As I write this from my rural Vermont apartment overlooking a rainy landscape, I’m overcome with relief that’s only partially comforting. We’ve been in extreme drought conditions, affecting farms and communities across the region. It’s times like these that remind us of how vulnerable we are. How much we rely on rain, energy grids, and Wi-Fi signals, even as aquifers dry up and pollinators disappear. It’s hard to hold a positive outlook or even feel any space for optimism these days. But with this rain comes a small semblance of hope. With the quenching sounds of wet droplets comes a possibility that the pastures might have a chance to grow back a little before winter, or that the watersheds might get a sip, a drop that has the power to hold an entire ecosystem together.
I don’t mean to paint a gloomy picture, and generally, when working with youth, we focus 99% on solutions. However, in this case and in general, we need to tell the truth to harness information from scientific observations in fragile areas into the consciousness of all sectors. The stories of climate refugees and catastrophic events like what just happened in the Village of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, Alaska where Typhoon Halong swept entire houses and communities away, with little to no warning or time to prepare, offer another example of the hard realities we face.
These events happen on a regular basis around the globe. Every day, areas of landmass that can no longer sustain populations expand, and the communities of people that have inhabited them for millennia are forced to leave. It’s estimated by the International Organization for Migration that there will be up to 216 million climate refugees by 2050. We must be asking ourselves,
Given what we know, how are we preparing for the coming future?"
The ReGeneration Corps was born out of a collective response to this inquiry. We began by asking questions like:
- “How are we preparing youth with the skills to address the complexity of political and local issues related to climate solutions?”
- “How can we build opportunities to uplift local knowledge grounded in place?”
- “What local solutions exist that middle and high school students can engage with?”
- “How do we center those most impacted?”
A group of educators, farmers, climate activists, non-profit allies, and BIPoC partners came together to co-create a path forward that would increase opportunities for youth to engage with local climate solutions. We met biweekly for two years and affectionately became known as Mycelium Meets. As we built relationships and addressed the needs and gaps in climate education, we also met with the intention to de-silo our work and uplift collaboration.
In February of 2020, we launched the ReGeneration Corps with the mission “to empower youth with the skills to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and its constituent impacts, while contributing to the regenerative local food system.” We gained inspiration from Kathleen’s Kesson’s A Blueprint for Community Schools and found inroads to schools through the Flexible Pathway Initiative (Act 77 of 2013) and by leveraging our relationships from past work in the Farm to School arena and Farm Education fields.
This network allowed us to “ground truth” our programs in place-based, local, real solutions. We delivered presentations on a Just Transition, composting, regenerative agriculture, permaculture, and agroecology. We taught electives on soil health while building a compost bin, seed saving while designing a garden, and pollinators while harvesting culinary herbs. Two schools across districts came together to plant a pollinator hedgerow at a nearby farm.
Since we were creating the map while navigating, we tried to connect with our network to strategize about programming and fundraising. We held a strong commitment to following the leadership and guidance of educators, farmers, and BIPoC partners in recognition of their positionality as front-line communities in what are increasingly rapidly changing environments. We use the words “resilience” and “regeneration” to highlight the practices and principles that build healthy ecosystems with integrated and complex relationships that all generate energy and cycle minerals, water, nutrients, and people back into landscapes. Our goal is to integrate students with these cycles and landscapes to support their embodied understanding of interconnected systems.
This is where multisolving comes in. We wanted our programs to meet growing concerns related to the increasing apathy, addiction, lack of physical activity, and screen addiction in youth, while multisolving to create opportunities for hands-on learning based on local, place-based programs. There is enough evidence now to suggest that outdoor and environmental education increases attention spans and decreases behavioral issues. I have now come to witness this many times over.
After our first year, we reflected on how our programs aligned with a Just Transition as well as the Multisolving Framework. At this time, our focus was on composting, establishing native tree nurseries, and supporting local food sovereignty. We walked through the FLOWER tool for each of these areas and found multiple co-benefits for each one. For instance, teaching composting while building on-campus facilities to manage food waste not only reduces carbon emissions, but also creates a fertile resource for the school gardens, while creating young experts who are intimately involved with all aspects of the process, from collecting to spreading on the garden beds.
Similarly, we started our Free Food for All garden because we needed a site to teach about regenerative growing and designed it to have multiple co-benefits. We host groups from different schools to help grow, weed, and harvest the veggies and demonstrate companion planting, no till, cover cropping, and mulching. The site is also home to our tree nursery stocked with a germplasm of hardy tree stock destined for agroforestry projects on local farms and a food forest with nuts, fruits, and berries. Everything grown is distributed to those who come to help, the local food shelf, and the community refrigerator, open 24 hours a day.
The positive outcomes from these programs reflect another value that we aim to center in our approach, reciprocity. Our ability to create a Just Transition relies on our ability to inhabit this concept in our relations with each other and the places we intersect.
A Just Transition involves a big pivot from extractive and exploitative practices to ones that are regenerative and reciprocal. We talk about this in the context of agriculture, labor, production, and corporations vs. co-ops. We look at it from the frame of “Who makes the decisions?” and “Who benefits?” When students comprehend that their ability to understand a system relates to the questions they ask about it, their critical thinking skills are engaged. But we don’t stop there! We want them to feel confident in understanding feedback loops and incorporating systems theory and multisolving techniques into their toolboxes.
In partnership with community projects like the Clifford Park Food Forest –where an underutilized town park has been transformed into a diversified food forest and riparian buffer by local farmers who are planting trees for pollinators, silvopasture, and shade –we’ve been able to show students how regenerative agriculture is leading the way in local climate solutions. Hundreds of middle and high school students have helped to install trees in pastures, pollinator hedgerows, and riparian buffers, grow food, and meet farmers who are eager to share their stories and practices.
As we continue on our path in an ever-evolving landscape of uncertainty, we look forward to meeting the gaps in climate education with opportunities that build skills and confidence in youth while supporting farmers in regenerating farms as diverse ecosystems with both trees and community. The ReGeneration Corps is a living example of “we can’t do it alone.” Our social mycelium is the bedrock of the program, breathing life into human solutions that quench our needs and our calling to adapt.
Karen is the nursery manager and runs the youth education program, the ReGeneration Corps, for the White River Natural Resources Conservation District in Vermont.
She holds a B.A self-designed degree, titled Social Engagement in Environmental Awareness and Human Rights, is a Master Composter and Somatic Facilitator. In 2015, after working at and living on a number of farms in the Northeast, she received both her
permaculture design and teacher certification and founded Permaculture Solutions, LLC., designing garden ecosystems and bringing her love of medicinal herbs and perennial food systems to landscapes around the region.
Prior to starting the ReGeneration Corps and working full time with the WRNRCD, she ran Change the World Kids, a nonprofit supporting youth in engaging with service-based learning opportunities and food justice. She is also the co-founder of Transition Town Upper Valley, the Upper Valley Apple Corps, the Hartford Hub, and the Vermont Agroecology School, all initiatives working towards food and land sovereignty.
