Category Archives: Intentional Communities

THE EAST WIND COMMUNITY is hidden deep in the Ozarks of southern Missouri, less than 10 miles from the Arkansas border, surrounded by jagged hills and tawny fields. Getting there requires traversing country roads that rise, dip and twist through chicken-wire-fenced farmsteads and grazing pastures cluttered with rusty agricultural equipment until you reach 1,145 acres of largely undeveloped highland forest, where cedar, oak, pine and mulberry create a dense canopy. Beneath that are 27 buildings and structures, including four large dormitories, nine personal shelters, a kitchen and dining facility, an automobile shop, a nut butter manufacturing plant and a cold-storage warehouse, all built over the years by the community since its founding in 1974. Outside, farm animals six piglets, 50 chickens, several dozen brown-and-white cows crunch through the carpet of winter leaves.

Nearby, a pair of women make their way down a muddy field, one pushing a wheelbarrow, to a weathered-gray wooden barn where theyll draw gallons of milk from their dairy cows. A reedy man with a long, sandy mullet presses a chain saw to the base of a tree trunk. People stop each other on the dirt paths, asking about the understaffed forestry program, or recounting anecdotes about going into town to sort through credit card charges. Everyone has somewhere to be, yet no one is hurried. There are no smartphones in sight. The collective feels like a farm, a work exchange and a bustling household rolled into one, with much work to be done but many hands to be lent.

East Wind is what its 72 residents call an intentional community, a modern descendant of the utopian colonies and communes of centuries past where individuals share everything from meals, chores and living space to work, income, domestic responsibilities and the burden of self-governance. The term intentional community dates to the late 1940s, when the Inter-Community Exchange an organization formed in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in the wake of World War II to help promote peaceful, cooperative living arrangements (in the hope of eradicating war altogether) changed its name to the Fellowship of Intentional Communities; the founders felt the new title better conveyed the deliberateness with which these groups were assembling. The members of East Wind, for example, range in age from infancy to 76: Some have lived here for more than three decades, but around half of the population is part of a new wave, people in their late 20s and early 30s who joined in the last four years. These newer residents moved to East Wind to wean themselves off fossil fuels, grow their own food, have a greater say in how their society is run and live in less precarious financial circumstances.

According to Sky Blue, the 39-year-old executive director of the Foundation for Intentional Community and a former member of the Virginia-based commune Twin Oaks, which was founded in 1967, the number of intentional communities listed in the FICs directory nearly doubled between 2010 and 2016 (the last year the directory was published), to roughly 1,200. Although the number of people living in these communities is hard to pin down the demographic is often deliberately off the grid Blue estimates that there are currently around 100,000 individuals residing in them. Theres an obvious growth trend that you can chart, he said; millennials get this intentional community thing more than people in the past.

THE UNITED STATES HAS been a laboratory for experiments in alternative living since its founding. The English Puritans and Pilgrims who, wishing to escape the oppression and persecution of the Church of England, fled to America in the early 17th century to create smaller societies where they could live according to their faith were followed, notably, by the Transcendentalists in 1830s New England, who sought to distance themselves from the ruthlessness of the Industrial Revolution and instead lead a life driven by Romantic ideals.

In 1841, George and Sophia Ripley, Unitarians inspired by that Transcendentalist ethos, bought a 188-acre parcel of hills and pinewood forests in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, where they started one of the countrys earliest and most influential utopian communities, called Brook Farm. To fund the project, the couple created a joint stock company with 10 other initial investors; they sold shares for $500, promising investors 5 percent of annual profits, which they hoped to earn by selling handmade clothing, collecting tuition from a private school run by Sophia and offering tours to curious outsiders for a small fee. George even wrote to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the founder of Transcendentalism, in 1840, in hopes that the movements putative leader might join or otherwise invest in his social experiment, arguing that, at Brook Farm, thought would preside over the operations of labor, and labor would contribute to the expansion of thought in order to achieve industry without drudgery.

Because Brook Farm aspired to so many goals abolishing the class system, promoting gender parity, dividing labor equitably, privileging intellectual and leisure pursuits, promoting self-improvement it attracted social reformers and early feminists, theologians and authors (Nathaniel Hawthorne was a founding member). Though it peaked at just 32 people and was officially shuttered in 1847 after being devastated by debt, smallpox and a fire, it became an American model for subsequent utopian projects. Over the following decades, more communities, including the Amana Colonies in Iowa and the Oneida Colony in upstate New York, served as sanctuaries from materialism and modernity. By the early 1900s, though, many of these had collapsed under the weight of financial pressures, ideological strife and tensions between the fantasy of social enlightenment and the realities of manual labor and working-class living conditions.

It wasnt until the decades after World War II, when large numbers of Americans began questioning their nations sociopolitical and environmental policies, that the desire to create alternative societies was renewed, leading to the hippie communes that would become indelible features of the 20th-century cultural landscape. Places like Strawberry Fields in Southern California, The Farm in central Tennessee and Drop City in rural Colorado encapsulated the radical freedom, social experimentation and consciousness expansion that came to define the 1960s and 1970s. By borrowing openly from the psychedelic movement, artist collectives such as Ant Farm, Fluxus and Art Workers Coalition, as well as subcultures like the Merry Pranksters, the Nature Boys and, too, the rising environmentalist movement some of which had emerged in response to the Vietnam War these new communes tapped into an iconoclastic strain of society that embraced socialist ideals and Eastern philosophical tenets (including detachment, spontaneity and pacifism), rejecting many of the prevailing middle-class values of the time, including the primacy of the nuclear family and the zeal for conspicuous consumption (upon joining The Farm, for instance, all members took vows of poverty). Many of these communes, lacking any codified organizational structure and struggling to cultivate steady income, eventually faltered, but they had already achieved a kind of dubious cultural immortality, ultimately becoming the nations measure for the alternative living arrangements and utopian enterprises that followed.

WHILE HIPPIE COMMUNES have become a clich, their DNA has nevertheless been passed down to some of todays intentional communities. Consider Cedar Moon, tucked inside a state park on seven acres of farmland near the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. Up until 2004, the property was rented out to a rotating cast of free-spirited artists, activists and musicians, who lived in two old-growth timber-frame houses. When a developer offered the owner $1.5 million to convert the land into a housing development, longtime residents banded together to save it from a fate that would not only have left them homeless, but was antithetical to their values. In February 2005, 16 residents raised $125,000 in a month to buy the developers option contract effectively removing the immediate threat and then scrambled to secure the $1.5 million required to buy the property (nearly half of which, ironically, came from bank loans) over the next year.

In addition to the two original houses and a ramshackle barn, the property now consists of a sauna, yurt, outdoor kitchen, performance stage, composting-toilet outhouse and elaborate, brightly-painted gazebo that the 20 residents, who built everything themselves, call the T-Whale. Several of the structures are made of cob, a composite of clay, sand and straw that was popularized in England in the late Middle Ages and is extremely energy-efficient because of its high thermal mass. Almost everyone earns income outside of the community Cedar Moon is not technically a commune according to the FIC definition and current members, primarily people in their 30s and 40s and their children, include several teachers, a therapist, a director at a nonprofit and an accountant. While everyone keeps their finances separate, they share groceries, appliances (theres one washer and dryer) and operate based on consensus. Its such an anticapitalist thing, just to share, said Brenna Bell, an environmental lawyer who lives there. Our economy relies on growth. It relies on people consuming. And we are going very intentionally in the opposite direction.

Members must contribute 10 hours of labor each week, which might include tending the apple orchard, milking the herd of goats or cooking for the community (living expenses total around $600 a month). Cedar Moon isnt off the power grid, but its residents have a dramatically smaller carbon footprint than the average American because they share resources, grow much of their own produce, use composting toilets and heat their homes with wood-burning stoves. Vinnie Inzano, a 30-year-old graduate student in marriage and family therapy, moved to Cedar Moon a year and a half ago because he didnt want to be plugged into systems that are causing collapse, he said; he feels the community offers a better way of coexisting with the environment, combating the story of extraction.

Earthaven, which consists of 329 densely forested acres within North Carolinas Blue Ridge Mountains, and was founded in 1994 by 18 people in their 30s and 40s, takes sustainability even more seriously. The community of roughly 100 people, which member Chris Farmer described as overeducated suburban refugees, is entirely off the grid. Several solar panels, a micro-hydropower system and smaller photovoltaic installations scattered throughout the propertys hills provide all the necessary energy for residents, who are divided into 11 smaller neighborhoods, each with anywhere from one to 14 homes made of earthen plaster, straw bale and lumber felled on the land. Rachel Fee, a 39-year-old herbalist, moved to Earthaven in 2017 after five years living outside Asheville, N.C. She wanted a more communal lifestyle that fit her ideals and didnt push her to work relentlessly; here, shes no longer inundated with the idea that productivity is your self-worth, she said. But Fee was also clear that her living arrangement was uniquely challenging, requiring a willingness to fully cohabit with others. Her 800-square-foot, reddish-brown straw-bale home sits on a gently sloping hill that she shares with 20 people living in nine structures huddled closely together. The residents get their water from the same spring and bathe in the same bathhouse. This is not an idealistic situation, she said. Its not running away from the world and sticking our head in the sand its reinventing the wheel.

IN 2017 BJORN GRINDE and Ranghild Bang Nes, researchers with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, co-authored a paper on the quality of life among North Americans living in intentional communities. Along with David Sloan Wilson, director of the evolutionary studies program at Binghamton University, and Ian MacDonald, a graduate assistant, they contacted more than 1,000 people living in 174 communities across the U.S. and Canada and asked them to rate their happiness level on the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), a globally recognized measurement tool. They compared these results to a widely cited 2008 study by the psychologists William Pavot and Ed Diener, which surveyed past studies that used the scale to analyze 31 disparate populations including Dutch adults, French-Canadian university students and the Inuit of northern Greenland and discovered that members of intentional communities scored higher than 30 of the 31 groups. Living in an intentional community, the authors concluded, appears to offer a life less in discord with the nature of being human compared to mainstream society. They then hypothesized why that might be: One, social connections; two, sense of meaning; and three, closeness to nature.

Though many residents of intentional communities are undoubtedly frustrated by climate inaction and mounting economic inequality, others are joining primarily to form stronger social bonds. According to a study published last year by researchers at the University of California San Diego, more than three-quarters of American adults now experience moderate to high levels of loneliness rates that have more than doubled over the last 50 years. Despite rising housing costs across the country, more Americans are living alone today than ever before. As Boone Wheeler, a 33-year-old member of East Wind, told me, There are literal health consequences to loneliness: Your quality of life goes down due to lack of community you will die sooner.

Last February, Sumner Nichols, a 29-year-old who grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to East Wind four years ago, invited me to visit the community, which was originally established by a group of men and women who had been living at Twin Oaks and decided they wanted to use the knowledge and experience they accumulated to start their own commune. After amassing a handful of followers during stops in Vermont and Massachusetts, the fledgling group eventually settled in the Ozarks because the land was cheap and adjacent to water. The residents, whose commitment to industry has helped ensure East Winds longevity, crafted rope hammocks by hand in partnership with Twin Oaks in the 1970s before launching their own jarred nut-butter business in the early 1980s; their products, which are mainly sold across the Midwest, typically gross between $2 million and $3 million annually. All adult members of East Wind must work 35 hours per week in various capacities, whether cooking, gardening, milling lumber, maintaining infrastructure, looking after the animals or working in the manufacturing plant. Because its a relatively modest schedule, residents have enough free time to cultivate personal passions: Nichols practices wildlife photography, while other members produce and record music, study herbal medicine and create ceramics using the community kiln.

Even in the dead of winter, the property is stunning, with its undulating textures of ridges, glades and limestone escarpments. It was obvious how living here could reconnect people to the land, letting them hike, climb, swim and harvest in a way that is beyond reach for most Americans. As we passed a three-story dormitory painted Egyptian blue, Nichols told me that, as a college student in the late 2000s, he tumbled down what he calls the climate change research hole, reading websites that pored over grim scientific projections about an increasingly warmer planet. Hed joined the Bloomington, Indiana, chapter of the Occupy movement for a while, but saw the blaze of indignation dwindle to fumes without any lasting political victories. Afterward, Nichols felt wholly disillusioned by the corporations and government organizations that he felt had a stranglehold on his life. Its going to go how it goes, he recalled thinking, so how do you want to live in it? After discovering several intentional communities online many find East Wind and others through simple Google searches he concluded that joining one was just a more comfortable way of living right now.

As evening approached, we met several residents who had decided to take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather by gathering at one of East Winds swimming holes sandbanks that run alongside Lick Creek and provide easy swimming access. As the setting sun glinted off the gently rippling water, one 31-year-old resident, who goes by the mononym Indo and who had been at East Wind for five and a half years, discussed what brought him to the community: When I was in Babylon, he said, using the term members of East Wind half-sarcastically deploy to refer to mainstream society, all I did was follow economics. While the residents have similar issues and problems as people outside of an intentional community, he added, here they were free from the cutthroat hierarchies that dominated the broader culture. Instead of your boss telling you what to do, it turns into a social relationship, he said. Were just reframing it from a different perspective. Indeed, if there is any sense of romanticism running through the community one that harks back to Brook Farms belief in a daily life in which individual freedoms are more fully realized and moral convictions more faithfully observed it lies in the notion that none of us, actually, have to be complicit to political, social and economic forces with which we dont agree.

But unless people are raised in an intentional community or something closely resembling one, they must still find a way to relinquish whatever perch theyve already carved out for themselves before moving to one of these places. The choice is reminiscent of a line from Henry Thoreaus Walden (1854), in which the Transcendentalist author assures the reader that if he were to follow a more intrepid path, he will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense. He will live with the license of a higher order of beings. There will always, however, be the daunting task of letting go.

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The New Generation of Self-Created Utopias - The New York Times

Guillermo Aristizabal P.Eng

CEO & Co-Founder

Guillermo studied and worked in the field of Mechanical Engineering for many years and is an experienced real estate investor. Since childhood, he has had a lifelong passion enjoying wilderness adventures, mountain biking, hiking, canoe tripping, backpacking and dreaming of living in a remote, off-grid cabin. In early 2020 Guillermo invested in a acre off-grid wilderness lot within a large intentional community, where lots quickly sold out. Impressed with the advantages of using this co-ownership legal structure of land ownership, Guillermo formed a partnership with Cathia Badiere to co-found and start Off the Grid Communities. Their mission is to provide affordable off-grid wilderness land co-ownership opportunities to people including friends and family.

Cathia Badiere MSc.

CFO & Co-Founder

Cathia studied Economics, Industrial Relations and Business Analytics and has worked as a labour market consultant, government policy advisor and director at a national union. During her years working in various offices, she always dreamed of more time outdoors and more time camping in the woods. Co-founding Off the Grid Communities with Guillermo Aristizabal was the perfect way to incorporate some of her favourite outdoor activities into her work life. Drawing from past experience in project management, analysis and report writing, Cathia manages operations from property selection, investor relations, marketing and customer service. She never had a job before that allowed for wild food foraging during site visits and thoroughly enjoys this role for its balance between project management work at a computer and site visits to beautiful, wilderness locations!

Link:

Off the Grid Communities Opportunities to live on beautiful ...

Communitywith thegoalof becoming more sustainable

An ecovillage is a traditional or intentional community with the goal of becoming more socially, culturally, economically, and/or ecologically sustainable. An ecovillage strives to produce the least possible negative impact on the natural environment through intentional physical design and resident behavior choices.[1] It is consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes to regenerate and restore its social and natural environments. Most range from a population of 50 to 250 individuals, although some are smaller, and traditional ecovillages are often much larger. Larger ecovillages often exist as networks of smaller sub-communities. Some ecovillages have grown through like-minded individuals, families, or other small groupswho are not members, at least at the outsetsettling on the ecovillage's periphery and participating de facto in the community.

Ecovillagers are united by shared ecological, social-economic and cultural-spiritual values.[2] Concretely, ecovillagers seek alternatives to ecologically destructive electrical, water, transportation, and waste-treatment systems, as well as the larger social systems that mirror and support them. Many see the breakdown of traditional forms of community, wasteful consumerist lifestyles, the destruction of natural habitat, urban sprawl, factory farming, and over-reliance on fossil fuels as trends that must be changed to avert ecological disaster and create richer and more fulfilling ways of life.

Ecovillages offer small-scale communities with minimal ecological impact or regenerative impacts as an alternative. However, such communities often cooperate with peer villages in networks of their own (see Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) for an example). This model of collective action is similar to that of Ten Thousand Villages, which supports the fair trade of goods worldwide.

Multiple sources define ecovillages as a subtype of intentional communities focussing on sustainability.[3][4][5] More pronounced definitions are listed here:

In Joubert's view, ecovillages are seen as an ongoing process, rather than a particular outcome. They often start off with a focus on one of the four dimensions of sustainability, e.g. ecology, but evolve into holistic models for restoration. In this view, aiming for sustainability is not enough; it is vital to restore and regenerate the fabric of life and across all four dimensions of sustainability: social, environmental, economic and cultural.

Ecovillages have developed in recent years as technology has improved, so they have more sophisticated structures as noted by Baydoun, M. 2013.

Generally, the ecovillage concept is not tied to specific sectarian (religious, political, corporate) organizations or belief systems not directly related to environmentalism, such as monasteries, cults, or communes.

The modern-day desire for community was notably characterized by the communal "back to the land" movement of the 1960s and 1970s through communities such as the earliest example that still survives, the Miccosukee Land Co-op co-founded in May 1973 by James Clement van Pelt in Tallahassee, Florida. In the same decades, the imperative for alternatives to radically inefficient energy-use patterns, in particular automobile-enabled suburban sprawl, was brought into focus by recurrent energy crises. The term "eco-village" was introduced by Georgia Tech Professor George Ramsey in a 1978 address, "Passive Energy Applications for the Built Environment", to the First World Energy Conference of the Association of Energy Engineers,[11] to describe small-scale, car-free, close-in developments, including suburban infill, arguing that "the great energy waste in the United States is not in its technology; it is in its lifestyle and concept of living."[12] Ramsey's article includes a sketch for a "self-sufficient pedestrian solar village" by one of his students that looks very similar to eco-villages today.

The movement became more focused and organized in the cohousing and related alternative-community movements of the mid-1980s. Then, in 1991, Robert Gilman and Diane Gilman co-authored a germinal study called "Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities" for Gaia Trust, in which the ecological and communitarian themes were brought together.

The first Eco-Village in North America began its first stages in 1990. Earthaven Eco-Village in Black Mountain, NC was the first community called an Eco-Village and was designed using permaculture (holistic) principles. The first residents moved onto the vacant land in 1993. As of 2019 Earthaven Eco-Village has over 70 families living off the grid on 368 acres of land.

The ecovillage movement began to coalesce at the annual autumn conference of Findhorn, in Scotland, in 1995. The conference was called: "Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities", and conference organizers turned away hundreds of applicants. According to Ross Jackson, "somehow they had struck a chord that resonated far and wide. The word 'ecovillage'... thus became part of the language of the Cultural Creatives."[13] After that conference, many intentional communities, including Findhorn, began calling themselves "ecovillages", giving birth to a new movement. The Global Ecovillage Network, formed by a group of about 25 people from various countries who had attended the Findhorn conference, crystallized the event by linking hundreds of small projects from around the world, that had similar goals but had formerly operated without knowledge of each other. Gaia Trust of Denmark agreed to fund the network for its first five years.[13] Today, there are self-identified ecovillages in over 70 countries on six continents.[14]

Since the 1995 conference, a number of the early members of the Global Ecovillage Network have tried other approaches to ecovillage building in an attempt to build settlements that would be attractive to mainstream culture in order to make sustainable development more generally accepted. One of these with some degree of success is Living Villages and The Wintles where eco-houses are arranged so that social connectivity is maximised and residents have shared food growing areas, woodlands, and animal husbandry for greater sustainability.

The principles on which ecovillages rely can be applied to urban and rural settings, as well as to developing and developed countries. Advocates seek a sustainable lifestyle (for example, of voluntary simplicity) for inhabitants with a minimum of trade outside the local area, or ecoregion. Many advocates also seek independence from existing infrastructures, although others, particularly in more urban settings, pursue more integration with existing infrastructure. Rural ecovillages are usually based on organic farming, permaculture and other approaches which promote ecosystem function and biodiversity.[15] Ecovillages, whether urban or rural, tend to integrate community and ecological values within a principle-based approach to sustainability, such as permaculture design.[16]

Johnathan Dawson, former president of the Global Ecovillage Network, describes five ecovillage principles in his 2006 book Ecovillages: New Frontiers for Sustainability:

Effective governance is important within ecovillages. It provides a model to implement and promote sustainable lifestyles (Cunningham and Wearing, 2013). While the first generation of ecovillagers tended to adopt consensus decision-making as a governance method, some difficulties with consensus as an everyday decision-making method emerged: it can be extremely time-intensive, and decisions too often could be blocked by a few intransigent members.[17] More recently many ecovillages have moved toward sociocracy and related alternative decision-making methods.[18]

In addition, ecovillages look for alternative forms of government, with an emphasis on deeper connections with ecology than economics.[19]

Kellogg, W. Keating, W. (2011), "Cleveland's Ecovillage: green and affordable housing through a network alliance", Housing Policy Debate, 21 (1), pp.6991

Cunningham, Paul A. and Wearing, Stephen L.(2013).The Politics of Consensus: An Exploration of the Cloughjordan Ecovillage, Ireland.[electronic version]. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies. 5(2) pp.128

The rest is here:

Ecovillage - Wikipedia

Friends who have lived in communes tell me the worst thing is the endless meetings. All those issues a household bickers into resolution who will sort the recycling, who finished the milk are decided by committee. Yet from Findhorn ecovillage in Moray to the co-housing community at Postlip Hall, in Gloucestershire, Britain has more than 400 intentional communities or communes, and in the post-Covid era theyre fielding more inquiries than ever.

Some people turn to co-housing to be able to afford a roof over their head. But many, according to the website of umbrella organisation Diggers & Dreamers, are looking for a more values-led, potentially unorthodox way of life. There are echoes of the 1960s and 70s experiments in communal self-sufficiency, when food was farmed organically, kids were home-schooled and some communities went entirely off-grid. But the roots of the movement go much further back than that.

In June 1794, Samuel Taylor Coleridge visited Oxford, and was introduced to a student poet, Robert Southey. A restless if brilliant Cambridge undergraduate, Coleridge was passing through on a summer walking tour to Wales, then in fashion for its rugged good looks. After a brief stay in Oxford, he pressed on to Snowdonia, returning through the Cambrian mountains. He turned out to be no great evoker of the picturesque: Gloucester is a nothing-to-be-said-about town. The women have almost all of them sharp noses.

But this hardly mattered, because his trip had become instead a chance to proselytise for a scheme the new friends had dreamed up. In a Montgomeryshire pub, for example, Coleridge claimed that two great huge fellows of butcher-like appearance danced about the room [shouting] God save the King! And may he be the last! Their republican outburst was a response to Coleridge regaling the pub with his idea for a radical community in which everything would be held in common, partly inspired by William Godwins recent Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Prefixing isocracy equal governing power for everyone with the universalising pan, the friends named their ideal Pantisocracy.

They had partly been inspired by William Godwins Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, published a year earlier. Godwin argued that a system of inequality produces 1 a sense of dependence, 2 the perpetual spectacle of injustice 3 the discouragement of intellectual attainments, 4 the multiplication of vice 5 depopulation. As befitted a future poet laureate, Southey waxed rather more lyrical when spelling out the benefits to an old schoolfriend: To go with my friends to live with them in the most agreeable and most honourable employment. To eat the fruits I have raised & see every face happy around me. My mother sheltered my brothers educated.

The 21-year-old Coleridge had little to lose, but he did make one major sacrifice for the project: giving up his great love, Mary Evans. Instead, marrying Sarah Fricker, he joined himself to a chain of Pantisocratic brothers-in-law as he, Southey and Robert Lovell, a fellow idealist and a largely unpublished poet, wedded a trio of sisters in the belief that this would cement their proposed community.

As in so many masculine utopias, however, they did not seek to transform womens roles. As Coleridge told Southey: The long helplessness of the babe is the means of our superiority in the filial and maternal affection It is likewise among other causes the means of society. Childcare, in other words, was a social building block and the touchstone that naturalised masculine superiority.

In the event, Coleridges sacrifice proved unnecessary. The Pantisocratics had already become markedly less fraternal by December 1794 when their plan, which was to found an ideal community in North America, foundered through lack of funds. They had imagined settling on the Susquehanna River, partly because of its excessive beauty and its security from hostile Indians: Pantisocratic rights clearly didnt extend to Indigenous peoples.

But six months in, Southey, as the schemes primary funder, was advocating a cheaper alternative. For Gods sake, my dear fellow, Coleridge hectored him, tell me what we are to gain by taking a Welsh farm. For this wasnt just downsizing. The new plan was for an agribusiness: Coleridge, Southey, Lovell, Burnett, and Co, some five men going partners together. Was this really compatible with the principles and proposed consequences of pantisocracy, Coleridge wondered.

A schism was on the way, and by late 1795, the Pantisocratic dream had been abandoned. We see the same sorts of questions being asked in intentional communities today, where many elders of the 1960s and 70s are now themselves in their 60s and 70s. Big old country houses no longer come cheap, and newer community members often go out to work, at least part time, to support their way of life. From the outside, at least, this looks like realism enabling idealism.

Such pragmatism as Coleridge and his fellow radicals mustered seems to have been directed towards seeding Pantisocratic ideals across society. This was an era when republican revolution in America and France had successfully challenged the established social order and proved it could be radically transformed, and they planned to model and to publish radical transformations of their own.

Another vertiginous social shift surrounded them. The turn of the 19th century saw the culmination of the process of enclosures that had incrementally cleared the subsistence farming peasantry from the countryside. Forced into cities, they became the labour that powered the Industrial Revolution. Todays countryside to which many Britons, freed by home working, wish to return is once again a contested space, at the cutting edge of climate change. Sustainable farming practices and radical land management, including rewilding, pull in one direction; agribusiness, post-Brexit needs for food security, even cottagecores inflated property prices, pull in another.

Despite Pantisocracys failure, the Romantic ideal of a better life in a community of like minds persisted. Coleridge went on to live in rural community with friends, first in Somerset, where he persuaded the Wordsworths to move, and then, following Southey and the Wordsworths, in the Lake District. In 1798 William Maddocks, a landowner committed to improvements, revived the idea of radical community in Wales and founded Tremadog in Gwynedd. Percy Bysshe Shelley lived here in 1812-13: he first called on William Godwin, and met his future wife Mary, Godwins daughter, while fundraising for the community. The Shelleys would go on to live in neighbourly community with Lord Byron and his entourage, and share houses with the Leigh Hunts and others.

In their first months together, Percy tried repeatedly to seduce the 16-year-old Mary into polyamory: most notably while travelling across the Napoleonic battlefields of Europe to Switzerland to found a polyamorous community, which failed through lack of money. Like the Pantisocratics, he seems to have believed that relationships with women could solidify radical community life. Shelley may have sincerely considered monogamy a form of ownership but personal convenience undermines such radicalism.

Intentional community by definition requires a degree of individual sacrifice. Coleridges heirs today are surely the all-in diggers and dreamers of Tipi Valley in Carmarthenshire, still using low-impact structures after 47 years, or, in Somerset, woodworkers at the off-grid community of Tinkers Bubble. They are living the balance between individual desires and collective good that is at the heart of the social contract.

Fiona Sampsons Starlight Wood: Walking back to the Romantic Countryside is published by Corsair.

See the article here:

From Romantics to 21st century radicals: Coleridge, Shelley and the roots of communal living - The Guardian

Debut Book and Music Release by Eric Todd: The Fullness of Love.

Eric Todds compelling debut book,The Fullness of Love From Mere Churchianity to an Awakened Life calls out to a world in need of grace, and promotes a love forward future. Todd declares a mandate stating, Its time to know deeper, not more, as freedom is found in the unknowing mysteries of God. Unfiltered by Churchianity, steeped in a history of racism and religious nationalism, the teachings of Jesus are revolutionary to hearers today. Life after death is explored based on Todds personal experience, and western belief is deconstructed and reimagined in this new book from Wipf & Stock Publishers.

The companion music album from Echoes Blue Music, is an immersive ambient worship experience, featuring nine stunning tracks by artists from around the world, including Salt of the Sound, Eliza King, Rising Violet, Anita Tatlow, & Eric Todd.

A music industry veteran, Todd is the founder and CEO of Garage Brand, a marketing and A&R platform for indie artists and labels, and the developer of Charismata, a digital intentional community seeking to build a better world. His entree as an author started out as self-therapy, in trying to make sense of an evolving belief system that now included a more robust experiential faith.

The book preface sets the reader up for whats to come:

Religion is like a finger pointing to the sun and prescribes its own brand of lessons in how to live under it. Meanwhile, the sun simply is and provides life-giving energy, warmth, and grace to everyone, regardless of belief. You have a choice in how to live your life. Choose to be conscripted into religion with all its trappings and constrictions, never directly experiencing the sun; choose to ignore the sun, unconsciously benefiting from its life-giving energy; or you can abide in the sun, acknowledging its presence, and fully immersed in its rays. This book points the way to soak up the sun. Cue Sheryl Crow.

Below are excerpts from an interview with Eric Todd.

What is the overarching theme of The Fullness of Love?

God can handle our doubt, faithlessness, and tough questions. Authentic faith has more questions than answers. True peace is found in the unknowing mysteries of God. The book chronicles the evolution of deconstruction and decentralization of faith for the 21st century.

Please provide insight into the tagline: From Mere Churchianity to an Awakened Life.

I was aligned for decades with what I now call Churchianity a religious nationalist movement that infiltrated the Western Church, built on racism and a lust for power to create a theocracy. The value proposition of my faith was rooted in partisan politics, a weaponized Word, and glamorized eschatology. I never quite fit in and questioned my belief system. A profound life-changing event occurred at my mothers passing when I encountered what is called in scientific terms, a documented SDE or a shared-death experience, similar to a NDE, or near-death experience, which confirmed my belief in life after life. My faith evolved to become more experiential.

Who is the ideal reader of The Fullness of Love?

There are two ideal reader groups. Those that left and continue to leave the Western Church in droves, who might call themselves spiritual not religious, and may find the book and music therapeutic. Missionally, the book is constructed to enlighten the load for those in the Church whose hearts are stirring because they feel like outsiders within their own faith traditions. The book is built by design to question everything we believe.

How much research did you need to do for your book?

Ive been searching for truth my entire life. Ive had myriad questions that no modern western theologian could answer inside Churchianity. Once freed, I uncovered answers and explored mysteries over the course of twelve years, that when compiled became the core manuscript.

What is your mission behind the book and music?

My team and I are planning to go big to transform the world one heart at a time through books like The Fullness of Love, its companion music album, and the mentoring of social entrepreneurs with a complementary vision to build a better world. We are creating a global digital intentional community to leverage the impact of individuals and communities, in the funding and crowdsourcing of charitable projects and social enterprises. Our first project, Love Kitchens, will be a pay-it-forward community restaurant and boutique concept.

Praise for the book and music:

Todd writes like a modern-day prophet who makes the comfortable uncomfortable. Buckle up with an open mind and let Scripture and Todds compelling message bring you into a closer relationship with the resurrected Christ. Paul Bane, founder, Mindful Christianity

A beautiful image of the love and openness Christianity can bring to our world, rooted in ancient understandings of the faith and grounded in the teachings of Jesus. Accessible to all and deeply researched, The Fullness of Love is an essential encouragement for the twenty-first century. Ben Tatlow, founder, Echoes Blue Music and Salt of the Sound

The Fullness of Love is bursting with energy and the will to let the world know about Todds experience and how to put in perspective the true value in life and what comes after it. He masterfully conveys the message based on the life-changing event of his mothers passing. Transcendency such as this can give birth to great change in the world, which is evident in this little book, as Todd calls it. Petra Frese, founder, Peak Mind Academy

A beautiful and reflective music experience. Louder Than Music

###

Contact:Lowrie GodovinThe Fullness of Love484-522-9665[emailprotected]

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Religion News Service or Religion News Foundation.

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Mere Churchianity, Life After Death, and an Awakened Faith - Religion News Service

Three Rutgers Today staffers recently attended the Tyler Clement Center's first Inclusion Summit, organized to bring members of the Rutgers Community together to explore issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

Panels explored issues of race in America, neurodiversity, indigenous history and culture and understanding culturally significant holidays.

In my experience, most folks want to be inclusive, but aren't always sure how to build new habits," said Crystal Bedley, director of the Tyler Clementi Center for Diversity Education and Bias Prevention. The Inclusion Summit provided one model by being intentional about accessibility, providing ground rules for engagement and sharing pronouns. I wanted people to see that by connecting across silos, transformative change is possible."

Here are some takeaways from the event.

As we think about supporting neurodiverse individuals in their work and education, we can always do more.

While we presently have over 30 students enrolled in theCollege Support Program, part of theRutgers Center for Adult Autism Services(RCAAS), the program currently does not have funding to expand support beyond students enrolled at Rutgers-New Brunswick. It is likely that the number of students on the autism spectrum across the university is considerably larger. Without the necessary demographic data, the picture of the needs of our neurodiverse students isnt as clear as it could be.

The lack of information, training and funding are challenges we must overcome. There currently are no institutional training opportunities for faculty and staff focused on serving our neurodiverse students.

The Center for Adult Autism Services, part of the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, is doing impressive work to fill some of those gaps by providing neurodiverse adults with the skills and opportunities to lead independent and fulfilling lives; in fact, 100 percent of Supporting Community Access through Leisure and Employment (SCALE) program participants are employed. To help fund these services, the center has been able to cultivate 670 individual donors; however, more funding is needed to make their valuable services available to more in need.

To raise awareness about neurodiversity, on Monday, Oct. 17, the Center for Adult Autism Services will hostan exclusive screeningof the filmIn A Different Keyat The Yard on the College Avenue Campus, an event that is being sponsored by RISE at Warren, an innovative residential project being designed for neurodiverse people. The award-winning film, co-directed by Caren Zucker and John Donvan, chronicles the history of autismtold from the perspectives of individuals and families including Donald Triplett, the first person diagnosed with autism in 1941. In addition to the screening, the filmmakers will join RCAAS executive director Christopher Manente and RCAAS relationship coach Amy Gravino to discuss how the film's messages can help address opportunities and challenges within the Rutgers community.

Jason Brandon/University Equity and Inclusion

Learning that the percentage of indigenous students at Rutgers is significantly small, at less than 1 percent, was surprising. I also learned that the broader local community has larger parentage of indigenous people, so building trust in those communities to help increase student numbers is a major way to increase representation in this regard.

Rutgers Gardenshas begun collaborating withindigenous communities in New Jersey to explore installing native plants of cultural significance in the gardens. This is a great opportunity for anyone who is looking to learn more about native plants and their connection to the local indigenous communities. As the program seeks to increase partnerships with local indigenous communities, as well as to serve as a tool to potentially recruit more indigenous students and practitioners to the university, indigenous community members interested in collaborating on this new project are invited to contact the Rutgers Gardens office for more information.

Jason Brandon/University Equity and Inclusion

What I took away from the Inclusion Summit is that we should expect more from white allies. When we talked about what could be done better by white counterparts, the first example was recognizing Juneteenth. It's not just another "day off" -- we can actually do small things such as finding a Black-owned business to support that day.

Allyship is understanding that there is not a complexion requirement: Its a matter of understanding and recognizing that Juneteenth is an American holiday. It is expecting to use your allyship as a bridge so that people can cross it with you. Although it takes time, you must put forth consistent effort. This effort consists of being comfortable with being vulnerable in moments of learning. Your curiosity must be satiated. It is then that you can expect flowers to grow from those initial seeds you planted.

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Takeaways From the Tyler Clementi Center's First Inclusion Summit - Rutgers University

IMPD met with community members and faith leaders to learn more about the barriers they face when it comes to public safety.

INDIANAPOLIS As Indianapolis grapples with a sudden spike in gun violence the past few weeks, city and police leaders are turning their attention to the community in hopes it will help build positive relationships and make neighborhoods safer in the long-term.

IMPD held a meeting Tuesday with Latino community members and faith leaders in an effort to learn more about the barriers they face when it comes to public safety.

The meeting, dubbed "Tacos with Pastors and Police," was the latest in the Pizza with Pastors and Police series IMPD has been holding around Indianapolis recently to learn from community members about what's working and what needs to change.

"Because at the end of the day, everybody wants to feel safe and secure," IMPD Commander Ida Williams said. "I think we are all working toward the same goal of helping reduce violent crime in our community, and that's what it's all about."

The past few weeks have been violent for the city of Indianapolis, making crime reduction in communities a major priority for police.

For the first time, IMPD is sitting down with members of the city's Hispanic and Latino community, together with community and faith leaders, to help address issues between police and the community.

I think its important that we build bridges between the police department and the Latino community, particularly those individuals who may be fearful of reaching out to the police for any needs that they have, Indianapolis resident Anna Hail said.

"In many cases, Latino people don't come to the police to report abuses or something because lack of knowledge, lack of regular immigration status or just because they don't want to do it or know how to do it," said Leticia Teramoto, Consulate of Mexico Indianapolis. "We are here to try to encourage people to come to the police, to trust more in the police."

Many at Tuesday night's meeting stressed to police that one of the biggest challenges facing the Latino community in Indianapolis is the language and cultural barrier. They're asking for more language-assistance programs, better cultural understanding of Latinos and more Spanish-speaking officers around IMPD who can help victims and respond in emergencies.

"But it is very important to have representation, when somebody calls and to have someone that understands what they're saying," Hail said.

Because we do want our police department to be reflective of the community that we serve, and that means being intentional, and were going to work on that, Williams said.

"Education. We need to educate us, the community. And the community needs to educate you about us," Indianapolis resident Maria Wildridge said.

Many in attendance stressed that the meeting was an important step in addressing the ongoing issues, but to break down these challenges long-term, work needs to be done to meet Latino community members where they're at in neighborhoods, churches and community centers. That can build trust where bonds are thin currently, many stressed to IMPD leadership.

"We need to be aware of the fear that exists in the many communities, and we need to get out more into those communities so we can help to break down that barrier of fear and also the communication, so we know that's a disconnect there," Williams said.

For residents like Hail who were listening and participating in the conversation, she said she's hopeful this will be a good first step in building a lasting relationship together.

"This is only the beginning, and we have yet to see what's possible," Hail said.

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IMPD, Latino community come together to tackle issues, focus on safety - WTHR

Last year at this time, Communities United, a survivor-led, grassroots, intergenerational, racial justice organization in Chicago set their sights on changing the mental health landscape for youth with the help of Lurie Childrens Hospital of Chicago. The goal was to develop a wholistic plan for youth that moves the mental health conversation from one focused on individual treatment to one that supports community healing.

Their work on that path for years yielded Healing Through Justice: A Community-Led Breakthrough Strategy for Healing-Centered Communities a 10-year road map to foster youth-led strategies on community healing that centers youth leadership in creating institutional change on mental health. The plan placed the medical institution and community organization in a finalist position in the W.K. Kellogg Foundations Racial Equity 2030 Challenge a global competition announced in 2020, that awarded a total of $90 million to help build and scale actionable ideas for transformative change in systems and institutions that uphold racial inequities. The challenge received 1,453 submissions from 72 countries. In September 2021, the Kellogg Foundation announced the top 10 finalists.

While traditional medical approaches rely heavily on treatment, Healing Through Justice (developed by Communities United and informed by narratives of hundreds of young people who experienced personal and collective trauma and healing while taking social action to address issues impacting them and their families) focuses on supporting the leadership and action of Black and brown youth in Chicago to create new pathways for recovery, and positive health outcomes for themselves and their communities.

Over the past year, Communities United and Lurie Childrens moved through a process of multiple levels of review and feedback involving peer applicants and multi-disciplined experts from across the world to bring their plan to scale with a $1 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The duo are now the recipients of $10 million by the foundation to turn their plan to practice. The money will be paid out over eight years to coincide with W.K. Kellogg Foundations 100th anniversary in 2030.

Laqueanda Reneau, a Communities United community organizer said the recognition and money shows that others believe in their work and want to support youth.

When we shared the news with our young people, they were jumping out of their seats screaming, Reneau said. This is a global competition that wants to support young people and their leadership. The work that we do encourages youth voices, to say that lived experiences are important and those lived experiences are something that they can create and change if they want to.

Bezaleia Bezzy Reed, 18, a youth leader at Communities United, and sister to the late Caleb Reed, an advocate for racial justice in the education system who died in 2020 from gun violence, said her brother would be surprised and excited about the grant amount awarded to the organization.

Im excited to see whats to come and to be able to continue what were doing and to see that were being supported. Im glad people love what were doing. Now we know that were capable of anything, Reed said. With a goal of being a teacher, Reed is approaching her one-year anniversary with Communities United. After his passing, I wanted to get more involved with Communities United because I saw a passion in Caleb and I was interested. I would describe myself as a witness to the work.

The $10 million grant will be used to: Invest in the development of 3,000 young people as leaders in the community that will inform new strategies for Lurie Childrens and other health systems to support youth-led and community-centered healing; convene a network of community-based partners to support youth leaders and the implementation of new mental wellness strategies; document and evaluate the new model that supports community-led healing to improve health outcomes in communities of color. Dr. John Walkup, chair of Lurie Childrens psychiatry department and principal investigator of the Kellogg proposal, said his hope is that the model will be disseminated to church groups, schools, and youth organizations around the world.

Thats the dream, he said. Some of the first years work is to codify this, get it down on paper so that anybody who picks it up and wants to do it understands exactly what it is they need to do it in order to replicate the results. Thats gonna be part of the project too fleshing it out. Its got to turn into something that has not just a manual, but guidebooks and strategies that will allow it to be disseminated and be successful elsewhere too.

The Healing Through Justice initiative builds on the 11-year partnership between Communities United and Lurie Childrens. The work on the Healing Through Justice partnership is a fundamental part of Lurie Childrens 2023-2025 Community Health Implementation Strategy. Recently, the pair collaborated on the release of Changing the Beat of Mental Health, a youth-led participatory action research project that identified systemic inequities and the normalization of trauma as key drivers of worsening mental health among young men of color.

Its youth driven, its about racial equity to its core, Walkup said. This is a group (Communities United) thats not doing it for the purpose of this grant. Theyve been doing this stuff forever. They know how to do it. And were just taking it up a couple of big notches with the grant. Positive programming takes such a long time to grow. But theres something about this idea that if youve had a hard time in your life and you begin to put your life together and youre going to do something special in your own life for your family and community because of whats happened to you, that idea gets so many different kinds of people excited.

The power of that idea is highly contagious. Instead of having it happen by accident, we want people to understand that you can make it happen, that you can become intentional with it and really make a difference in this world that way.

drockett@chicagotribune.com

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Strategies for wholistic mental health for youth on the way - Chicago Tribune

Courtesy Riana Bruce-Goodsky

Bill Hulterstrom is president and CEO of United Way of Utah County.

It is always so inspiring to see how Utah County comes together to participate in volunteer events like the Day of Caring. Large group volunteer experiences are a crucial support to our community, and it is wonderful to see how such events can spark a desire for continued personal impact through volunteering.

One way to increase your personal impact is to find a way to participate in more committed long-term and ongoing volunteer opportunities. These opportunities help volunteers increase their own skills and provide valuable experience in a variety of settings, and they seek to build deeper relationships between volunteers and the recipients of their service. Those relationships provide the foundation for strong, vibrant and more connected communities.

Here in Utah County, there are so many ways for community members to get involved in committed ongoing volunteer opportunities. Many of these opportunities require higher skill levels and are an excellent way to increase the volunteers talents and capabilities. For example, the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program provides free tax preparation training and IRS certification to its volunteers. After completing the training process, volunteers dedicate a couple of hours a week during tax season to help low- and moderate-income families prepare their personal tax returns.

Each year, this program returns millions of dollars in tax refunds to our community, providing much-needed relief to families who just need a little help to make ends meet. The skills that volunteers learn through this program also benefit their own families, and some volunteers have even decided to pursue similar work professionally after their time with the program. Programs such as VITA show how the impact of committed volunteering doesnt just benefit the community it benefits the volunteers as well.

There are many other volunteer opportunities that give people the chance to increase their skills while strengthening relationships and supporting individual community members. One such program is The Refuge Utahs Rape Crisis Team. Volunteers with this program complete 40 hours of training before they start working with sexual assault victims. Rape Crisis Team Members give one day a month to answer calls on the rape crisis phone line and meet with rape victims in the hospital. These volunteers provide essential support at times of severe personal crisis, and are such a valuable resource for our community.

Courtesy United Way

A volunteer with United Way's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program helps prepare income taxes for a community member.

Community Action Services and Food Banks Circles program is another valuable resource that relies on committed volunteers. This program helps individuals and families who are experiencing poverty access the skills and resources needed to become more self-reliant. Volunteers, known as Circles Allies, become intentional friends to families and provide encouragement and support as they go through the program. This program, with its focus on long-term relationships, is a stellar example of how committed volunteering leads to significant impact in the community.

Another way that committed volunteers can support families in Utah County is by volunteering with the crisis and respite nursery at Family Haven. This nursery is available 24/7 for parents who need a safe place for their children to stay for a couple hours whether due to a family emergency or something as simple as a doctor appointment or a job interview. The volunteers at the nursery provide a fun and positive environment for children who need it.

No matter what your interests, skills, or time availability may be, there is a volunteer opportunity for you. By increasing your commitment to giving of your time to support our community in a long-term and ongoing capacity, you will see increased impact from your efforts. Your experiences as a committed volunteer will change our society for the betterand they may just change your life.

For more information about these and other volunteer opportunities in Utah County, please visit http://volunteer.unitedwayuc.org.

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United Way: Commitment to ongoing volunteerism increases impact - Daily Herald

The nations secretaries of education and labor went to the Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology Friday to praise the schools innovative education that can lead to career opportunities in the sciences for high school and college students from marginalized communities.

During a panel discussion at the institute, Miguel Cardona, US secretary of education and Martin J. Walsh, US secretary of labor and former Boston mayor, highlighted the importance of partnerships between K-12 schools, colleges, and employers focusing on career connected learning, or education that prepares students for real-world jobs. The institute is a shining example of what all schools across the nation can do to empower students to pursue postsecondary education, make a more equitable workforce, and rebuild the economy, they said.

Every high school in this country needs to have an early college experience program to give our students an opportunity to see what they can be even when they dont dream that high, Cardona said. You have to be an outlier if youre not doing it.

Cardona said K-12 education, postsecondary institutions, and workforce partners are too siloed, and need to be integrated through experiential learning to give all students, regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic background, as many career options as possible. This reflects the Biden administrations proposed Economic Blueprint a plan to rebuild the US economy and create more high-paying job opportunities, he said.

Jayvonte Odom, who earned an associates degree in construction management from the institute in 2021 and was a speaker on the panel, said he chose to attend the college because students there looked like him and came from similar neighborhoods. Being surrounded by people like him gave him the courage to pursue a career in construction. Today, he works as an engineering assistant at Turner Construction in Boston, he said.

Massachusetts 7th District Representative Ayanna Pressley, who attended the event, said students like Odom prove that students of color are more than capable of succeeding in STEM, or science, technology, engineering, and math jobs. But many of them havent been given opportunities, underscoring why institutions like the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology need to exist countrywide.

What this model [at the Institute] proves is that there is no deficit of talent. Theres only a deficit of opportunity. And that is exactly why we need to invest today, Pressley said. And when we make that investment in our human infrastructure, it yields the greatest return.

Speakers said legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which invest federal dollars into climate-change initiatives, infrastructure, and clean energy, create jobs in those fields. Cardona said its up to him and Walsh to ensure schools are preparing students, particularly students of color and women, for these new jobs, and theyre going to use the Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology as a model.

Im proud that in our budget proposal, the president put out $200 million for career-connected learning. We need to systematize what Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology is doing and ensure our students have equal opportunity at success, Cardona said.

Walsh added that the Department of Labor already prioritizes creating jobs with benefits, union opportunities, and high pay for marginalized workers through The Good Jobs Initiative, and now its time to funnel those efforts where they are most needed by making STEM education more accessible to minority communities.

We need to be more focused on the industries that need people, Walsh said. Our training has to be more intentional.

To give women and people of color more career opportunities in STEM, Walsh said the Department of Labor is collaborating with the Department of Education and the American Federation of Teachers to recruit more STEM educators, investing in community colleges and postsecondary institutions, and working to expose students to STEM when theyre young.

We actually have to let young people see what the result of STEM education is, Walsh said. They have to feel it and see it.

Katie Mogg can be reached at katie.mogg@globe.com. Follow her on twitter @j0urnalistkatie

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Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology praised as a model for inclusive, innovative science programs - The Boston Globe