Events Calendar

An intensive workshop designed to help diverse leaders create new coalitions and new approaches in order to address broad-level environmental and social change. We will practice transformational leadership that includes listening, cultural competency, adaptation and flexibility, making room for others and cultivating a moral voice.

Click here for more information on our Whole Thinking Workshops

Learn more about our pricing structure.

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In this ongoing program to support the future health and resilience of our community, citizens of the Mad River Valley come together to get to know each other, voice their hopes and values, build skills, and deepen leadership.

This event will culminate on Saturday evening with a dinner picnic and oral history/storytelling evening at Knoll Farm that is open to all.

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Celebrate the taste of Vermont’s local and organic food at a NOFAvore Social with Knoll Farm and NOFA Vermont (the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont)! We invite you to join us for dinner featuring our Vermont Farmers’ Fare pizza with local and organic cheeses, meats, and toppings, hot from our wood-fired oven. The celebration will provide an opportunity to meet other NOFA Vermont supporters in your region, introduce your friends to NOFA Vermont, and tour Knoll Farm. These gatherings are free and open to all (NOFA members and non-members alike). Please do pre-register by contacting the NOFA Vermont office at 802-434-4122 or info@nofavt.org. Find out more about NOFA Vermont online at www.nofavt.org.

Climate Change: Understanding its Effects, Personally and Culturally

Climate change is here to stay and is affecting all of us in some way. However, climate change enters peoples' lives differently: sometimes as information, others times as material effects. It’s important to all of us, and to our collective humanity, to understand these impacts on our emotional, social and cultural realities.

The goals of this workshop are to help us understand climate change as a system, and to deepen our capacities to engage with climate change in our life, work, communities and world. We will do this through conversation, reflection and active engagement with ideas and with one another.

Questions we'll consider together include: - Who is experiencing climate change through information? Through loss? - How is privilege mediating climate change debate, policy and action? - How do we challenge the human-centric approach to conversations about the Earth to consider conversations with the Earth?

Learn more about our pricing structure.

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In these difficult economic times, philanthropists are having to examine more than ever their focus and approach in order to carry out their mission. Come to this workshop to be with a small cohort of philanthropists and funders to explore what transformational grantmaking could look like today.

This workshop begins on Tuesday afternoon and ends after breakfast on Friday. The cost covers all meals and accomodations.

Learn more about the Whole Funding Workshop

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This workshop will help us support one another to find our voice, to use shared language, and to harness the power of story not only in our lives but in our leadership. We’ll look at what it means to lead through story, through our deepest values.

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Join Center for Whole Communities alumni from across the New England region as we gather at Knoll Farm to deepen our capacity for whole communities work and strengthen our connections with each other.

Working together, we will share our challenges and successes; practice dialogue, deep listening and story; and explore the practice of transformative leadership. Given the challenges ahead, what is required of us as leaders today? Ample time will be given to considering how we can partner as regional allies with broader, shared goals.

Fee of $195 includes all meals and accommodation.

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Join with New Jersey Alumni at the historic Burlington Meeting House as we deepen our capacity for whole communities work and strengthen connections with each other.

Together, we will deepen our understanding of the ways race, power and privilege impact our institutions and communities; and dialogue about transformative leadership. We will also explore Burlington, a city with an extensive history related to the abolishment of slavery; and visit alumni in the region, tasting whole communities work “on the ground.”

This workshop is made possible by the generous support of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

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Whole Thinking Retreats bring together diverse leaders from multiple disciplines. We bring them together to ask questions of themselves and each other, and through that process help them see their work and potential in a new light. What emerges from our work is stronger leadership, bolder, visioning and more systemic change. This is a fellowship-based retreat, by invitation.

Click here for more information on our retreats.

Whole Thinking Retreats bring together diverse leaders from multiple disciplines. We bring them together to ask questions of themselves and each other, and through that process help them see their work and potential in a new light. What emerges from our work is stronger leadership, bolder, visioning and more systemic change. This is a fellowship-based retreat, by invitation.

Click here for more information on our retreats.

Whole Thinking Retreats bring together diverse leaders from multiple disciplines. We bring them together to ask questions of themselves and each other, and through that process help them see their work and potential in a new light. What emerges from our work is stronger leadership, bolder, visioning and more systemic change. This is a fellowship-based retreat, by invitation.

Click here for more information on our retreats.

A Whole Thinking Retreat for young leaders in the environmental and social justice fields. Whole Thinking Retreats bring together diverse leaders from multiple disciplines. We bring them together to ask questions of themselves and each other, and through that process help them see their work and potential in a new light. What emerges from our work is stronger leadership, bolder, visioning and more systemic change. This is a fellowship-based retreat, by invitation.

Click here for more information on our retreats.

This is a popular workshop every year. Come learn all about siting, planting, pruning, and caring for your blueberries, and have a chance to pick-your-own from 7 different varieties after the workshop. This is a NOFA-VT summer series workshop and all proceeds go to benefit NOFA-VT. $10 for NOFA members and $15 for non-members.

Following the workshop we will host a "Nofavore" celebration of local food hot from our bread oven and a farm tour. All are welcome!

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Master craftsman, educator and homesteader, Bill Coperthwaite will be back to lead work with participants of all levels to carve a beautiful and unique hardwood spoon. You’ll learn to use a crooked knife, the traditional carving blade used by the Northwest tribes, and to design and shape a spoon from a block of cherry or birch. All materials will be provided. This workshop fills quickly each year so sign-up early! $60 includes all material and full-day instruction.

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If you’ve ever seen a hand-carved wooden bowl you know how extraordinary they are, but you may have also marveled at how long it must take to scoop out so much wood. In this workshop, Bill Coperthwaite will explain how to use simple block knives and other hand tools to save time and effort and come away with a beautiful carved bowl in one day that will last you more than a lifetime. All materials provided; all levels of experience encouraged. This workshop was a huge success last year! $80 covers all materials, tools, and a full-day of instruction.

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"Stories are the secret reservoirs of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves and you change the individuals and nations. Nations and people are largely the stories they tell themselves" Ben Okri

We all tell stories - to ourselves, to each other and to our communities. Challenging world events and environmental issues contribute to how many of us narrate the relationship between our personal actions and the welfare of nature and neighborhoods.

To focus on a single issue, such as ecologically sustainable landscaping, is both a privilege as well as a source of isolation. While attendees and exhibitors at the ELA Conference and Eco-Marketplace seek to learn practical skills, they are also aware (or they hope) that their environmentally sensitive practices have a positive impact of the surrounding bioregion and community. They are part of an environmental movement that has over 10,000 organizations. These organizations represent 10,000 visions of the current state of local, national and international environmental concerns. These movements for change are as divided and fragmented as the culture we live in - and these divides hurt people and the earth. There is no coherent story that all share.

The art of story, practiced by us all in our daily lives, has untapped potential in the field of conservation. Indeed, telling the stories of our relationships to land could be the key to effecting social change around conservation values. Whole Communities is about deep diversity and a commitment to inclusively – to work on behalf of all people and all ecosystems so that all may thrive.

Visit ELA's website for more information or to register

How does the practice of conservation change when we begin to view it not just as a legal act, but as a cultural one? What would an approach to conservation that depended on relationships as well as laws look like? Participants in this seminar will begin to answer these questions by developing a greater understanding of the role of land, and its uses and misuses, in shaping healthy and prosperous communities. They will consider new theories of how broad societal change occurs, and the role of conservation and education in fostering positive change. They will rethink language and strategies around partnerships; build stronger goals for collaboration with community partners; discuss how best to inspire conservation rather than demand it; and learn how to build stronger bases of support through community-driven efforts. Finally, they will consider new ways to determine what successful conservation looks like, and learn about a new measurement too- "Whole Measures"- to help them know when they've achieved it. Click here for more information or to register

Join Peter Forbes, co-founder of the Center for Whole Communities, as he guides this timely weekend retreat. Each one of us can truly make a difference in our communities, live our lives joyfully in the process, and satisfy our deep longing to take care of what we love. Whether our issue is alternative energy, peace in the Middle East, or economic justice, Peter will teach us how we can harness our passion, hone our ability to truly listen, and speak so that we inspire a response. Let’s transform our world!

For more information or to register visit http://www.mro.org/zmm/retreats

enable all of us to succeed in this new economy? Today, how do we best take care of one another, the land, and our healthy systems of food production? How can we build healthy, whole communities in New Jersey?

The purpose of this workshop is to deepen the alliances across fields, sectors, politics, socio-economics and race that are critical today in creating a new story about land, food and healthy communities. In the summer of 2008, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and Center for Whole Communities convened 18 leaders to strengthen the field of land conservation by connecting it with other land-based movements who are working with New Jersey communities around food systems, urban development, and business. The goal was to develop the new relationships and understanding between these leaders that would lead to a fundamental shift in practice. For example, to elevate the importance of food grown close to market in terms of addressing resource use and climate change.

In this workshop we will go through tips for successful lambing with very little infrastructure or intervention. Our purebred Icelandic ewes live outside year-round, deliver their lambs in the field, and are an incredible low-maintenance asset to our farm. We will talk about raising sheep in general, breeding, grazing management, and how to start a flock. Co-sponsored by the Mad River Valley Localvore Project. $10 per person

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The political and cultural landscape of our country is changing dramatically and so must our efforts to protect rivers. Today, those who care about nature can not succeed without those who care about people. How do we convey what we care most about in away that earns a real response from our neighbors? Join author, photographer, and movement-builder Peter Forbes for a journey into the role of story as force in bridging divides and re-shaping the conservation movement to be a stronger player in the new politics of America. Story is the way to rebuild a land ethic in our culture and the way to cross the boundaries between us. Story is the way conservationists expand their work from landscape-scale to the much larger culture-scale.

For More information on the River Ralley visit their website

At Knoll Farm we have 40 layer hens in a mobile coop. We will cover breeds, rotating hens through your pasture, predators, winter management and feed. Co-sponsored by the Mad River Valley Localvore Project. $10 per person

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A retreat for a business, environmental, political, education and public health leaders in New Hampshire to find common ground, common purpose and common courage in tackling one of the major issues of our day. Sponsored by the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and by invitation.