Learn & Grow Sustainable Tiny House

The Learn & Grow Educational Series was started in 2013 to teach food security, recycling, water conservation, and sustainable building and living methods to people in every walk of life, using evidence-based teaching practices. Over the last 7 years, we have educated tens of thousands of learners, both online and through in-person events.

So far, we have taught people how to grow their own fresh fruits and vegetables, no matter where they live, using portable, water-conservative self-watering containers made from recycled and/or inexpensive materials. This instruction has already reached tens of thousands of learners around the world through our social media and website.

We have also added backyard laying hen care to our food security curriculum. We use our test garden, which includes our laying hens, in our online and in-person instruction.

Now, it's time to take things to the next level and expand our curriculum to include all of the other aspects of sustainable living that we also want to teach. For that, we need to make a purchase ... which is where your help would be most appreciated.

Our successful instructional methods rely on modeling and project-based learning (PBL), meaning that we demonstrate the skills and methods we want our learners to acquire and have them copy what we are doing with hands-on projects. This is a powerful method of instruction supported by a lot of science and we're sticking with what we know works.

Our introductory video gives you an idea of what we have already done, the nature of our nonprofit instruction, and our next big steps, which include the purchase of a sustainably built tiny house with graywater recapturing, a composting toilet, solar power, and more, to add to our garden and use to model sustainable building and living methods.

The graywater from the tiny house will become the primary water supply for our self-watering container garden, connecting the two together as part of a self-perpetuating garden-to-table sustainable living system:

Kitchen scraps from the tiny house will go to the chickens or into the composter, graywater from the tiny house will water the garden, compost will fertilize the garden, the garden and chickens will produce food, the food will be cooked in the tiny house, and the kitchen scraps from the tiny house will go to the chickens and/or composter ... 

Anne Zachry, the creator of the Learn & Grow Educational Series and executive director of our nonprofit organization, will use the tiny house to model the methods and approaches being instructed to live sustainably and food secure.

We can't do this without the help of all our wonderful learners and all the other people like them who appreciate the need to develop a turnkey sustainable living solution to meet the modern housing needs. We all now know the ways we have been living for the last few decades are not environmentally responsible and they aren't economically achievable for many people.  

The old way isn't the only way, but the new ways have to be explained and taught. By helping us acquire the tiny house for this aspect of our instructional mission, you give us the tools we need to educate learners about sustainable living practices and approaches that are affordable, comfortable, and responsible.

Please watch our introductory video for a summary of our past accomplishments, our program design, and this next exciting phase of our instruction, including our project budget. We are hoping to raise $20,000 at minimum, but if we can make it to $28,700, that will cover the tiny house shell, electrical wiring, plumbing, trailer, and solar power. We will be finishing it out on the inside once it has been built and parked by the garden as part of the instruction.

When you help us make this part of our journey a reality, you help us bring the knowledge and instruction necessary to many other people around the world who will benefit from it, find solutions for your own life that will allow you to live more sustainably, and change behaviors on a large enough scale to help us recover from climate change.

Now is the time to face the reality that we all have to make some changes in order to stop the harmful effects of climate change. Teaching significant numbers of people how to live more sustainably is a critical component of any such reparative effort and we need your help to do it.

The total amount we need is not astronomical, but it's way more than what our tiny, struggling nonprofit organization has on hand. We just need enough to cover the costs of doing the job we're trying to do. Because you believe in us and what we are doing, already, we believe we can count on you to be part of the team and help us make this happen with your financial contributions.

Any amount, no matter how small, helps us get there. Collectively, we can all put in what we are able and it will all add up.  Please help us realize this goal.

We are excited to start delivering on the sustainable living aspects of our instruction and informing our part of the discussions about the future of meeting human survival needs in our ever-evolving world.