WTJ%202012%20Final%20pdf

Contents

6 | From Working ON to Working WITH Communities, Young Kim

9 | Feeding Bellies and Hearts, Mary Lake

10 | Finding Whole Thinking in an Unexpected Place, Rebecca Ruggles

12 | A Land Trust Transforming, Craig Anderson, Lee Hackeling

14 | Thunder and Gratitude, Andrew Dillon Bustin

15 | Widening the Frame, Lauret Savoy, Alison Hawthorne Deming

18 | Selah, Kevin K.J. Chang

19 | Why Do I, Alex Bauermeister

20 | The Heart of the Matter, Virginia Kennedy

22 | As Within, So Without, Daniel Lim

25 | Daphne and Apollo: A Story of Necessary Change, Glen Hutcheson

26 | Even Before I Forgot, JuanCarlos Arauz

28 | Switchgrass Bricks, Harmonicas and Glaciers, Garett Brennan

30 | Pizza,Taylor Burt, Phillip Ulbrich

31 | Brown and Blue, Jenny Helm

Departments

2 | Contributors 4 | From the Executive Director 32 | News from Whole Communities 34 | 2011 Alumni 37 | FY 2010–2011 Financial Report 38 | Honoring Our Supporters 40 | 2012 Calendar

JENNY HELM

www.wholecommunities.org CENTER FOR WHOLE COMMUNITIES © 2012

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Contributors

Craig Anderson has been the Executive Director of LandPaths since 1997 and lives by the credo “can do.” He is on the Steering Committee of the Bay Area Open Space Council, and teaches work-shops nationally focused on public engagement with conserved lands.

Lee Hackeling has been the Assistant Director of LandPaths since 1999, focusing her work on proj-ect development, grant writing and strategic plan-ning. Her passion is the interface of people with nature, and she has been instrumental in develop-ing LandPaths work in urban areas.

JuanCarlos Arauz is a consultant, trainer and storyteller specializing in immigration, youth and education. His fresh and compelling vision brings collaboration between the private and public sectors to engage and empower young people to become prepared for a global sustainable society. He is the founding director of E3: Education, Excellence & Equity. He lives in Navato, CA.

Garett Brennan is the executive director of Focus the Nation, the country’s premier clean energy leadership development organization. He is also a singer, songwriter and musician with The Great Salt Licks, a band based in Portland, OR. Raised at the base of the Wasatch Rockies in Salt Lake City, he’s a long-time avid backcountry tele-skier and a huge fan of snow storms.

Kevin K.J. Chang is the Executive Director of the Hawai‘i Community Stewardship Network. He received a B.A. in Psychology and a J.D. from the University of Oregon. Chang is also a member of the band Kūpaāina and uses music as a tool to raise awareness on the contemporary economic, social, cultural and environmental justice issues of Hawai‘i.

Alison Hawthorne Deming is an award-winning poet, essayist and teacher. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona. She is the author of four books of poetry including Rope and The Monarchs and is co-editor with Lauret Savoy of The Color of Nature.

Jenny Helm works at Center for Whole Communities, where she has the unique perspec-tive of having worked both on the land and in the office. Outside of CWC, her current projects include co-managing a garden for the kitchen and classrooms of a local elementary school, discover-ing how to be most useful in our changing world, and spending as much time as possible adventur-ing outdoors.

Andrew Dillon Bustin is a freelance photogra-pher living and working on the South Shore of Boston, MA. His work is influenced by his educa-tion in human-environment interaction, sustain-ability, and Earth systems. He believes that much like geography, photography is about investigat-ing temporal, spatial, cultural, and environmental relationships.

Alex Bauermeister comes to Center for Whole Communities by way of professional experience in the nonprofit, government, and private sectors. Most recently she worked to transform American marine fisheries policy with Environmental Defense Fund’s Boston office. Through this work, she experienced and learned from the friction and inequity that can emerge between conserva-tion advocates, governmental leaders, and fishing communities.

Glen Hutcheson is a painter and sculptor as well as a chef who specializes in regional and local cuisine. He lives more simply than most, with-out a car and with very few material needs, in Montpelier, VT.

CENTER FOR WHOLE COMMUNITIES © 2012 www.wholecommunities.org

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Virginia Kennedy is the Outreach Coordinator at Delaware Highlands Conservancy in the Upper Delaware River region in Pennsylvania. Before joining the Conservancy, Virginia was a teacher at the high school and college level. She recently obtained a PhD in English and American Indian Studies at Cornell University.

Young Kim has been the Executive Director of Milwaukee’s Fondy Food Center since 2003. Young is the founder of the Asian-Pacific Islander Unitarian Universalist Caucus. A second generation Korean American who was born and raised in the American deep south, Young calls himself a “hardcore foodie.” When he’s not thinking of food and food systems, he likes to read poetry, restore vintage fountain pens, and work on his standup comedy routine.

Daniel Lim is completing his Masters of City and Regional Planning at Pratt Institute and will soon be launching Inner Activism Movement, a compassion-based personal and institutional transformation consultancy serving social change leaders and organizations. He is a blogger, baker and has an irrational love of colors. He lives in Brooklyn.

Lauret Savoy founding board member of Center for Whole Communities, educator and writer, writes and teaches about the threads of cultural and ecological identity. She is a profes-sor of environmental studies and geology at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Her books include Bedrock: Writers on the Wonders of Geology and Living with the Changing California Coast.

Ginny McGinn is a passionate social change leader whose career has spanned the arts, nonprofit management and green business entre-preneurship. She brings her heartfelt caring to building, maintaining, and improving organiza-tions through relationships and a commitment to creating a sustainable future. Ginny is the execu-tive director of Center for Whole Communities.

Mary Lake spent the last year working for Knoll Farm and Center for Whole Communities as the farm manager. She has been apprenticing with Helen Whybrow in shepherding for the past three years. Mary is a sheep shearer and butcher-in-training and uses her journalism degree to blog all about it. Mary will be start-ing at the Royal Butcher in Braintree, VT, in May as a butcher and meat cutter apprentice.

Rebecca Ruggles lives and works in Baltimore, MD, where she joins with others advocating for holistic community health services and equi-table protections from environmental health hazards. She holds the position of Director of Special Projects at Baltimore Medical System and is also the coordinator of a newly formed Maryland Environmental Health Network.

Contributors


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Be TransformedSee the fear, feel the fear, and head straight for it.

For this issue, we asked our alumni, staff and faculty to reflect on the experience of transformation in their lives and work. Some of the pieces make more obvi-

ous connections than others. . . but what kept coming up for me as I read them was how many wildly different approaches we each bring to this work of transforming ourselves and our world. Whether it is by working with immigrant youth and communities, by cultivating or conserving land, by acts of civil disobedience, or by documenting images and speaking out, through our words, images, music, art and poetry our leader-ship paths are unique. And yet there are threads that weave us into relationship as we work toward our collective vision of whole communities.

Since the founding of Center for Whole Communities in 2001, we have held a space for people to be transformed – through our relationships to each other, to the land and place that we inhabit together. Stepping out of our habitual day-to-day work norms, slowing down, unplugging, listening, and cultivating our awareness all help to create the conditions for meaningful change and transformation. For the last few years we have been on a journey to transform our organizational leadership model and deepen our intercultural competency both internally and externally. We continue to be challenged in this process to live what it is we are talking about – to step into unknown territory, to be willing to be changed by the people and places we are in relationship with.

As I look back on my own journey it seems that the points along the path that have been most transformative for me have come with a heavy dose of learning. Often it has come in the form of not-so-small mistakes shaking me awake to my own unconscious behavior. It is in hindsight that I can see that what seemed like a setback was often the next right thing. Looking back helps to ground me when what is in front of me requires moving out of my comfort zone, being willing to risk, being willing to be vulnerable. It helps me remember that when I am scared, it is often a sign to keep moving forward.

An unlikely mentor for me in my transformation is Diane Wilson. Diane is a gulf-coast shrimper and activist fighting corporate dumping of toxic waste in her home of Lavaca Bay, TX. In the summer of 2002, I spent some days with her in the back of her truck in front of a chemical plant where she was in the midst of a hunger strike to bring attention to the role

the company played in the 1984 Bhopal Industrial Disaster, and for which the company was then being tried in court in India. Diane was at day 22 of her hunger strike when I arrived. My job was to make sure that she drank plenty of water (it was August and 90 degrees) and keep her company as she kept her vigil from sunup to sundown in front of the plant. We spent many hours reading, talking and waving at the cars as they passed by. During our time together Diane reinforced in me her own learning around risk – and fear. She encouraged me to pay attention – to notice when I was feeling a bit afraid of what I thought was the next right action, to feel that fear and head straight for it.

I have never been an activist for whom direct action and protest has been a regular practice, but being with Diane helped me understand it. It wasn’t difficult to translate her wisdom to the work that I hoped to do in shifting the way that organizations work internally – and externally so that the organization itself reflects the values it stands for. I have come to recognize the fear that Diane was talking about. That fear usually has something to do with standing strong in relation-ship to a dominant cultural norm.

Diane Wilson. KATE MCCONNIRO, THE TEXAS OBSERVER

From the Executive Director


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The dominant leadership culture in the U.S. is one that pref-erences top-down, efficient, confident, highly verbal, demand-ing, driven and fiercely competitive forms of leadership. Peter Forbes and Helen Whybrow, the co-founders of Center for Whole Communities, have initiated and actively worked to undo that dominant pattern of leadership. It is exciting to be a part of transforming that model, and to be actively learning about and cultivating new ways of working. You can feel it in the articles throughout this journal – in unexpected ways, in unexpected places, leadership is undergoing a profound shift.

I was “schooled” again this winter by one of our summer interns, Abigail Borah. Our year-round staff had recently said good-bye to the intern crew which included Abigail, a Middlebury student and climate activist. In the six months that Abigail was part of our team supporting summer retreat participants, I had many glimpses of her intelligence, her strong sense of justice and her sense of humor. It took time to get to know her – and I am still pretty sure that I have only an inkling of the depth of who she is as a human being. I like to think that we practice reciprocal mentorship here at the Center, but still positional power and roles are deeply ingrained in all of us. My role in relationship to Abigail was more often taking the “lead.”

In the last few weeks of her time with us, Abigail was hard at work on policy papers for the climate talks in Durban, South Africa. I was impressed by her diligence, and interested in what it would be like for her in South Africa. The staff was excited to hear how the experience was for Abigail. In the first days we heard bits and pieces from her mostly through her Facebook posts.

Then on December 8th, I was traveling in Michigan and

stopped between meetings to get lunch and while eating my soup in the café I pulled out my iPhone to check email, and yes, Facebook. The first item I saw was a New York Times link to a story about a young student from Middlebury College who had been arrested after interrupting the U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern. It was Abigail, quiet, wicked-intelligent, courageous Abigail. She and other members of the U.S. youth delegation prepared her remarks that challenged the U.S. posi-tion at the talks and called for immediate action on the part of the U.S. government.

I immediately began searching for other news and found a link to that morning’s edition of Democracy Now! I watched as Amy Goodman interviewed the articulate, calm and direct Abigail as she was being led out of the assembly by the police. Abigail shouted to the assembly, I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot. The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty. We need leaders who will commit to real change, not empty rhetoric. Keep your promises. Keep our hope alive.

I was stunned, thrilled and moved by her strength. As I made my way through the rest of my meetings that day, I kept think-ing of how Abigail served and supported faculty, fellows and staff in a quiet and sometimes invisible way all summer long. I imagined that there were people who had spent a week at the table with Abigail at meals, while behind the scenes she was chopping wood, lighting fires, and emptying yurt johns. They might have overlooked the strength of her leadership which she demonstrated so visibly in Durban, which was less visible, but no less “leaderly” than her role as an intern. I was moved by her courage in Durban – and by the equally powerful way that she contributed to the work of the Center as an intern. Like jumping in the pond on a hot day, I felt shaken awake by Abigail’s courage. Reminded that I need to pay exquisite atten-tion and be present to the people and landscape around me.

I hope you enjoy the wealth of stories and images in this journal. May you be inspired by the stories of leadership throughout this book and be encouraged to take every oppor-tunity to be transformed, to learn, to see the fear, feel the fear and head straight for it.

Ginny McGinnMay 2012

Abigail being escorted out of climate talks in Durban, South Africa with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! in the background. PHOTO CREDIT: SHADIA

FAYNE WOOD


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I’ve stood atop Mount Stupid many times, but my most profound encoun-

ter with it was about eight years ago. I was two years into my time at the helm of a new nonprofit organization bent on improving fresh fruit and vegetable access and reducing obesity in Milwaukee’s North Side community – the kind of place that many from outside the community call a “food desert.”

We received a grant to run healthy cooking demonstra-tions at a food bank in my agency’s predominantly African American neighborhood. I was dicing some onions to prepare for the demonstration. It was spring, so the onions had been in storage for months and were especially pungent that day. A woman who was standing in line to get her food basket took one look at my tear-streaked face and told me, “You’re doing it wrong.”

I handed her the knife and stepped back. She took a whole onion and deftly halved it lengthwise. Then she took the tough outer layer and peeled to back towards the root end, taking care not to tear it off. “Use the skin as your handle,” she said, “so that you won’t cut yourself if your knife is dull, you will use the whole onion, and since your hand is out of the way you can chop faster and you won’t cry so much.” The rest of the feedback from the food bank clients was positive but still disconcerting, ranging from “I would add more garlic” or “if you put in some other spices you would need less salt.”

The next morning an uncomfortable question started bounc-ing around in my head: “Just who is helping whom?” I began my descent down the other side of Mount Stupid. As someone

who was trying to present himself as an authority on food deserts, it was an uncomfortable place to be. I real-ized that my solution was aimed at a stereotype and that my show-and-tell agenda had no space for a conversa-tion. I started talking to neighbor-hood residents and found some of the most food-opinionated people I’ve ever encountered. The people here take pride in their cooking. Ask someone for a recipe and they’ll give it to you, begrudgingly, but with a key ingredient or technique left out. I learned that most of the restaurant cooks in Milwaukee from the begin-ning of the 20th century until the 1970s were African American. This community knows how to cook.

Many of us working for nonprofit agencies that are trying to address community health problems like obesity live in the suburbs, outside of the communities that we are trying to help. We also tend to work from a problem-oriented mindset. The emphasis is on identifying problems, creating solutions, and then search-ing for funding to “make it happen.”

Relationship building is saved for later as interested groups work together on these problems.

Here is a scenario that I’ve seen unfold again and again: National ABC Foundation releases a call for proposals from community and academic partnerships that address the obesity epidemic. Researchers at the local XYZ University decide to apply for funding and begin contacting inner city nonprofit agencies to become subcontractors. Lured by the promise of published academic research and by big funding dollars, the academic and social service agency leaders meet and begin writing the grant application narrative. Grant appli-cation deadlines preclude any true relationship building. That process is put off until the grant is actually awarded. Power is concentrated in the academic institution and the nonprofit

From Working ON to Working WITH CommunitiesBy Young Kim

Fondy Food’s Greens Throwdown Cooking Contest. YOUNG KIM

PERMISSION TO USE THIS IMAGE GRANTED BY ZACH WEINER OF SMBC-COMICS.COM


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agency leadership. The obesity remedies may sound great on paper, but because of deadline pressures they have not been fully vetted by the community.

The progression from the call for proposals to project imple-mentation looks something like the chart at the top of this page.

By putting off any real relationship building until after the grant is awarded, project implementation is slow. Project partners are still feeling each other out and learning to work together. Basic nuts-and-bolts activities like report writing, community feedback loops, and invoicing are worked out on the fly.

This problem-first approach is reflected in how Americans are taught to write in school. We’re taught to begin each paragraph with a thesis statement followed by supporting arguments. But

years ago I encountered a Japanese graduate student who was studying English Literature in New York. He told me that the most difficult thing for him was learning to think and write like an American. He said that Japanese children are taught to write essays that begin with supporting statements and end with the thesis statement or conclusion. In other words, he was trained to develop a relationship with his reader first, then to share his opinion at the end.

Since that time, I’ve learned that a lot of other non-white communities prefer to work this way. They put relationship building first, and then in the getting-to-know-you process, mutual interests are identified and solutions are worked out.

Outsiders that want to enter into meaningful partnerships with marginalized, non-white communities need to establish solid relationships before there is an agenda, because entering

Call for Proposals

Decision madeto apply

Write the Grant

Grant is Awarded

Announce grant to the wider community, community members scratch their heads and try to make it work

(Time)

Fondy Food’s Greens Throwdown Cooking Contest. YOUNG KIM


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into a relationship with an agenda is a sign that you’re not interested in talking. Relationships also need to be established before there is any talk of going after grant funding because people behave differently and are not as genuine when money is on the table. Relationship building is a time consuming process, and it can be difficult to go against the grain in this increas-ingly funding-centric world.

How does someone from outside a community start build-ing relationships? You show up, again and again. You go to community meetings. When you stand in the doorway looking into the meeting room and you don’t see any faces that look like yours, you take a deep breath and walk in

anyway. You start volunteering your time. You talk about your parents and where you grew up. You make your grand-mother’s special blueberry pie and you bring it to potluck dinners. You attend marriages and funerals. When that impatient voice in your head asks, “When are they going to get down to brass tacks and start talking about problems?” You wait.

Slowly you will learn the neighborhood histories and aspira-tions that your predecessors missed. In my case, I learned that people living in inner city Milwaukee were painfully aware of

all the doctoral dissertations that had been minted off of the neighborhood’s struggles. The folks were tired of being poked, prodded, studied and being labeled as problems, and they didn’t like it when I called their neighborhood a food desert. One community leader told me that, grammatically speaking, she was tired of being the object: “I want to be the subject and the verb!”

Once the relational foundation has been established, then you can talk about aspirations, problems, and funding. And instead of waiting for a charitable foundation to issue a call for proposals, the partnership has the power to approach founda-tions and ask for funding.

The progression of this relational model looks something like the chart at the top of this page.

The time invested in relationship building phase will pay off in the latter stages. When the grant is awarded you will already know the personalities and the skills of the individuals on your team. You will know who has the ability to crank out grant reports or who is more of a conceptual thinker. You will also know that an agency’s accountant only works on the second and fourth Monday of the month. Everyone will see the big picture and no one will be saying, “Just tell me what to do.” The project will just flow.

Like a lot of American rust belt cities, Milwaukee still has its problems. But I believe that those of us who are working to create systemic change need to train ourselves into seeing the glass as half empty and half full. The embers of healthier behavior and positive change are right under our noses, just waiting to be fanned into flames.

A year after my Mount Stupid moment, we organized a Greens Throwdown cooking contest at our farmers market. We invited fifteen neighborhood residents to go head-to-head see who had the best collard greens recipe. Much to my surprise, half of the entrants used recipes that were either vegetarian or salt free. No one was willing to share their recipe with me.

YOUNG KIM

Implement!Grant is Awarded

Write the Grant

Approach Funders

Relationship Building

(Time)


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When I started working at Knoll Farm, I was pretty sure that I could anticipate the type of work and learning that lay ahead. I was the apprentice to Helen

Whybrow, an Icelandic sheep and organic blueberry farmer as well as the co-founder of Center for Whole Communities. I knew I would learn how to take care of sheep, how to feed them, help them reproduce and raise lambs, protect them from predators and bacteria and diseases, heal them, slaughter them, shear them, sell them. I anticipated that learning these skills would be difficult, because undoubtedly I would love the sheep. Because of that love, successes and mistakes would be felt deep in my heart. I wanted to feel this joy and pain, and I wanted to experience the education that farming offers.

At that point, I didn’t know anything about Center for Whole Communities. I was there to learn how to become a shepherd. I wasn’t involved with the nonprofit work, and I didn’t think it had much to do with me.

However, last summer, I managed the farm while Helen was on sabbatical and fulfilled a connection for retreat participants to the land and farm. When I met participants, the intro-duction of the farm and my work often led to meaningful conversations about raising animals for meat, farming without owning land or animals, or nearly forgotten skills like shearing and butchering.

We also talked about slaughter, which was new for me. I had spent the previous year learning how to kill livestock and process their meat, but I still struggled with how to talk about slaughter to non-butchers, not to mention vegetarians.

One of the most memorable conversations for me was about how someone could love sheep and still be able to slaughter them. There came a time where I had to look at each of the rams in this photo, one by one, and decide who would get processed. Instead of looking at those rams lovingly with a slight smile like I did every day, my face was

Feeding Bellies and HeartsBy Mary Lake

Knoll Farm’s guard llama, Neo, and his flock of Icelandic rams. MARY LAKE


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In late September of 2011, only two weeks after being at Center for Whole Communities (CWC) on Knoll Farm in Vermont, I found myself at a two-day professional

workshop where whole thinking was being practiced. I was startled to find Whole Communities’ transformative practices in use. I went around to the organizers and tried to link them to Whole Communities, but to no avail. I finally had to accept that this was serendipity.

The workshop drew together people in my field, community

health. It attracted people who feel a sense of urgency about addressing the social and environmental context of patients’ lives. The workshop was titled Leveraging the Social Determinants of Health in Community Health Centers.

“Social determinants” is public health jargon for environ-mental, geographic, cultural and economic factors that affect a person and a community’s health status. In effect, it is a form of whole thinking.

In the world of health care today, we know a person’s health is more affected by where they live and work, what they eat and drink, and where they stand on the economic and educa-tional ladder, than it is by access to good health care services. But the health care system is focused on itself – delivering good care and creating adequate access to services for those already sick. It is a system designed to address disease, not health.

Thus many of us at the workshop were frustrated visionar-ies, disappointed by health care reform’s focus on questions of insurance and coverage, struggling to maintain a whole person approach in our work. To my surprise, the workshop unfolded as a safe place to vent these feelings, and then to be vision-ary and hopeful. Cynicism and frustration were sidelined in

Finding Whole Thinking in an Unexpected PlaceBy Rebecca Ruggles

concentrated as I tried to decide which one would be slaugh-tered. I was proud of the young sheep those ram lambs had become, though I was surprised to find myself thinking of them as products. These rams, who I had helped feed and protect all summer, were going to nourish my friends, family and community with their meat. It’s an interesting cycle of love. Telling participants about that cycle helped me feel more dedicated and confident in my work, and I think it was a new and different story for many participants. I – and I hope a lot of participants – look at meat production a little differently now. When I started at Knoll Farm and Center for Whole Communities, I did not anticipate the transformation I would make as person in agriculture. I’ve started to see myself as a leader with a story to tell, and I am ready to dive into my work as a butcher and shearer with a long-lasting vigor. I feel a responsibility not only to myself but to others to learn everything I can about raising animals for meat: from humane animal handling and food safety to

grazing in a way that restores the land to marketing meat and breeding stock to sharing the stories of local farmers. The skills I’ve acquired over the past few years here have shown me the importance of sharing stories and working for a healthy relationship to land and food. As I leave Knoll Farm and Center for Whole Communities this May, I will be taking all that I have learned with me over the mountain to the Royal Butcher, where I will be serving small-scale and commercial farmers through humane and safe processing of their sheep, goats, pigs and cattle.

I don’t know whether it is right or wrong to raise animals for meat. But, I do know that it is possible to love and respect live-stock up until their death. I know I can slaughter animals in a way that is as stress-free as possible and I think that is right. I slaughter livestock because I love the animals, respect the farmers and want to educate consumers. All deserve a skilled, knowledgeable and focused butcher. I would like to be that butcher.

ADB PHOTOS


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favor of voicing our aspirations for true health for communities and people.

Having just been exposed to transformative practices, I noticed how many were cropping up during this workshop. I saw how they helped create that safe and hopeful conversation. The workshop organizers showed deep hospitality by hosting a dinner the night before we began our two days together. The entire workshop was free, including overnight accommodations even for local workshop partici-pants. We built relationships with each other during evening meals and breakfasts which allowed for unstructured conver-sations. We were a small group and we had time to reveal ourselves. As a group, we worked with difference by accept-ing attachment to place as a basis for differences and authentic communication.

A form of dialogue emerged as we worked together. At times, we noticed that our own thoughts would be voiced by a previous speaker, allowing us to build on each other’s

ideas. The facilitators were skilled at acknowledging dissenting ideas without forcing resolu-tion. Reflections deepened over the course of the two days. We also practiced awareness. At the suggestion of a physician from Hawai‘i, we began our first day’s

work with a circle of hands, and a silent remembering of ancestors who came before us, those who paved the way for our work. We ended with silently dedicating ourselves and our further work to the people of the future, again coming together in a circle of hands.

Because my retreat had been just a few weeks before, I recognized these elements and felt them keenly. I continue to feel nourished by these two experiences and the serendip-ity of their combined effect. Just as the Center for Whole Communities “time out of time” remains powerful and inspir-ing, this workshop has strengthened my resolve to be holistic in my approach to community health work and has given me lasting support.

ADB PHOTOS

. . . many of us at the workshop were frustrated visionaries, disappointed by health care

reform’s focus on questions of insurance and coverage, struggling to maintain a whole

person approach in our work.


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Once there was a young land trust that saw through repeat experiences that people being connected to land was perhaps the most significant addition to a land

trust’s ‘tool box’ for creating real and long-term conservation success. Quite accidentally (and happily), this land trust read of a new organization at the time being formed in the moun-tains of Vermont that not only believed about this, wrote and lectured publically about it, but actually taught leaders from across the country to practice it more deeply. This made the young land trust happy and created a sense of “we’ve got some back up here.”

It seemed that the entire community where this land trust

practiced, Sonoma County in Northern California, was not being included in issues related to enjoying, preserving and stewarding land wild and farmed – and this land trust took heart and decided to take action in approximately 2002. The young land trust thought a good starting place would be reach-ing out to Latinos in our community, a group comprising the second largest population group in Sonoma County. Current programs were translated for Spanish speakers and outings and events were planned for native Spanish-speaking residents in order to provide access to new lands being preserved in the region. Why not have the 40 to 50 people that came for every event be those less served by traditional conservation work? In

A Land Trust TransformingBy Craig Anderson and Lee Hackeling

Following the garden-staged play “Todos Comemos / We All Eat”, one of the actresses picks up a guitar and plays French and Mexican folk songs while the attendees eat post-theater tortillas prepared on outdoor ovens at Bayer Farm in Santa Rosa, CA. CRAIG ANDERSON, COURTESY OF LANDPATHS


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order to ensure turnout similar for these events a native Spanish-speaking guide was retained, public service announce-ments were created on Spanish language radio stations and ads and announce-ments were made in local Spanish and bilingual papers. The big day arrived.

Three people showed up for the event. It would have been easiest to give up any further endeavors in this direction on the spot.

The land trust decided that it had to make efforts at systemic change first in how it operated; the hard before the easy. In part, it became clear that language was not the only barrier to reaching beyond our self-proclaimed ‘conservation-minded culture’ in order to include the entire community in our work. It is using energy to see the connections between issues the land trust cares about and the issues the community cares about – always looking for overlap and things that unite us not divide us.

There are seemingly countless walls we can imagine that separate us from having common experience – and that experi-ence being conserving and stewarding land wild and agricultural – with groups different from ourselves. These include politi-cal ideologies, hunters versus non-hunters, where we shop and even the clothes we wear and music we listen to. In order to engage a broader audience we simply had to be willing to make our organization relevant to that broader audience.

This organization created a diversity policy on how to reach out for new hires and new board members. It worked more closely with its existing field-based school program by hiring Spanish-speaking instructors. It started a new city park in an extremely challenged urban area based on the model of a work-ing farm open to the public and for people in the community that wanted to grow their own food. The participants at this site, the Bayer Farm and Gardens, included not only people of ethnic diversity but war veterans, single mothers and a plural-ity of interest groups and clubs that had their original genesis

from earth-inspired activities (hunters, poets, Aztec and folk dancers) that had been largely if not totally ignored by the conservation movement. From there programs were imple-mented to bring the people from this farm to other parts of the county so that they could experience what their county and state tax dollars – however meager or mighty – were doing for the preservation of wild and agricultural lands. Some of these people, of different color and interest and education and socio-economic background eventually came to work for the land trust, some of whom will eventually join its board of directors. The organization continues to change from the inside out and in a fantastic way.

These days every event at the urban farm has a minimum of several hundred (and as many as 600) people attending, each and every hike is populated by dozens (sometimes upwards of 70). The land trust is known locally as LandPaths (short for “land partners through stewardship) and it continues to work in creating exemplary opportunities for people to connect with land where they live for the betterment of the natural world and the human community. Ultimately, we are learning that it’s not about speaking someone’s different language in order to fit in or gain trust, but understanding new perspectives on how one experiences land. That understanding and the willingness to be changed by that understanding can lead to mutual bene-fits for land and people.

Santa Rosa Aztec Dancers perform at Bayer Farm’s first ever community event within six weeks of LandPaths working with the community to create a park. CRAIG ANDERSON, COURTESY OF LANDPATHS

There are seemingly countless walls we can imagine that separate us from

having common experience.


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A river of mist flows through the Mad River Valley at sunrise. With peaceful turbidity it winds its way through the treetops.

Silence.Sitting cross-legged in the meadow of Knoll Farm I admire

the stunning view from 1,400 feet above sea level. Deep breaths inject crisp mountain air into my lungs. I close my eyes and open my mind.

For six days at the end of July, 2011, I had the privilege of enjoying this meditative morning routine.

Center for Whole Communities and Center for Diversity and the Environment made it possible for 18 young conservation leaders from all over the country to come to Knoll Farm in Vermont for 2042 Today: Young Leaders Re-Imagining Conservation. 2042 is the year when demographers are predicting every metropolitan statistical area will be predominantly people of color.

The program sought to increase our awareness of historically entrenched challenges related to the white dominance of our country’s conservation movement. Together we discovered new perspectives to help us understand how important a diverse conservation movement will be to the sustainable future of a changing America.

The experience has left me humbled by the power of story,

togetherness, and the natural world.On the last day of the retreat we held a gathering of grati-

tude. The group stood around a small fire – a flickering beacon of love and light. The flames reminded me that the real world we had escaped for a short time was waiting for us tomorrow.

Thunder threatened as we offered our gratitude.One by one we stepped forward, shared what we felt thank-

ful for, then tossed a handful of wood shavings onto the fire. The crackling pile consumed the helpless dry wood immedi-ately, sending an ethereal wisp of smoke into the cool evening air. Dark clouds were building but the thunder continued without rain.

As soon as we were finished the rain began to fall. First a drop on the shoulder, then buckets. We laughed and ran into the barn for shelter. Within minutes the sun was shining again and I heard someone from outside shout, “Rainbow!”

We bolted back outside into the meadow to witness a gigan-tic beaming arc of color span the entire Mad River Valley. All of the colors were there, unified as one in a beautiful, harmoni-ous display.

Apparently our smoke of gratitude had struck a chord with the thundering heavens above Knoll Farm. Nature had acknowledged our thanks, and replied with a rainbow,

“You’re welcome.”

Thunder and Gratitude By Andrew Dillon Bustin

ADB PHOTOS


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Despite countless claims to the contrary in recent newscasts and articles, the United States is not a “post-racial” society. In fact, each day offers new

examples of injustice that reveal a society determined to avoid the troubled legacy of our nation’s founding and growth.

Consider New Orleans. Years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005, the wake of levee failure still points to long-embedded practices of de jure and de facto apart-heid. For those who lacked access to shelter or higher ground, and for those who received little forewarning or relief aid, their disproportionate suffering was only another surge in a centu-ries-old pattern. After the Civil War, African Americans were forced to live in the least-desirable, flood-prone areas of New Orleans. Lawful segregation of the city’s public housing and transportation before the mid-1960s only further entrenched this geography of poverty and race. When Hurricane Katrina arrived, then, it should have hardly been a surprise that the burden fell primarily on low-income people of color. Weeks after the levees broke the majority of homes that remained submerged were owned or rented by African Americans.

By some measures New Orleans has recovered significantly. The Brookings Institution reported in late 2010 that the city’s population had exceeded three-quarters the pre-Katrina numbers, that large-scale rebuilding efforts had boosted the economy there, and that the local unemployment was lower than national statistics. But who has moved back and who is being counted?

Even though most of those living in the Crescent City in August of 2005 were renters and low-income residents, recov-ery programs have favored property owners. Thousands of displaced families still, years later, live in “temporary” hous-ing (trailers and tents), or are homeless, many squatting in abandoned buildings. Thousands more, particularly low-income (former) renters and public housing residents, have not been able to return to the city as rents there climb out of reach and as mixed-income homes replace affordable housing. Those affordable public housing projects that survived Katrina – more than 5,000 units – were demolished by the housing authority (backed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the city council), leaving only a small percentage of homes set aside or subsidized for those with little means. And corporate spending on rebuilding hasn’t helped the situation, giving priority to privatizing or reducing many

social services rather than ending the displacement and home-lessness of poor people of color. With investment goals focused on a smaller but more affluent city footprint, redevelopment is targeting areas where the economically poor did not, or could not, live.

Reconstruction is changing the city’s racial and economic complexion, rather than restoring separated families, commu-nities, or the spiritual rootedness that made the city so culturally rich. Yet, polled by Gallup and other organizations on whether Hurricane Katrina and its impacts pointed to persistent racial inequality, fewer than half of white Americans thought so, while more than three-quarters of African Americans in the country said “yes.”

“Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? / and

Widening the FrameBy Lauret E. Savoy and Alison H. Deming


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miss it each night and day . . .” These lyrics, first sung by Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday in 1947, might very well be the anthem of a whole generation of New Orleanians unlucky enough to be from the wrong ward.

This is not only happening in New Orleans. Across the nation polluting industries follow paths of least power or resistance, as the federal government has persistently weakened or simply failed to imple-ment enforcement structures and health-protection measures for communities less capable of defending themselves. The recent study, Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987–2007: Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism in the United States, reports that more than half of the nine million people living within two miles of hazardous waste sites across the country are people of color. The study goes on to document systemic racial and socioeconomic inequities in the siting of commercial waste facilities.1

Anyone who looks closely enough can see that the ways in which the United States organizes its political system and economy – from de facto segregation and toxic waste sites to food production and trade policies – are far from neutral and even farther from “post-racial.” And yet, despite clearly worded, well-researched studies proving racist policies, like Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, and despite one of the most massive and ongoing segregated depopulations of a United States city in history – New Orleans – citizens with great power in this coun-try continue not to see the systematic injustices daily visited on communities of color. Why not?

The seed of this anthology was a troubling question voiced in mainstream or white Euro-American literary and environ-mental circles: “Why is there so little ‘nature writing’ by people of color?” To respond we had to decide what “nature writing” was, and is.

Although writings about the natural world have existed from ancient times to the present in countless cultural traditions and languages, “nature writing” as a distinct literary tradition in Europe and Euro-America originated in the Romantic Age of the late eighteenth century. Romanticism, as a reaction against neoclassicism, was an affirmation of imagination over intel-lect and emotion over reason, and it celebrated a belief in the innate goodness of nature and of human beings in their natu-ral state; but romanticism was also defined by a sense of separa-tion from the natural world, the belief that nature was external

to human existence. That “nature writing” became a strand in the weave of American literature was hardly surprising consid-ering the compelling heritage of natural beauty, grand scale, and rich biodiversity of the continent. Many of the early, Euro-American luminaries of the genre wrote about solitary explora-tions of wild places from a poetic, philosophical, or scientific perspective, seeing nature as a place apart, where wisdom and inspiration could be harvested for day-to-day life in the “real” world of cities.

In the last few decades, “nature writing” has ranged beyond such narratives of solitary encounters and celebrations of pris-tine wildness to consider degraded habitats, cascading species extinctions, and global climate change - all providing incon-trovertible evidence that our uniquely “American” relationship with this world has become unsustainable. This more contem-porary sensibility understands that nature has been wounded and degraded throughout human history, that such wounding diminishes all of us, and that the wound must somehow be healed. If this is what “nature writing” is, the question then remains, “Why is there so little recognized ‘nature writing’ by people of color?”

African American, Asian American, Arab American, Latino/a, Native American, and “multiracial” or “mixed-blood” voices have profoundly enlarged and enriched our national literary identity. While this question suggests, somewhat surprisingly, that little of that writing has had anything to do with the natu-ral world, there is a wealth of literature on nature from cultur-ally and ethnically diverse voices. Black Nature: Four Centuries

1 Reputable information sources on current environmental justice issues and activism include the Environmental Justice Resource Network (www.ejrc.cau.edu/) and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (www.dscej.org/).

Hurricane Katrina, August 31, 2005.


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of African American Nature Poetry (edited by Camille T. Dungy) is one recent example offering a vision of what African American poets have contributed to our understanding of the natural world and to nature writing. And it raises questions in our minds as to why other perspectives are missing from our nature literature as it has been historically defined.

What if one’s primary experience of land and place is not a place apart but rather indigenous? What if it is urban or inden-tured or exiled or (im)migrant or toxic? To define “nature writ-ing” as anything that does not include these experiences reveals not a “lack” of writing, but reflects, instead, a societal struc-ture of inclusion and exclusion based on othered difference – whether by “race,” culture, class, or gender.

If what is called “nature writing” aims to understand how we comprehend and then live responsibly in the world, then it must recognize the legacies of America’s past in ways that are mindful of the complex historical and cultural dynamics that

have shaped us all. Perhaps some would say this isn’t a goal of writing about nature or natural history. But if such writing examines human perceptions and experiences of nature, if an intimacy with and response to the larger-than-human world define who or what we are, if we as people are part of nature, then the experiences of all people on this land are necessary stories, even if some voices have been silent, silenced, or simply not recognized as nature writing. What is defined by some as an edge of separation between nature and culture, people and place, is a zone of exchange where finding common ground is more than possible; it is necessary.

“Widening the Frame,” by Alison H. Deming and Lauret E. Savoy, from The Colors of Nature (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2011). Copyright © 2011 by Lauret E. Savoy and Alison H. Deming. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. (www.milk weed.org).

The meaning of the word “nature” is derived from the Latin

nascor, to be born. Perhaps a birth of sorts may yet occur in

our ability to re-imagine and refocus how we think and write

about nature and environment through different lenses.

Then, perhaps all of us might begin, finally, to resist any

mono-identity or mono-culture of mind, self, or knowledge –

to celebrate the biodiversity of self and of others.

MOLLY BAGNATO


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It was fortuitous. After a week’s retreat with Center for Diversity and the Environment and Center for Whole Communities engaging the productive use of silence and

bridge building, a new word came into my life. The word is SELAH, a cool word my friend Laura brought up recently. This is my mana’o (thoughts) on it.

SELAH is Hebrew. Its meaning is unknown. But its use, its potential meaning and non-meaning make complete sense to me. It’s been translated to mean “stop and listen” or to pause, to reflect. It is the musical interlude in psalms. SELAH, to reflect on the word. It may also mean forever and be used in the place of amen. SELAH. It is the word acknowledging the pause. Or perhaps it’s the pause itself. SELAH is the canvas upon which sound is made evident. It embodies transition between movements.

Most music is rhythm and/or melody intertwined and transitioning among spaces of silence. Many mini interludes. Without the silence it would not be music. SELAH.

Perhaps our lives are giant (or small) interludes in time and space; within each life are further experiences intertwined with interludes of reflection. Music is life, life is music. SELAH. The less you reflect, the less you fully participate; the less music of life you make . . . so on and so forth. SELAH.

I imagine within each person is a drum, a heart which pauses, not just beats, but pauses. The pause itself is the part of the beat we neglect. Without the pause there is no such thing as a beat. Or is the pause its own thing? Either way we cannot live without that pause. SELAH. As we know, it always can unexpectedly stop, either ending us or sending us into forever. Would we be able to live with a heart that does not pause for its beat? Is that conceivable? Without the pause is there a beat? Why is it we are alive between the pauses of our heartbeat? SELAH.

Perhaps it’s the pause that’s forever. SELAH.SELAH. It’s that place where you hang in the balance, not

knowing where you are going, and it goes on forever. It’s funny how at the core of things it is the nothingness that holds everything together, shapes it and gives it meaning. Yet, we don’t value it. Forever is meaningless in our limited-time horizon. It is nothing in the interlude of our short and fleeting lives. We take it for granted. Even those things we mistake

for being for forever. Like a loved one. SELAH. Perhaps it is SELAH that keeps our community together, like a commu-nal drum. We are still connected, though loosely, because we pause and reflect just enough. Or at least we used to. SELAH. Perhaps the more we neglect to pause and consider things the more we fall apart. Ironically, less reflection, less mean-ing, more nothing in a different sense. SELAH. Are we losing time for reflection?

In love is it the talking or the listening that matters? SELAH. Is it that we pause for our love that matters, that we give them the time? Or is it the continuous presence of the beloved that makes love what it is. What is that saying? . . . Absence makes the heart grow fonder. SELAH. But when the beloved is gone,

SELAHBy Kevin K.J. Chang

Kevin Chang plays the ukele for friends at Center for Whole Communities in August. SHADIA FAYNE WOOD

Perhaps it’s the pause that’s forever. SELAH.


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like the heartbeat it would seem that it is the emptiness that goes on forever. SELAH.

I recently read an article about the speed of our conscience and neurological science. Accordingly, our brain is prodictive (vs. predictive). For example, a sensation passed from our toe to our brain takes time, milliseconds. But milliseconds count. There is a minute delay in our assessment of each moment. A pause. What we think of as present conscience is actually – and always – based on past knowledge, sensation and experience. A reflection. We are never actually using present information, never seeing the full picture. We actually are looking at a piece of the fabric in a larger quilt, a piece of information in an ever-changing lineage of events. SELAH. In this context, what does it mean when we fail to pause and consider? SELAH.

Is it the heartbeat or the pause between the beats that repre-sents life? Isn’t a silent heart a death knell? To say that a heart’s beat is the measurement and affirmation of life neglects the pause between each beat. Perhaps life is the balance of the two. Can you imagine a life without it? What would a song be like that was all crescendo? SELAH.

It is the silence that also keeps us alive. Life seems like a

limbo-like state between absence and presence. Like music, the sounds we hear dance on a canvas of silence which brings forth the spirit that makes us dance. Without the canvas there is no life.

To know that what you know is never enough is to know what knowing is all about.

Funny how it’s the pause, the emptiness, that makes every-thing so meaningful, so beautiful and so worthwhile. SELAH is that place where we gather our senses, transcend words and build real bridges to each other.

Here in Hawai‘i we have collectively paused and reflected over time. “I ka wā ma mua, ka wā ma hope,” history lies ahead of us, the future is at our back. History is our bridge to cross. In my home, our communities, especially our rural and Native Hawaiian people, are transcending history and build-ing a bridge to the future by looking to the past.

I found a sense of kinship with my friends at the Retreat, arising out of pausing and reflecting too. SELAH was the canvas for the bridge we collectively imagined into life. It was a place we shared that was full of potential, and it is from here that I transition . . . take your time.

SELAH

Why Do I I do this work toEncounter the miracleOf one tiny shift.

ALEX BAUERMEISTER

HaikuBy Alex Bauermeister


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In the summer of 2011, I began a journey down a road I hadn’t considered before.

For the past five years, I have been a teaching fellow at Cornell University, working toward a PhD in English and American Indian Studies. During these years, I also wrote grants for the Delaware Highlands Conservancy, a local land trust where I live. The trust has been successful in protecting farms and forests and educating the communities of the Upper Delaware River region about the importance of caring for healthy lands and clean waters now and for future generations. I traveled back and forth between Ithaca, NY and Milford, PA teaching, working and caring for my family. With the support of some generous fellowships, I traveled to different commu-nities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to learn about diverse approaches to environmental ethics – the ways in which people relate to the biosphere. One fellowship landed me at Center for Whole Communities to explore how our stories reveal ourselves, and how these revelations can build communities that change our lives.

In the same five years, this Upper Delaware River region, where I have been blest to raise my children, has come under siege. Natural gas companies practicing fracking, the process of injecting massive amounts of water and toxic chemicals into shale rock to force trapped natural gas to the surface for capture, invaded Northeastern Pennsylvania, where I live, and the Finger Lakes region of New York, where I have been going to school. The introduction of huge amounts of natural gas money in the form of leases for peoples’ lands, often times acres of farm and forestlands, has divided communities and set neighbor against neighbor. Our lands, waters, biodiversity and health are at risk. The battle lines are stark, the energy compa-nies contribute their misleading noise, and the armies on either side have little opportunity for understanding or talking with each other.

As I came to the close of my teaching fellowship in the spring of 2011, I was offered the opportunity to work fulltime at the Conservancy and work for the home lands I love in this community rife with tension but also filled with potential. I have always been a teacher; high school first, then college. The thought of leaving the classroom was unsettling. But, as outreach and development director at

the land trust I would have the opportunity to work with the community through programming, activities, and fundraising directly related to the work of connecting people to the lands and waters that sustain them. I would also be squarely within the middle of the tension caused by natural gas and an envi-ronmental ethic governed by a focus on wealth and private property.

I wanted to believe I had the diplomatic skills to work in a community in the presence of this dissension, but I wasn’t

sure. Could I remain diplomati-cally engaged among people deter-mined to mine the land and the water for an energy resource they believe they have a right to, and people determined to prevent a drilling and extraction process that’s far too damaging to allow?

I have always been an activist, passionately and actively supporting my beliefs, so some members of the board and the executive director had their own concerns about how I would navigate the tension in the our community. But they trusted my skills and commitment to the Conservancy and

The Heart of the MatterBy Virginia Kennedy

Virginia Kennedy being arrested at the Keystone XL Pipeline protest in front of the White House on Aug. 20, 2011. SHADIA FAYNE WOOD

Where are the connections between justice and environmental protection? What is the emergency we

face first? Climate change? Fracking and our drinking water? Or people being robbed of their lives and spirits

right now, every second, by poverty?


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offered me the position. I accepted and planned for a start date in September.

As luck and the universe would have it, the day I was sched-uled to meet with the entire Conservancy board I was in a federal prison cell in Washington D.C. I had been arrested as part of the civil disobedience action against the Keystone XL Pipeline, a pipeline designed to carry dirty tar sands oil lique-fied with heat from fracked natural gas. I was part of the first wave of protestors arrested and the only group for whom a fine was not an option. I was in jail for the weekend with sixty-four other protestors including climate change activist, Bill McKibben. I spent the time with fourteen fellow female activ-ists; the men were separated from us. Over the course of the weekend, we spent time in the cells of three different D.C. jails.

In the beginning, I worried about my new job and what the people who had hired me would think about where I was when I supposed to be attending the board meeting. But, there was something important, maybe even profound, happening for me in jail. We activists were strangers to each other when we were arrested, and we were strangers to the women with whom we shared our cells. We, the activists, were all white women, middle class professionals and students. Our cellmates were low-income women of color. They had never heard of climate change or fracking, nor were they worried about these things. They had other concerns – violent husbands, nowhere to live, no one with enough money to bail them out or resources to support them. Together, we were all cramped, hungry and cold, and with that discomfort in common, we found ways to listen to each other beyond the wide gulf of different experiences.

Disagreements arose, but the biggest of these were among the activists. The conditions in the jail were appalling; thou-sands of women herded through a system that so completely

dehumanized them that hope for anything beyond cycles of despair seemed impossible. We passionately debated the ques-tion the environmental movement has been consistently and deeply asking itself in recent years. Where are the connec-tions between justice and environmental protection? What is the emergency we face first? Climate change? Fracking and our drinking water? Or people being robbed of their lives and spirits right now, every second, by poverty? How can a women be in jail for being poor and drunk on the street, yet not a single person has been arrested for the eleven dead men blown up on a oil rig that decimated half the Gulf of Mexico and the lives and livelihoods of thousands? How do we connect it all for ourselves and communicate with people who are busy with their own struggles and immersed in surviving day to day?

As we were being released and led out of the jail cell, some of the women we left behind were cheering us. “You keep fight-ing the man,” they said. “Yes,” I thought then, “the man,” the greed at the heart of all this; invasive and corrosive. Their “man” is ours as well, but love and connection are stronger. In the worst of places, or of situations, we can remember, if we try to, to embrace this simple fact.

This is what I brought home to my new job and to my community. It’s what I try to keep with me, though some days it is harder than others.

I remember something Peter Forbes told me the first time we met. We were talking about a photo he had of a woman about to sacrifice her life for her child. I wasn’t sure about it, about keeping a photo like that. Peter said, “But, just imagine the power of that love; what that speaks to in us.” In people, in humans. In the face of such tremendous loss, how incredibly hopeful.

Kennedy protests with her daughter Marygrace in August at the White House (left) and in October (right). The picture on the left shows Marygrace leaving the August protests just before arrests were made. Marygrace was aminor and her mother didn’t want her arrested. LEFT PHOTO: SHADIA FAYNE WOOD; RIGHT PHOTO: VIRGINIA KENNEDY


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“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely

re-arranging their prejudices.” – Edward R. Murrow

2012 is the year of the Water Dragon in the Chinese Zodiac and this essay reflects one of the main themes of the Water Dragon, which is taking action with wisdom.

As I think about what it means to take action with wisdom, I recollect the many observations I have had over the years that led me to write this essay about the role of spiritual transfor-mation in social change movements. The most recent observa-tion is of Occupy Wall Street and the question arising from it, which is, “Will the 99% create the new 1% or will the protest-ers create a world that works for all?” This question lingers unanswered in my mind because I have witnessed situations in the movement that lead me to suspect that what the protest-ers really want is not sustainability and democracy but simply their own access to the wealth and power that the 1% currently hoards. At the mass student protest on N17 (the highly success-ful two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street) at Union Square, NYC, I saw a young, white male protester aggressively pushing his way towards the speaker stage, ultimately engag-ing in a fist fight with another male protester just because he did not want to wait in line to speak like everyone else. The first thought that came to my mind when I saw this unfold in front of me was that if what that man wanted ultimately was to exert his own privilege and power over others then the Occupy movement was not for him. I was further disheartened a few weeks later when I read a story from a woman protester about how an idea she introduced at an Occupy meeting was completely ignored but was embraced minutes later when it was identically introduced by a male speaker. Is this what we have to look forward to in the movement – a new group of people to perpetuate the same systemic silencing and exploita-tion of other living beings?

Another observation that prompted this essay was the TV show, Heroes, that ran on NBC for four seasons. On Heroes – and almost all other similar dramas about people with super-powers – the viewer is presented with the premise that people with superpowers can create better societies because they are somehow more evolved, by virtue of having powers that other

human beings don’t have. But as their stories unfold, the viewer witnesses the same philosophical wars, political mind games and power struggles that plague regular human beings. The viewer quickly realizes that these characters have not evolved. They are still the same emotionally damaged and power hungry people that you see on the screen all the time and in real life. They want to exact mass social change through the use of their powers but they fail in the end because their hearts lack wisdom. I analyze the trajectories of the characters on Heroes to try to understand why they ultimately meet their demise. But in doing so, I actually miss the larger truth about the show. The truth is that the premise of the show is a trick premise to begin with. The idea that one person or a small group of people can determine for the world how it can be better and then try to bring about that vision through the use of force – superpowers, in this case – is inherently unevolved. It is not that the characters are unevolved. It is that their philosophy of social change is unevolved. The show borrows its premise, of course, from real life, where real leaders base their work on the same flawed idea.

This method of social change is a self-contradiction. One cannot hope to bring about social change without first chang-ing oneself or allowing oneself to be changed in the process. And yet, that is what our mainstream leaders believe. They embrace the notion that a sustainable and just world is an objec-tive reality that exists somewhere in the future, independent of the political process and power structures we use to get there. They don’t see that how they engage in social change carries rippling implications on the final outcome. This philosophy is the reason why we are seeing many institutions today such as banks and governments constructing “eco-friendly” buildings and engaging in other “green” initiatives even though they may be some of the exploitative and oppressive organizations in the world.

This schism between how one does things and what one is trying to achieve runs contrary to the new knowledge we have gleaned about the universe from the study of quantum mechanics. Groundbreaking insights from modern phys-ics increasingly show us a universe where there is no objec-tive reality. The future remains an unrealized potential that is unfolding as one reality or another inextricably dependent on what we choose to pay attention to and act on. In the world described by quantum mechanics, the process by which we try

As Within, So WithoutBy Daniel Lim


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to create social change has tremendous impact on the quality of the change outcome. In fact, the process is the product, as the cliché saying goes. Sustainability and democracy are not objective states of existence in the future that we can reach using the same corrupt technolo-gies and political systems. Attempting to do so will only perpetuate the same conditions of environmental and social degradation. Sustainability and democracy are rather processes of forming nourishing, reciprocal relationships with other human beings, other living beings, the land, air and oceans now – here in the present.

As Fritjof Capra points out in his book, The Tao of Physics, modern physics often show us what ancient spiritual teaching has been telling us for millennia. Gandhi probably did not study quantum mechanics, but he deftly expressed the same

wisdom when he said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” This is not simply a feel-good axiom about not waiting

for someone else to create a world you want to live in. It is a beautiful recog-nition of the need for all living beings to create social change by first culti-vating that change within ourselves, in our psyches and our behaviors. It is no wonder then that one of the most epit-omic messages of the Occupy move-ment is “Occupy the Mind”, since

liberation from environmental and social exploitation must begin in our values.

Modern physics and ancient spiritual wisdom give us clues to what an enlightened process looks like for creating social change. First, we shift from the love of power to the power of love. We abandon hidden motives of amassing personal power, defending one’s privilege and glorifying one’s ego since doing

Protestors march in the streets of Oakland, CA on Nov. 2, 2011 during occupy Oakland’s general strike and mass day of action. SHADIA FAYNE WOOD

Modern physics and ancient spiritual wisdom give us clues to what an

enlightened process looks like for creating social change. First, we shift from the love

of power to the power of love.


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so almost always handicaps us from doing what is better for the common good. We instead exercise collective power, which counter-intuitively grows stronger the more it is shared among a larger and more diverse group of people. Second, we move away from producing outcomes via competition and towards producing outcomes through collaboration. We stop using

hard force to impose change on society and instead rely on soft relationships to co-create meaning since a shared vision is often more powerful and ultimately sustainable. Third, we turn inward and pay attention to the trauma stored in our bodies to better understand how they might be undermining our work. As we recognize that we continually experience the world by re-creating the traumatic events we experienced in the past, we begin to heal ourselves so that our leadership can be healed as well. Many activists have particularly acknowledged this third point, leveraging the term “emotional justice” to describe the connection between personal healing and social change.

The fight that broke out at the Occupy student protest quickly ended when the hundreds of other protesters surround-

ing the two fighting individuals began chanting, “This is a peaceful protest. This is a peaceful protest.” It was such a relief to witness such collective maturity from the rest of the group. What a breath of fresh air to see the protesters immediately disarm the two aggressors with wise words rather than egg them on as you would usually see in a street fight. Events like this reaffirm the fact that the Occupy movement and all social change endeavors are not end states of a better world in and of themselves but a continuous process of learning and striv-ing to be better. Each of us will experience moments when we want to promote personal agendas. Our egos will be activated. We will see others as enemies and want them to fail. We will rely on our past pains to inform how we react to the current situation. But the more often we can recognize when we lose our way, the more capable we become of getting back on the wise road.

Protestors march the streets of Oakland, CA on Nov. 2, 2011 during occupy Oakland’s general strike and mass day of action. SHADIA FAYNE WOOD

Events like this reaffirm the fact that the Occupy movement and all social change endeavors are not

end states of a better world in and of themselves but a continuous process of learning and striving to be better.


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Daphne and Apollo is a story from ancient Greek mythology. Apollo, the god of sun and music, was bragging about how he’d killed a monster snake with

his big bow and arrow. He insulted Cupid, the little god of love, saying his little bow was no good. Cupid got mad and shot Apollo with one of his love-arrows and shot Daphne, a nymph standing near, with an arrow meant to repel love. Apollo fell instantly in love with Daphne but she wanted nothing to do with him and ran away. Apollo pursued her continuously and she continued to flee, Cupid’s arrows instilling an impracti-cal sense of love and abhorrence. After some time Daphne’s father, the river god Peneus, intervened and helped Apollo gain ground. Just as Apollo was about to catch her, Daphne called

for help from her father, pleading with him to change her out of the form which had led to pursuit and danger. Peneus fulfilled her wish and changed her into a laurel tree. Suddenly, her skin turned into bark, her hair became leaves, and her arms were transformed into branches. She stopped running as her feet became rooted to the ground. Apollo embraced the branches, but even the branches shrank away from him. Since Apollo could no longer take her as his wife, he vowed to tend her as his tree, and promised that her leaves would decorate the heads of leaders as crowns, and that her leaves were also to be depicted on weapons. Apollo also used his powers of eternal youth and immortality to render her ever green. Since then, the leaves of the Bay laurel tree have never known decay.

Daphne and ApolloIllustration by Glen Hutcheson


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At Education, Excellence & Equity (E3 )teachers are trained to

translate students’ skills into academic achievement so that every student, regardless of starting point, is engaged and thriving in schools that practice a culture of academic success for all. The goal is to narrow the academic achievement gap by identifying students least likely to succeed and training teachers to work with them. JuanCarlos Arauz is the founding director of E

3.

One of the services at E3 brings teachers and students

together for summer trainings. These trainings have proved to be transformational experiences

for both teachers and their students. This is exemplified in the story of Chris, a seventh-grader with a failing GPA who had participated in an E

3 summer program. He hesitantly

attended our weekly follow-up sessions until one day he exclaimed in frustration, “Why do y’all keep coming?” We responded that we show up and do what we do because we believe in him and his desire to learn, whether his behavior reflected this or not. Astonished, he replied, “Well, I thought if I continued to behave poorly you would give up on me like others have in my life.” Today, I am proud to share that Chris is a rising high school sophomore with a 2.4 GPA and is more focused on his future than ever before. Chris’s story is not uncommon and speaks to the challenges and successes of the work we do at E

3.

I wanted to share this spoken word piece that gets at both the pain and joy of doing transformational work – as educators and students – learners all.

Even Before I ForgotBy JuanCarlos Arauz

E3 students prepare to make juice as part of a grant they received to teach others about making healthy snacks. DILSY MENDEZ


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EVENto the chaosThe lifting of my veilDrifting by winds of timeI’m naked knowing that I’ll fail EVENto the luxury of serenityPlacing these chains upon meSlashing, cutting, knifing all that I seeI find a way to break me EVENfinding that eternal place in time that I knowFeeling the spirits from 7 generations agoI’m still asking what’s this all for EVENwhen you sell your soulAnd you move through this worldTrickle by trickle watching the pain unfoldThere was a time called before

BEFOREI was being held even though I did not realize Others would see me as they gazed into my eyesThat I didn’t ever have to wonder or ask why I was connected to all and the world was mine

BEFOREI don’t remember what it’s like to be freeI don’t remember what is really important to meI don’t remember who I am so I can’t beI don’t remember and might die without ever realizing me BEFOREThere was you grown and you thought you were all alone There was you through the eyes of a childand those who never learned how to smileIs it the mirror of me? Please tell me what you seeEach day, every day, all day

I FORGOTWhat it is to see what’s coming and how to walk awayWhat it is true inside of me is there every day and everydayIt is in complete darkness that you are your brightestIt is in complete despair that you are your wisestWhen no one seems to listen When no one seems to careWhen no one seems to notice is when you know I’m thereWhen it all seems hopeless When it all seems breaking apartWhen it all seems quiet you can hear inside your heartRocks get tired tooWhen you cry, I feel youWhen you yell, I endure youWhen you speak, I hear you When you move, I see you I see you I see you I see you, I SEE YOU!Rocks get tired too

JuanCarlos and E3 students. DILSY MENDEZ E3 students on a snowshoe outing near Lake Tahoe. JuanCarlos credits his time at Whole Communities for inspiring the addition of more outdoor activities and healthy cooking in E3 programs. DILSY MENDEZ


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It was late in the summer of 2009. I was fried. I’d been on the job for six months. I started the same morning Obama did. Hell, if he can do it, I can do it.

My staff was fried too. Thousands and thousands of hours beating the drum to raise awareness about our climate. About why people should care. About what’s at stake. Young people making the case for clean energy. Fancy old rich people inside the ever-expanding beltway of Washington pretending to care. Every partner and every campaign marching and barking on about capping carbon, polluters must pay, down with the hydro-carbon industry, or else.

Something isn’t right here my gut kept pounding. People are burning out and we haven’t even been to Copenhagen yet. This could get worse. Young spirits could get crushed. We aren’t helping them build relationships that will last. We aren’t helping college students understand how complex this energy transition is, let alone how to commit the next 40 years of their lives to it, if indeed they are serious about what they are demanding of their leaders. This can’t just be some trendy thing to do while in college. You can’t just flip a switch or change your status update. We keep mobilizing people to point the finger at a bad guy. But is there really a bad guy? And what good does getting all these young people to point fingers really do? What if we helped them point fingers at themselves? At

what skills and passions they have and want to build a career out of? To sculpt their life’s work from? Talk about terrible resource stewardship.

What are we doing? Young people are the largest, most diverse untapped natural resource we have to solve our most pressing challenges, not a constituency to throw at deep systemic prob-lems they played no role in creating. It’s almost like we’re burn-ing through young people like we do our coal and oil. Drill it, burn it, make it do what we want it to do and then go find the next stash, if god forbid, they burn out and move on to some-thing else. Perhaps that sounds a little harsh. But that is what I saw happening in our work at Focus the Nation and in the work around us. It felt disrespectful to young people. It did not

embody the values of justice and prosperity that changing our country’s energy story has the potential to do. For too long, the prosperity that has come from our relationship with energy has been built on the backs of social and environmental injustice. Breaking that cycle will be the truest test of whether or not we succeed in building a clean energy future.

All this was swirling and stewing that August in 2009. I was struggling to tackle it and fish it and ski it and sing it and hold it and cook it and eat it. I was swamped with things like payroll and raising money, calculating sick leaves and negotiat-ing rent contracts and dealing with staff members bickering over versions of success that had nothing to do with “empow-ering a generation to power a nation” because they too – bless their hearts – were fried and grasping at tactical straws to prove a point. That was all the courage they could muster.

Then, a guy named Terry said a gal named Ginny wanted me to spend a week at a place called Knoll Farm with a group called Center for Whole Communities. Honestly, I couldn’t find much on Google about it (which I liked). But the idea of unplugging on a farm in the Mad River Valley sounded self-ishly glorious. I needed a break. And I couldn’t even articulate what from. So I went. I brought my guitar, but no harmoni-cas because they’d been stolen two days before I hopped a flight to Vermont. (The harmonicas I play now were actually

Switchgrass Bricks, Harmonicas and GlaciersBy Garett R. Brennan

Focus the Nation organizes participants of the Recharge! Retreat into the four distinct fields of work critical to building a renewable energy future. COURTESY OF FOCUS THE NATION

For too long, the prosperity that has come from our relationship with energy has been built on the

backs of social and environmental injustice.


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all purchased in Vermont. Upon arriving, the staff told us “if you need anything at all while you’re here don’t hesitate to ask, we have a white board in the barn so just write your item down and we’ll pick it up for you when we head into town.” So I wrote on the board: Harmonica Rack and Harmonicas in the keys of A, B, C, G, E, Bb, D-garett. Sure enough, Ginny’s husband Tim came back from town a few days later with all of them but the Bb. That was awesome. And it helped me write two great songs at Knoll Farm.)

If you’re reading this, you know exactly what happens at Knoll Farm so I won’t recap the experience. And if you’re

reading this and you don’t know what I’m talking about, you will soon. It’s a special place.

What I will recap though is the clarity it struck in me: a version of this is what’s missing in the youth climate move-ment. And we need to do it on Mt. Hood. And there are four kinds of young people that need to know each other: techni-

cians, innovators, politicos and storytellers. They need to know how important they are to changing our country’s energy story. And we need to support them right now while they are young, to build that deeper set of skills that will carry them when it gets hard – because it will – and ground them in the relation-ships they cultivate, in the work they will so passionately invest themselves in until they are old and their knees are sore and the lines in their hands dark and the wrinkles around their eyes are tributaries feeding into their soul.

And that’s what happened. In my head and in my heart at Knoll Farm. So a year later, Center for Whole Communities and Focus the Nation proceeded to co-design the country’s first place-based retreat for rising clean energy leaders. We call it the ReCharge! Retreat. In August of 2011, on the south face of Mt. Hood we gathered 20 students divided equally among tech-nicians, innovators, politicos and storytellers. Expert guests in

ReCharge! Retreat participants gather for a group photo at the Biglow Canyon Windfarm near Rufus, OR. The place-based retreat brings 20 rising clean energy leaders together each year to experience an area of the country where energy is accelerating toward renewables. GARETT BRENNAN

Young people are the largest, most diverse untapped natural resource we have to solve

our most pressing challenges

Participants of the ReCharge! Retreat visit Oregon’s only coal plant in Boardman, OR. The participants are given the opportunity to talk to workers about what it feels like to work in a plant that is slated to be shut down in 2020. GARETT BRENNAN


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each of those groups led evening sessions and shared their own curious personal pathfinding and professional meandering to change our country’s energy story. And the students hiked a glacier that has lost 60% of its snow pack since 1982. And they visited a coal plant slated to shut down in 2020, where they talked with real people who work there about how it feels to know you might not have a job in nine years if someone doesn’t figure out how to make enough switchgrass bricks to swap out for the coal they are burning now. Students also stood inside 200-foot wind turbines in the middle of hayfields still harvested every other year for a decent profit. And, they stood on top of a hydro-dam that is actually restoring salmon populations and talked with the people who designed it and the people operate it. The people who are proud of it. That’s what happened.

And we’ll do it every year because the Whole Communities faculty who guided these young people said, “I’ve never seen a group bond so quickly and so deeply like this before.”

And we’ll do it every year because the students who went said things like, “it changed my life.” And, “I’ve been working on this issue for five years and I’ve never been to coal plant or a dam or a wind farm.” And, “now I know I’m not alone. I know there are other people out there with totally different skills but just as passionate as I am about renewable energy.”

And we’ll do it every year because the veterans in the renew-able energy industry who spent time with the students said things like this to my face: “I’ve been working on this issue for 30 years and I won’t lie but these last five years or so have been brutal, but this retreat, these students – it’s the first thing that’s given me hope. I wish I had had something like this when I was their age. My path wouldn’t have felt so lonely.”

Along with being the executive director of Focus the Nation, Garett is a full-time musician, playing all over the West coast with his band The Great Salt Licks. During his time at Knoll Farm, Center for Whole Communities staff and participants had the opportunity to enjoy his music and ability to spread environmental activism through song.

PizzaBy Taylor Burt and Phillip Ulbrich

Pizza is one of the best things to use up the dregs of the pantry on – you really can’t go wrong. A good flatbread will stretch that

last link of sausage in the freezer, that single jar of tomato sauce on the shelf, a potato at the bottom of the bin and that last chunk of cheese in the fridge.

Pizza DoughPizza dough can be as simple as mixing up the ingredients in the morning, or night before, and letting them sit until you’re ready to bake. No kneading necessary.

For every small to medium size pizza (depend-ing on how thick you like the crust), combine:

½ cup lukewarm water½ teaspoon salt½ teaspoon dried yeasta dollop of sourdough starter if you have it (optional, but flavorful)

enough flour to make a sticky, dough-like mass (a 50/50 mix of white and whole wheat flour will give a good balance of flavor and work-ability) – you should barely be able to stir the dough

Let the dough rest for 10 minutes while you go do something else, then wet your hands and fold the dough over on itself a couple times (in the bowl) – wetting your hands should allow you to fold it without getting too much stuck to your fingers. Add a little more flour only if the dough seems impossibly sticky. Cover and let sit in a cool place for several hours, or in the refrigerator overnight. Every hour or so, if you can or remember, wet your hands and fold the dough over itself again – this will help develop the gluten. When ready to make pizza, roll or stretch out the dough, top and bake in a hot (400–500 degree) oven. Enjoy!

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Brown and BlueBy Jenny Helm

We rise early, crackling in dissonance withthe river as it slinks into its tough winter shell.We rise before the room grays, before ourbellies cry out for toast and potatoes and milkand the hard truth that life on the edge of now can shred our will as ruthlessly as the windtears at the cracks around the door. The paintedfloor peels beneath our bare feet as we skittertoward socks and shirts, shoes and tea. It’ll behours before the sun soars into this steel-creeked valley, and we can sense the coming months ofknotted flesh here in the craggy shadows of thesewatchful mountains more than ever before.This cabin has roots. This land is solid. You aresolid, too, with your leather boots and your wool, your music, your splitting maul’s steady arc andyour growing piles of wood and lentils and stonesand battered, brown instruments: one banjo,two mandolins, three guitars. If we were men,would we keep large, dark dogs to warn the neighbors not to mess around? Would we orderour wives to shoot any fool who steps withina hundred yards? Some of the folks around hereare half-mad. If we were men, hair would grow,clotting, from our chapped cheeks and swirl upward in spirals, tangy with woodsmoke andsweat and the warmth that grows out of nestingby the woodstove, stretching, and makingour hardened bodies quiet enough to hearthe dull thud of the clockwork deep inside.

ADB PHOTOS


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News from Whole Communities

Whole Thinking Retreats: Strength in Numbers One of the ways in which we feel the strength of the Whole Communities network is through the Whole Thinking Retreat (WTR) fellowship nomination process. In 2012 we received 350 nominations that competed for 100 fellowships – up from 275 in 2011! This summer will hold three Whole Thinking Retreats, a fourth that is focused on young leaders 35 and under (WTR: NextGen), as well as our first ever WTR in an urban setting: Detroit.

Other CWC Programming In addition we are offering a 2042 Today: Young Leaders Re-Imagining Conservation Retreat and two Mission Retreats as well as Advanced Leadership Workshops, both at Knoll Farm and in communities across the country. The Food and Farm Workshop Series: Tools for a Changing World will convene at Knoll Farm throughout the spring-fall.

Growing our Curriculum Our curriculum has shifted in small and big ways since our first Whole Communities Retreat in 2001, and the journey continues.

This year, Whole Thinking Retreat 1 serves as a learning and growing platform. While the structure and core prac-tices of WTRs (awareness, building relationship, creativity, dialogue, hospitality, story, and working with difference) will remain in place, special emphasis will be placed on individual and collective awareness practices as foundational for conver-sations about diversity, power and privilege. The intention is to actively use awareness practice throughout the retreat to keep centered in wellbeing – of ourselves, our relationships and the environment.

In August we will hold a pilot Urban Whole Thinking Retreat in Detroit, Michigan. While we have held many events and workshops around the country, this marks the first time


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that we take the full 7-day Whole Thinking Retreat curricu-lum beyond Knoll Farm. Working in relationship with East Michigan Environmental Action Council, People’s Kitchen and Wayne State University and many other local organiza-tions and change agents, we look forward to this unique and exciting exploration.

Partnerships New Hampshire Charitable Foundation remains an inspir-ing and critical partner in bringing Mission Retreats to the Center. Through our fifth Wellborn Leadership Retreat, we will continue to grow and deepen the network of environmental and place-based educators in Vermont and New Hampshire. This year marks the second Strengthening New Hampshire’s Recovery Movement retreat. Each of these programs allow Whole Communities work to reach a critical mass of change makers within a specific work sector and region, while breaking down the divides between diverse constituencies and approaches.

Our partnership with Interaction Institute for Social Change continues through the Whole Measures Workshop.

This program continues to grow, especially as increasingly more alumni have been looking for opportunities to build upon their whole communities’ tools and practices.

The third cohort of 2042 Today: Young Leaders Re-Imagining Conservation will arrive in July. This retreat is held in collabo-ration with Center for Diversity and the Environment, an invaluable collaborator. Nominations have increased by an incredible 50% this year. We are thrilled to convene another group of young conservationists to meet the needs and oppor-tunities of 2042, the year when demographers predict all major metropolitan areas will be predominantly populated by people of color.

Staff NewsAs our work continues to grow and evolve, so does our team.

Tatek Assefa made the move from Madison, Wisconsin to take up the position as Program Coordinator. Molly Bagnato’s role has evolved from Executive Assistant to Development and Outreach Associate. Alex Bauermeister moved from Boston, Massachusetts to step in to the role of Senior Program Manager. Jenny Helm is now our Administrative Fellow, after having worked two retreat seasons as an intern. On May 1st we welcomed back our co-founders from sabbatical! Helen Whybrow returned as Food and Farm Program Manager and Peter Forbes as Senior Advisor. It is wonderful to have them back on the land and engaged in the work.

Finally, we want to extend our hearts and gratitude to Mary Lake, CWC’s and Knoll Farm’s departing Farm Manager. Mary’s entrepreneurial spirit, incredible networking abilities, and deep relationship to land and livestock has been a tremen-dous gift over the last four years. Mary will be developing her own farm and flock of sheep along with her active work with the Royal Butcher in Braintree, VT. Congratulations Mary, we will miss you!

EMILY HAGUE EMILY HAGUE


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Note: This list includes all of CWC’s 2011 retreat fellows as well as alumni from our 2011 workshops held at Knoll Farm and elsewhere.

Celina Adams, New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, ME

Ola Akinmowo, Weeksville Heritage Center, NYRob Aldrich, Land Trust Alliance, DCKaren Alexander, VTSteve Alexander, Antioch University New England,

NYMelanie Allen, Conservation Trust for North

Carolina, NCJane Arbuckle, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, METerrie Bad Hand, Taos County Economic

Development Corporation, NMCimbria Badenhause, Blue Sky Environmental

Strategies, NHKevin Barrow, Global Education Fund, MDLizzy Baskerville, WAAlex Bauermeister, Center for Whole

Communities, VTJamie Baxter, Chesapeake Bay Trust, MDLucile Beatty, Contra Costa College/First Unitarian

Church, CARonald Bell, MIJanet Bergman, Transitions Unlimited, NHKent Bicknell, Sant Bani School, NHJames Blaine, METem Blessed Ferreira, BlesTenergy, MARaquel Bournhonesque, Upstream Public Health,

OR

Micah Bouton, Second Growth, NHMichele Brooks, Boston Public Schools, MAPriscilla Brooks, Conservation Law Foundation,

MALeahnesha Brown, MIMichelle Brown, NYCCGC, NYDominique Burgunder-Johnson, National Wildlife

Federation, DCSarah Bursky, The Trustees of Reservations, MAChloe Byruck, Ecotone Creative, CAJoel Cabrera, NYSusan Caldwell, The Nature Conservancy, MEPete Caligiuri, The Nature Conservancy, ORStephanie Calloway, CORE - El Centro, WIEnmanuel Candelario, The Brotherhood Sister

Sol, NYJK Canepa, More Gardens!, NYBrenda Cardwell, MIErin Caudell, MIKevin Chang, Hawaii Community Stewardship

Network, HIKizzy Charles-Guzman, NYC Department of

Health, NYLinus Chen, Solicitor’s Office, DOI, MDMae Clifton, MIKen Colburn, Symbiotic Strategies, LLC, NHDanielle Connor, Rough Mountain Film & Media,

MAMelissa Contreras, Urban Oasis Project, FLDorn Cox, Green Start Biofuels, NHBillie Dantzler, MIRemona Davis Jobin- Leeds, Partnership for

Democracy & Education, MACandace De Wolf, Friends of Recovery NH, NHCarol Decker, Mass Audubon, MAPatricia DeMarco, Rachel Carson Institute for

Sustainability, PAPete Didisheim, Natural Resources Council of

Maine, MEAndrew Dillon Bustin, The Trust for Public Land,

MAJoni Doherty, New England Center for Civic Life

at Franklin Pierce, NH

Stacey Doll, New Hampshire Energy & Climate Collaborative, NH

Bridget Edmonds, The Nature Conservancy, MEBetty Farrell, Engender Health, MAShadia Fayne Wood, Project Survival Media, CADebora Ferreira, UMass Office of Equal

Opportunity & Diversity, MADavid Fine, NHSean-Michael Fleming, NYCCGC, NYAlison Fornes, Bent on Change, NYArt Friedrich, Urban Oasis Project, FLBen Frost, NH Housing Finance Authority, NHDavid Fukuzawa, The Kresge Foundation, MINancy Gamble, NH Office of Energy and

Planning, NHDanielle Gartner, University of Michigan-Flint, MITim Gaudreau, Tim Gaudreau Studios, NHMike Gildesgame, Appalachian Mountain Club,

MAMara Gittleman, New York City Community

Gardens Coalition, NYJoel Glanzberg, Regenesis Group, Inc., NMBoe Glasschild, MICyntoria Grant, Boston Public Schools, MADeborah Gray, Boston Public Schools, MAEmily Hague, Monadnock Conservancy, NHJeff Harness, Western Mass Center for Healthy

Communities, MAJoel Harrington, The Nature Conservancy, NHCindy Heath, GP Red, NHPaul Helms, Elijah’s Promise, NJTara Henrichon, Mass Audubon, MA

2011 Whole Communities Alumni

ADB PHOTOS SHADIA FAYNE WOOD


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Tyffany Rae Herrera, Hasbidito, NMNick Heyl, NHCharity Hicks, Detroit Food Justice Task Force, MIRoy Hoagland, Hope Impacts, VAZoe Hollomon, Massachusetts Avenue Project, NYMichael Horner, Rutland Area Farm and Food

Link, VTCarolle Huber, Grow It Green Morristown, NJVirginia Hutchins, MILon Jackman, Keystone Hall, NHStefan Jackson, The Nature Conservancy, MEAresh Javadi, More Gardens!, NYGeoffrey Jones, Stoddard Conservation

Commission, NHLeslie Jones, Southern Tier Advocacy & Mitigation

Project, NYSandra Jones, Plymouth Area Renewable Energy

Initiative, NHGina Joseph, NYHeeten Kalan, The New World Foundation, MAJan Kearce, Institute for Civic Leadership, MEJan Kelley Holder, Gila Watershed Partnership, AZYoung Chul Kim, Fondy Food Center, WIMichelle Knapik, Surdna Foundation, NYCharles Krezell, New York City Community

Gardens Coalition, NYGopi Krishna, Harriet Tubman Healthy Living

Community, MARuss Lanoie, Self-Employed Contractor, NHDaniella Levine, Catalyst Miami, FLRuby Levine, Grand Aspirations, MNBill Lippert, Hinesburg State Representative, VTGlynn Lloyd, City Fresh Foods, MAAndrea Lukens, Mass Audubon, MADavid MacDonald, Maine Coast Heritage Trust,

MEDaniel Macphee, Yale Sustainable Food Project,

CTTed Madden, Park County Community

Foundation, MT

Pam Malow-Isham, MIRue Mapp, Stewardship Council, CAAleya Martin, Health Resources in Action, MAJen Martinez, Bexar County, TXPati Martinson, Taos County Economic

Development Corporation, NMAlex Mas, The Nature Conservancy, MEJulia Steed Mawson, UNH Cooperative Extension

NH 4-H Common Ground Garden Project, NH

Madeline McElaney, New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority, NH

Beth McGuinn, Ausbon Sargent Land Preservation Trust, NH

Maggie McKenna, Permaculture Research Institute Cold Climate, MN

Patrick McKeown, FASTER, NHSusan McKeown, FASTER, NHAyana Meade, SEJ/Society of Environmental

Journalists, NYKate Mendenhall, Northeast Organic Farming

Association of New York, NYJameelah Muhammad, Jobs with Justice: Green

Collar Jobs Campaign, NYQuincy Murphy, MI Gail Myers, Farms to Grow, Inc., CAPatrick Natale, North Jersey RC&D, NJDanyelle O’Hara, OKJoe Orso, Franciscan Spirituality Center, WIErika Osbourne Symmonds, Green City Force, NYSara Padilla, Community Food Security Coalition,

ORElizabeth Parsons, Boston University School of

Theology, MADana Patterson, Edison Wetlands Association, NJSara Zoe Patterson, Seacoast Eat Local, NHLisa Peakes, Friends of Recovery NH, NHSara Peel, Wabash River Enhancement

Corporation, INAllen Penrod, Wisdomguild, NHFranklin Pleasant, MIKatherine Preissler, Trustees of Reservations, MAStephanie Lynn Puhl, Tualatin Riverkeepers, ORDamien Raffa, Presidio Trust, CASuzanne Rataj, Holyoke Open Square Farmers

Market

Doug Reed, Hudson River Basin Watch, NYSusan Reid, Conservation Law Foundation, MARobin Vann Ricca, The Home for Little

Wanderers, MAJane Richmond, The Nature Conservancy, MEJohann Rinkins, Fields Without Fences, NJGarry Rissman, The Times Square Hotel, NYQuinton Robinson, MIBelvie Rooks, Growing a Global Heart, CABlake Ross, Long Caye at Lighthouse Reef and

Long Caye Preserve, VTDorsey Ross, Jr., MIRebecca Ruggles, Baltimore Medical System, Inc.,

MDTom Rumpf, The Nature Conservancy, MEDonna Ryan, Friends of Recovery NH, NHCatherine Sands, Fertile Ground, MAElvera Sargent, Friends of the Akwesasne Freedom

School, NYSharon Sawyer, MINat Scrimshaw, NHKathy Sferra, Mass Audubon, MAKristen Sharpless, National Audubon Society, VTKumara Sidhartha, Institute for Inter-Connected

Communities of India Mollie Smith, Palomar College Joshua Sparrow, Brazelton Touchpoints Center,

CHB, MAQuinterra Spence, MIKate Stephenson, Yestermorrow Design/Build

School, VTLaura Stillson, VTRyan Strom, U.S. Environmental Protection, DCJudy Sulsona, Big Sur Land Trust, CACarol Swenson, MIKate Temple-West, Children’s Magical Garden/

More Gardens!, NY


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Victoria Thatcher, First Church Unitarian, Belmont, MA

Susan Thomas, MIDelma Thomas-Jackson, The Sankofa Project, MIMark Thompson, NHChristine Turnbull, Mass Audubon, MADavid Van Houton, Bethlehem Energy

Committee, NHJudith Vance, Boston Public Schools, MAFernando Villalba, Rosie the Riveter NHP,

National Park Service, CADebbie Vongviwat, East Yard Communities for

Environmnental Justice, CA

Iesha Wadala, Columbia University / Columbia Community Parnterships for Health, CA

Carl Wallman, Northwood Area Land Management Collaborative, NH

Jason Walser, Land Trust for Central North Carolina, NC

Chris Ward, The Trustees of Reservations, MAKaren Washington, La Familia Verde, NYLindsay Webb, New Hampshire Fish and Game,

NHBart Westdijk, New England Grassroots

Environment Fund, VTClaire Wheeler, New England Grassroots

Environmental Fund, VT

Diane White, DCHolly Wolfe, The Russell Family Foundation, WAMarilyn Wyzga, NH Fish & Game Department,

NHGail Yeo, Mass Audubon, MATrudie Young, NH

Adrienne Marie BrownAnushka FernandopulleCarolyn FinneyDeborah SchoenbaumEnrique SalmonGinny McGinn

Helen WhybrowJesse MaceoVega-FreyKavitha RaoKaylynn Sullivan TwoTreesLarry YangMatt Kolan

Melissa NelsonMistinguette SmithMohamad ChakakiPeter ForbesSamara GaevSantikaro

Stephanie KazaSteve GlazerToby HerzlichTom WesselsWendy Johnson

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Rumi

We extend our gratitude to the faculty of Center for Whole Communities. You are a constant source of inspiration

and without you this work would not be possible.

MOLLY BAGNATO


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For our 2010-2011 fiscal year we launched our Breakthrough Campaign to support the transition work internally and the development of our programs externally. That coupled with generous giving from 259 individual donors increased Individual Giving by 85% over FY2010, a terrific wave of support for the work. From April 2010 through March 2011, Center for Whole Communities utilized $585,500 in grants from 16 different foundations and one corporate giving program. Our earned income for the year totaled $131,887, up 30% from FY2010. We are encouraged by the solid growth of our earned income and the strength of our individual donor program. Our future depends on developing earned income and individual donor support in the coming years.

We are deeply grateful for the support and confidence that these foundations have placed in us: Anonymous Foundation (2), Alces Foundation, Argosy Foundation, The Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The Ittleson Foundation, The Johnson Family Foundation, Kalliopeia Foundation, The Kendeda Fund, Merck Family Fund, New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, The Roy

INCOMEDonations from Individuals $163,963Grants for FY2011 Programs $585,500 Program Fees, Workshops & Events $121,618Investment Income $6,505Miscellaneous Income $3,754Expended from Cash Reserve $30,000Total Income $911,340

EXPENSES Retreats and Workshops Whole Thinking Program $432,779 Advanced Leadership $178,412Other Programs $42,341 Fundraising $114,214Administration $137,392Total Expenses $905,138

FY2010–2011 Financial ReportApril 1, 2010–March 31, 2011

2010–11 Sources of FundsProgram Support and Administration 15%

Advanced Leadership 19.5%

Other Programs 4.5%

Whole Thinking Program 48%

Fundraising 13%

2010–11 Uses of Funds

Grants for Programs 64%

Investment Income .7%

Donations 18%

Program fees, Workshops and Events 13%

Expended from Cash Reserves 3.9%

Misc. .4%

Foundation, The Ruth Mott Foundation, Stifler Family Foundation, and The Wellborn Ecology Fund.

In addition we are grateful for the generous support of 1% for the Planet and their corporate giving program which added nearly 10% to our revenue in FY2011.


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$10,000 +1% for the PlanetBetsy and Jesse Fink FoundationCompton FoundationJeff CookAnn DayGeraldine R. Dodge FoundationIttleson FoundationJohnson Family FoundationKalliopeia FoundationKendeda FundMargot & Roger MillikenMerck Family FundNew Hampshire Charitable

FoundationRuth Mott FoundationBarbara Sargent Mary McFadden & Larry StiflerStifler Family FoundationSweet People Apparel, Inc./Miss MeThe Roy FoundationTides FoundationWendling Charitable Fund

$5,000 to $9,999Alces FoundationAnonymous (2)Argosy FoundationNed Kelley and Ferris BuckScott Droggs David GrantPeter Bergh & Janet PrincePrince CommunicationsNancy SchaubNorcross Wildlife FoundationSchwab Charitable FundThe Schaub FoundationTom and Kitty StonerVermont Community Foundation

$2,500 to $4,999George & Holly Stone

$1,000 to $2,499Anonymous (1)Michael & Margherita BaldwinCharitable Flex FundPatricia Cheeks Kinny Perot & Richard CzaplinskiWill & Laurie DanforthCarl & Judy Ferenbach Fidelity Charitable Gift FundNathan Wilson & Megan GaddHank Lentfer & Anya MaierScott Russell SandersLisa Cashdan & Peter SteinChip & Susan Atwood StoneMarcia & Tom Wessels

Peter Forbes & Helen WhybrowPeter WhybrowAnne & Ethan Winter

$500 to $999Bos Dewey & Liz Barratt-BrownSonni Chamberland Phoebe Buffum Cook & John CookThomas FrenchDagmar FriedmanNancy GilbertNicholas HodgesTandy JonesGil LivingstonMichael McDermottKaren OutlawGigi Coyle & Win Phelps Ruth Whybrow & Kate Siepmann Stephanie Kaza & Davis TeSelleThe Guide Foundation

$250 to $499Mark AckelsonSandy Buck Jared CadwellKenneth ColburnRita & John ElderJewell & Willie HarperElise & Ethan HoblitzelleKurt & Sally HoeltingMichael HornerDavid Van HoutenWendy JohnsonSue Ellen Kingsley & Terry KinzelMike LaMairAndrea MacKenzieMain Street LandingAnn LivingstonDavid & Lucy MarvinLucy McCarthyJim McCrackenElizabeth MeaseCharlotte MetcalfStephen MillikenMelinda MoultonJeff & Beth Binns SchoellkopfYeumei ShonEllen StraussMary Evelyn TuckerTom Williams

$100-$249John & Jan AuletaKathleen BlahaEmily BoedeckerDavid BordenKathy Taft BoydenDarby Bradley

Laura & Duncan BrinesKatherine BrownAnne BurlingMajora CarterMarguerite ChandlerViveka ChenStarling ChildsJay Cowles & Page Knudsen CowlesJane & Andrew CunninghamDavid M. Dion Real EstateRuth DinermanJay EspyGlenn and Jamie ForbesJoy GarlandEugenie & Brad Gentry William Glidden JrLarry GrinnellTrudy GuineeGita Gulati-ParteeHanaa HamdiKaren HatcherPeter HelmToby HerzlichCharles and Carol HosfordJames HoyteDana HudsonJunji ItagakiJon & Amy JamiesonGeoffrey JonesJohn KasselHelen & Terry KelloggRoger KennedyRenee KivikkoMatt KolanDaniel LimJen MarlowRobin McDermottLibby McDonaldGinny McGinnCurt MeineSandy MervakAnn C MillsAnn MillsPierre & Mary MoffroidAndrea MorganteJuliet Schor & Prasannan ParthasarathiKevin PetersonJosie PlautKathryn PorterLaura RichardsonAdonia RippleMark RobertsonAndrew A RobinsonWill RogersCarol Romero-WirthMarty & Joan RosenSanford - Strauss ArchitectsLauret Savoy

Pauline E SchneiderBeau Wright & Debbie SegaCarol ServidMonica SmileyAlcott SmithRichard SmithMark StevensBarbara SullivanGaye SymingtonDijit TaylorDoug Nopar & Joann ThomasCharlie & Mima TipperDorothy TodArthur & Lucia TreziseBeth TuttleSusanna WellerSue & Rand WentworthBill WilcoxJill WrigleyJudith Wu

$35-$99Susan ArnoldBaked Beads Ian BaldwinPeter BarnesDeborah Day BarnesNancy and Bob BaronAndrew Kang BartlettJoanne ChuKimberly CobleGeorge CoferRobin & David CohenEdward ConnellyWendy Cooper Matthew DahlhausenJon DolanGene FialkoffStephan Frenzl Vanessa FryBetty A. GaechterJovanna Garcia-SotoNatalie GarfieldMaryellen & Peter GriffinGeorge HallCarol F. HarleyCraig HerveyBronwyn HobbsHarvey & Ethel HornerClaudia HorwitzPhil & Audrey HuffmanDale KentChristina KhatriErwin KlaasKim LarsonPaul LevasseurDina MagarilPeter Marshall

Honoring Our 2010–2011 SupportersApril 1, 2010–March 31, 2011Note: boldface indicates

program alumni


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Darlene McCormickKevin McMillionDonna MeyersEzra MilchmanFlo MillerDavid MillstoneMary & Pierre MoffroidA.J. and Sally MolnarWillard MorganHelen MyersDana NuteAbraham H. OortTerry OsborneSherry PachmanKesha RamJulie Iffland & Chris RecchiaSarah ReevesCharles RoeMary RoscoeRebecca Ruggles

Decora Sandiford Rachel SaundersSusan SimsCassie SmithMeghan Moroni TeachoutCamila ThorndikeTom Howe & Sarah ThorneForrest & Cynthia TinsleyFrances & Bethany ViensCarol WarrenElizabeth WellerLynton Dove White

Up to $35Herb Kline & Marcia EaglesonRani ArboLinda BlackTom BrightmanBurton CohenJared Duval

Fayston Historical SocietyJacqueline FischerPatricia FolsomSteve GlazerKavitha Rao & Jeff GoldenNancy GoodmanLisa HaderleinCindy Heath Charles HendersonSarah Jawaid Sandra JonesVirginia KennedyMargaret KesselJonathon KohlSuzanne LongBen MachinMrs. Thomas MilesMichelle MockbeeLinda MulleyAnnette Naegel

Christopher NytchKristen OlbrysRuth PestleJoanna RagoTom RobertsTimothy ScottTaz & Maria SquireKate StephensonAmalia VeralliLoretta Wray

While we do our best to honor all of our donors accurately, we occasion-ally miss a name. Please let us know if we missed you. For any giving related questions, please contact Molly Bagnato at (802) 496-5690 or [email protected]

SHADIA FAYNE WOOD

To all of our supporters we offer a deep bow of gratitude

for the gift of support and your confidence in the work of Whole Communities.

We are inspired by the generosity and care we receive from so many friends,

alumni, allies and family. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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Residential Fellowship Retreats – held at Knoll Farm and in Detroit, MI

Whole Thinking Retreat 1, June 27- July 3The Whole Thinking Retreat convenes leaders from diverse disci-plines and backgrounds. Our curriculum is designed to rejuvenate and re-envision leadership, to build meaningful relationships, to help people to engage more meaningfully in the communities they serve, and to develop the competence to heal the divides that keep lasting social and environmental change from happening.

Wellborn Environmental Education Leadership Retreat, July 15-21 This retreat is specifically designed for leaders working in the fields of place-based and environmental education in the Upper Valley region of Vermont and New Hampshire. This retreat is building a strong and integrated network of leaders who are working to protect the environ-ment, empower and educate youth, address social concerns and build alliances across divides.

2042 Today: Young Leaders Re-imagining Conservation, July 28- August 3Increasingly, environmental change leaders are thinking about the excit-ing significance of 2042, the year when demographers predict that every metropolitan statistical area will be predominantly populated by people of color. In partnership with Center for Diversity and the Environment, we have developed an innovative leadership development program aimed at preparing young conservation leaders (20 to 35) from all back-grounds and sectors to strengthen their collective work.

Whole Thinking Retreat 2, August 7-13See full description under Whole Thinking 1, above.

Urban Whole Thinking Retreat: Detroit, MI, August 14-20Following the curriculum and practices of a Knoll Farm-based Whole Thinking Retreat, this urban-based retreat will explore the work in the context of an urban environment. See full description under Whole Thinking Retreat 1, above.

Whole Thinking Retreat 3, August 16-22See full description under Whole Thinking Retreat 1, above.

Mission Retreat with New Hampshire Charitable Foundation: “Strengthening New Hampshire’s Recovery Movement”, August 25-31 This leadership retreat is for NH professionals who work in the field of substance-use disorders and their allies. By bringing leaders together, this retreat will strengthen their capacity to help one another, and to share and build upon best practices. Building such a cohort of professionals in an arena as challenging as this one can help prevent burn-out, leverage change, and build stronger long-term partnerships.

Whole Thinking Retreat: NextGen, September 10-16The NextGen Retreat convenes leaders (ages 22 to 35) from across the social and environmental change sectors, including the environmental movement, food production, the arts, social justice and education, to

cross-pollinate and to find a collective voice that will help them to step into leadership.

Other Events New Hampshire Recovery Outreach Workshop, April 28

University of Vermont Student Leadership Retreats, throughout fall 2012

Open Workshops Whole Measures: Transforming Communities by Measuring What Matters Most, July 10-13Knoll Farm, Fayston, VermontWhole Measures is a values-based, community-oriented approach to planning, implementing and evaluating initiatives that foster healthy land and whole communities. From the whole measures framework, and in collaboration with the Interaction Institute for Social Change, the Whole Measures Workshop was created. This workshop introduces the process design and practices to lead your organization, commu-nity, partners or stakeholders through values-based planning and evaluation.

Transformational Leadership: An Introduction to Whole Communities Work, July 23-26Knoll Farm, Fayston, VermontShorter in length than our flagship Whole Thinking Program, this work-shop offers a strong introduction to our theories of change. The curricu-lum centers around core leadership practices such as working with difference, the power of story, the skills of movement-building, dialogue, and navigating the changing demands of leadership today.

Whole Funding, September 4-7 This workshop is designed for, and brings together, philanthropic leaders to explore approaches to achieve deeper collaboration and innovation. How do we foster relationships, not just projects? How do we support the evolution of organizations while being realistic about our funding capacity? This workshop creates the opportunity for a cohort of funders to freely discuss the challenges of this time.

Conservation in a New Nation, September 11-13Essex Conference Center, Essex, MAThis intensive workshop is for conservationists looking to strengthen and diversify the conservation movement. Looking to future and present-day challenges, this workshop presents the opportunity to talk openly and safely about how to leverage diversity, to step into leadership and to work across historical boundaries and divides in order to build a more resilient conservation movement.

Whole Measures: Transforming Communities by Measuring What Matters Most, December 4-6Interaction Institute for Social Change, Boston, MA See description above.

Please Note: Many of our workshops are open enrollment, and we are able to keep tuition reasonable through the generous support of our funders. Our calendar is growing constantly. For a complete list, or for more information on curriculum, faculty, accommodations, fees, and registration, go to www.wholecommunities.org, or call 802.496.5690.

2012 Program Calendar

Documents

WTJ%202012%20Final%20pdf