Folksy in the Forest Snow Storm Relief

Give children the tools to find joy, inspiration, and belonging in their everyday lives, and they’ll grow up as well-balanced, intrinsically motivated humans. Through slowness rooted in practical and meaningful skill building and child-led nature-play, children experience the beauty of the ordinary and learn to flourish in their social, emotional and intellectual environments. We believe kind and community-oriented individuals are cultivated from spaces that nurture such values and allow them to grow. Finding magic throughout each minute of the day is our guiding light.

This is Folksy.

Our 3 programs, Folksy Scouts, The Folksy House, and our 100% outdoor program Folksy in the Forest have been growing rapidly since 2020 and we are thrilled to say we enrich the lives of 60 Folksy Scouts in the evenings and nearly 90 students in our day-time programming.

We are situated in Clarence, NY northeast of Buffalo. 2 weeks ago Buffalo and the surrounding areas were hit with several bands of heavy snow. A travel ban was put into effect, schools were cancelled, and many people spent days digging their communities out.

Sadly, our forest site suffered irreparable damages to our shelters, after saving up and fundraising for them for a year. We opted to utilize 4-season, heavy-weight fabric tents outfitted with wood stoves and flues for our forest site. Our community members and parents spent the summer and fall building decks to raise them off the ground for snow clearance, and they were beginning to feel like a second home for our children with nature journals, art supplies, books and more inside. These tents were only a few months old when this first snow of the season fell, and although we took precautions (tightening ropes, collapsing the awnings so they wouldn't collect snow and weight the tent down), it wasn't enough and with the travel ban in place, we couldn't access the site or attempt to control the snow fall on them.

Two of our three tents are destroyed with the aluminum poles and frames folded in half, large gashes and damages. We managed to get the tent for our youngest children back upright, but it is severely damaged structurally and has holes. These tents provide shelter for our forest children and are our source of heat during these cold winter months.

We are a passionate community of educators and nature enthusiasts who believe in the power of getting children outdoors, having access to nature, and learning from the natural world. At this time, we cannot shoulder the financial burden of replacing these brand-new tents. We have contacted the company to recoup the tents in some capacity and hope they will work with us.

We are trying to raise funds for a more permanent, long-term, hard-top shelter for our forest school. As this is our maiden year, we could not put forth the finances needed for a structure like this and had it set as a future goal. In the wake of this devastation, we would like to turn toward our community near and far. Maybe you're a family member of one of our students, a good samaritan, a local community member, or a nature lover from afar and believe in the power of getting children outside. Perhaps our mission calls to you, and you would like to help.

This is our Toadstools tent under snow, our first glimpse of the devastation.

Our forest educators spent 6 hours clearing snow that day. It took 4 of us to uncover it and get it back up to assess the damage.

It remains bent, and the door is now tough to close. The interior aluminum poles have been bent.

After a substantial amount of snow melted, we could access and assess the other two tents. It was worse than we thought. Large slices and irreparable pole damage.

This is our "observation tent" which we use to house dry wood, educational materials and more.

After seeing their basecamp tent and salvaging the materials they were able, these forest children decided to try to build a temporary "igloo" structure for their class. Our children are exceptional, resisliant, and great problem-solvers.

Any amount can help. We appreciate those who believe in the magic and your willingness to help us rebuild better. If you'd like to observe more of our day-to-day, including reels demonstrating our programming, find us on Instagram @TheFolksyHouse. Any amount raised over our goal will go towards continued development of our site and programs.