Help Young Community Weaver in Vital Cultural Shifting Work

Who am I?

I am a 22 year old grass-roots community organizer/weaver based in Portland, OR. The majority of my time goes towards working with certain organizations, projects, and individuals to create events and connections that strengthen our networks of regenerative care and community resiliency. Over the past few years, I have become deeply committed to this work of learning how to shift our culture into a paradigm that is more just, equitable, and sustainable for all beings. As a community artist, gardener, forest tender, and activist, the places and people I’m learning from and organizing with are focused on food and land sovereignty, regenerative agriculture/permaculture, regenerative forestry and landscape stewardship, alternative pathways of relationship-based education (especially for youth), and restorative justice/collective healing.

Why do I need funding?

The work I do with these different organizations and projects has historically been solely volunteer based. I’ve been giving free time and labor towards these movements that are deeply important for our culture to shift into a regenerative paradigm. Due to our country’s current administration, many funding sources are drying up and becoming unavailable to the groups I work with that are oriented towards this vital work of culture shifting. This directly impacts the capacity of on-the-ground organizers, such as myself, to be able to make these dreams of a better world come into fruition. For the past few years I have been thrifty and creative with ways to meet my basic needs through relationships in my communities. However, it is no longer viable for me to continue to devote myself to this work at my full capacity without having some financial resources to meet my baseline living costs of rent and food each month.

What projects does your funding support?

Through your community financial support, you would be resourcing not just myself, but also a larger constellation of regenerative projects that I’m deeply involved with. Here’s a list of current projects I’m organizing with, including links to their websites to learn more. Some of these projects include:

There are other decentralized grass-roots projects and communities that I am involved with. Through some of these networks, we create learning opportunities to share regenerative earth-tending skills, collective trauma healing containers (including grief ceremonies), community art clubs, storytelling and musician guilds, resource maps, and mutual aid support.

This work is my life’s calling, especially as a young person who has a lifetime of accelerated climate chaos, capitalist systems crumbling, systematic oppression, and other unforeseen rapid changes ahead of me and our human species. And yet, I have active, grounded hope for our future because of these projects that exist CURRENTLY. Having hope be grounded in something that is tangible in our present moment, instead of solely a projection of the future, is truly profound and pivotal for how we can begin to reclaim our imagination for a new way of being with the land and each other.

I am deeply grateful for everyone who supports me in being able to continue to serve community in the ways that I do. Your support is what makes our systems resourced to change, grow, and heal.