the pandemic ruined that, so he had to change direction.
In 2020, he turned to helping people on the Navajo Nation, and with some assistance from his family, founded the nonprofit Fundamental Needs, which helps address critical gaps in accessing clean drinking water, electricity, education and vocational opportunities in underserved communities. The idea is that community-led approaches combined with practical solutions can empower individuals and families to overcome systemic barriers and, hopefully, create lasting change.
During the pandemic, Fundamental Needs delivered relief to Navajo citizens in lockdown, including water, food boxes, firewood, clothing and personal protective equipment or PPE. These were critical back then but they remain a scarcity for many, with 30% to 40% of households on the Navajo Nation lacking access to running water in their homes and around 10,050 to 13,000 households lacking electricity on the 17.5-million-acre reservation that spans Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Ramos also wanted to help kids living in Rock Point, Cortez and Kirtland, New Mexico, another town just outside of the reservation that sits along the San Juan River.
According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics November 2023 study, the unemployment rate for American Indians and Alaskan Natives was 8.2% in 2021 compared with a rate of 5.3% for the United States overall. American Indian and Alaska Native people ages 16 to 24 living in tribal areas had a 17.2% unemployment rate, compared with 11% for U.S. youth overall.
“We wanted to build towards something more long term, so we started building off-grid water systems,” he said. They partnered with DigDeep, an organization that believes everyone deserves water, and built their first three systems in 2021. A year later, Ramos started a high school program dedicated to doing the same at Rock Point Community School.
Now both Rock Point and Kirtland have school-based programs in which Indigenous students build and donate these systems to needy households within an hour and a half of their schools. To date, more than 240 systems have been installed, Ramos said.
The project trains and hires local high school students to build and install those systems themselves, turning infrastructural work into a pathway toward future careers. Students learn plumbing and electrical/solar installation and study topics like agriculture and financial literacy before receiving hands-on experience working in the field. They’re paid $100 stipends for every installation and $50 for every repair.
“From there, the work grew,” Ramos said. “Food delivery, firewood distribution, and the planting of apple trees in the Rock Point area all followed. But the thread connecting everything was the same: Find the need, find the people and build something that lasts.”
He also created a youth entrepreneurship program in Cortez that teaches high school students how to develop their own business plans and lets some test their concepts in internships through the organization.
And last year, he let students identify the next big issue that they wanted to solve and build a big project around that, he said.
To support the program’s participants, Fundamental Needs built Cortez Makerspace, a 14,000-square-foot building at 209 W. Main St. adorned with a beautiful mural of workers harvesting baskets of bright orange peaches. Inside is access to creative tools, technology and shared workspace. The center has 3D printing, laser cutting, textiles, silversmithing, virtual reality programs, large-format printing and digital design resources, along with space for workshops, classes and collaborative projects (see this video for a walkthrough).
Ramos’ latest endeavor is launching a creative contest that he hopes will raise money for Fundamental Needs. Artists, inventors and other creatives living within 150 miles of the Four Corners can “build anything. Robotics, wood, steel, cloth, paint, sculpture, sound, code, an invention, a thing nobody has a name for yet,” he said, and submit it.
The creations are viewable on Fundamental Needs’ website. People can vote through the online portal. Come awards night, in late October, one maker will take home $5,000 and Ramos says the top creation, displayed for all to see, will become a community treasure.