The World We Want: Growing Benevolent Agricultural Communities

Commodities

Practices

• Education and Training: farmer to farmer, mentoring, networking, other, workshop
• Sustainable Communities: analysis of personal/family life, community services, leadership development, other, quality of life, social capital, social networks

The Northeast SARE community is beginning to awaken to the inner work needed to achieve our shared dream to ‘honor the holistic connections among land, water, air and all living beings’. To honor our relationships in this interconnected web of life, we must first look inward to remember who we are at our ‘core’.  Through our previous NESARE professional development State Program “Reconnecting with Purpose”, we learned that when participants join in community to uncover and reclaim their birth gifts, stories of self, and inner identities, they develop a sense of awareness, connection and trust with one another that builds a collective strength. Collective strength enables us to act with the kinds of courage and integrity we need to create and sustain the bold, ambitious, urgent change our farm and food system badly needs.   Since 2020, our facilitator teams have fostered these transformations and impacts in the 75 participants we have served, but we have had to turn another 75 applications away. The need to develop a collaborator network of diverse, experienced facilitators who are prepared to design and curate programs for inner work is very high.

In the first year, our Facilitation/Mentoring team will design a Practitioners Preparation course for 22 alumni who are eager to dive more deeply into the practices and principles introduced in “Reconnecting with Purpose”.  As new Practitioners feel ready to live, embody and steward these principles, they will work in teams around areas of interest to co-design a range of programs, virtual and in-person, open to the entire agricultural community.  Themes already identified include exploring farmer wellness and balance, fostering interracial agricultural allyship and rural community safety, cultivating gratitude and reverence for the land, and climate change grief and action.

15 inspired alumni of the "Reconnecting with Purpose" program community (2020-2023 NY State NESARE PDP Program) will draw upon their gifts, strengths, and newly acquired practitioner skills to co-design and co-facilitate a variety of in-person and virtual programs focused on connection, trust, wellness and healing for 100 sustainable agriculture educators, change-makers, earth-workers, activists and farmers of diverse backgrounds.