What is the point?

Recently I gave a presentation at the annual symposium of the German Geographical Society’s Marine and Coastal research group. The topic was the Hawaiian Ahupua land- and coastal management concept and how it compares to modern integrated coastal zone management concepts. A few people were interested in more details and were quite amazed about the intricate completeness of the Ahupuaa approach. A young lady asked me what the project was about.
"There is no project" I told her.
"But who sponsered your work?" she wondered.
"Nobody" I said.
"So why did you do it?"
"Because I think it is a rather valuable approach and want to spread the word about it" I told her.
That, apparently, was not enough for this young researcher. She shook her head in apparent disbelief and walked away. It seemed that for her something was not valuable if merely one single maverick old poop like me declared it to be. For her at least a project needed to be funded and legitimized by some kind of bureaucratic or in any way "official" entity to be considered valuable. My crazy idea however is that things, ideas and beings have intrinsic values. Just so.