Welcome to the Land & Leadership Initiative:
a deeply participatory, community-driven school
led by author and soil sponge strategist Didi Pershouse.
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Human and environmental health begins with the soil and grows upward from there.
The Land and Leadership Initiative (LALI) was founded with the goal of creating healthier, more resilient, and more empowered communities by focusing on the regeneration of healthy soil. The "soil carbon sponge" is the infrastructure that makes life on land possible. A healthy soil sponge soaks up rain, filters water, and maintains its structural integrity even when wet, thereby preventing flooding, drought, wildfires, erosion, mudslides, and algae blooms. |
Our courses are geared towards people who want to organize or lead soil health initiatives in their own regions.
We have a strong focus on methods for communicating more effectively about soil's central role in preventing extreme weather events, public health, and thriving economies. We welcome people from all backgrounds in these courses, and we usually have an international group of farmers, ranchers, policy makers, teachers, college students, scientists, engineers, and others who see the potential to make big changes by putting soil at the center. |
If you want to learn how to make your farm more resilient to droughts and floods, then here is your chance!
Didi is fantastic at explaining how to fix our broken water cycle.
— Gail Fuller, Farmer
Our courses are designed to give you the tools to facilitate, lead, and support soil health initiatives in your own region. We aim to empower you with an understanding of whole-systems view of landscape function, communication strategies, and a well-founded hope for the future.
UPCOMING COURSES
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Effective writing can open the doors to financial resources, meetings with policy makers, invitations to speak at conferences, and opportunities for deep discussions with your neighbors.
Clear, compelling writing can help people shift to a new way of seeing and understanding landscapes, change people's minds about what's important, and drive them to action. Whether or not you think of yourself as a writer, everyone is welcome in this course, which will focus on developing your ability to share accurate information about soil health and whole-systems ecosystem function, in ways that people will love to read. Much of it will spring from the context of your own landscape, community, ideas, and life. The course begins on May 3rd, and will run for 5 consecutive Fridays in May. Learn more here. |
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In these four highly interactive weekly sessions, we will focus on creating policies that are holistically sound (social/cultural, economic, and ecological) with a broad base of favorable support. This methodology will be based on recent successful processes that have enabled healthy soil legislation to pass in New Mexico this winter.
This course will be taught by Jeff Goebel, a leading expert in consensus building, conflict resolution, and regenerative solutions who helps individuals and communities attain their goals and remove the obstacles that lie in the way, with over thirty years of national and international successes. As an award-winning consultant in private practice, he has worked on catalyzing positive change from non-profits to government agencies, multi-national corporations to small family ranchers. This course begins on May 6th, and will run for 4 weeks (three Mondays and a Tuesday). Learn more here. |
I can’t speak highly enough of Didi’s work. If you’d like to understand soil health and regeneration: this is a must.
— Gregory Landua, CEO of Regen Network