The Secret Sauce

Growing Seasons at Thoreau College is a 9-month, residential program for young adults seeking to challenge and cultivate themselves through an immersive, holistic curriculum designed to engage each participant as a whole human being.

Thoreau College creates a context where students can nurture their sacred curiosity, connect with their deepest selves, and cultivate the capacities they will need to manifest their highest aspirations for the world.”

A look inside a Food Enterprise Center that is cultivating community beyond its walls

Island Housing Trust’s mission is to preserve the viability of the year-round community on Mount Desert Island (MDI) by encouraging and providing housing opportunities affordable to the island’s workforce. To ensure that the island communities remain viable year-round villages and towns, IHT seeks to create a stock of permanently affordable year-round housing that is available to those who work on MDI.

Civic courage means striking first with love, and asking questions later. It’s building a bridge by trusting someone who doesn’t already trust you. It’s choosing to listen to someone who is across the trenches from you.

Now, the voices that dominate in Allen County are the voices of action. Voices of progress. Voices that say “HOW should we do this?” instead of “WHY should we do this?” The negativity does not go unchallenged.

Can art remind us there is a place for everyone, for all voices? Can art be a tool that helps demonstrate the ways in which we are intrinsically connected to each other and the natural world? Can art bring us together so that we might jointly create our sense of place? This summer in Paonia, we will take steps to find out.

How do we begin to dismantle the illusion of independence and to shine the light on all that we have to offer to each other, all that we need from each other, all the things that we can only do if we are together?

Approaching land, animals and humans with creativity and a collaborative spirit, the Finnriver team continues to use their tiny corner in western Washington to generate a new paradigm of social, economic, and environmental resilience for the future.

[I]t begins by finding practical ways to create healthy synergies between cities and the countryside, and by pursuing economic and ecological policies that don’t perpetuate unhealthy mutual dependency.