Registration, lodging, travelREGISTRATION/MEALS: The cost for registration is $600. This includes attendance May 10-14, (2 partial days and 3 full days) and most meals (with vegan and gluten free options), Lodging is not included in this fee. With sponsorship, we will be able to offer some scholarships for those who need them. This fee pays a modest working wage to those organizing, hosting, and leading the retreat, and covers expenses for food, meeting space and amenities. This event is a labor of love, not a big money maker. Spots are very limited. If we are overbooked, we will refund your payment or put you on a waiting list. You can pay through
AS SOON AS YOU PAY, PLEASE FILL OUT THIS REGISTRATION FORM SPONSORSHIP AND DONATIONS We will need some sponsors and additional donations in order to help certain people attend. You can find these options on the payment page. LODGING OPTIONS 1. Lakeside Lodging at Lake Morey Resort, a few miles drive from our meeting place. To book a room, click here. 2. Camping, glamping, and couch surfing options will also be available for a very reasonable fee within a 10 mile radius of the resort. When you submit the registration form, you can request help with alternative lodging. 3. There are other hotels and AIR BNBs available as well--check Google Maps for lodging near Fairlee, Vermont, USA. TRAVEL Our home base for the event is at a large lovely home with a swimming pond in East Thetford, Vermont
SIGN UP NOW About Didi Pershouse
Didi Pershouse is well known as an innovative international educator both in-person and online. She is the founder of the Land and Leadership Initiative. Her facilitator's guide Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function, is used in over 90 countries.
She became deeply involved in the intersection of food systems and health systems while providing rural health care for two decades at The Center for Sustainable Medicine, and wrote The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities. She has written a field training manual for the UN-FAO Farmer Field School Program and the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming Initiative in India, involving over 1 million smallholder farmers. She was a contributing author to The Climate Emergency: How Africa Can Survive and Thrive; Climate Change and Creation Care; and Health in the Anthropocene. She was one of five speakers at the United Nations-FAO World Soil Day in 2017. She serves on the Planning Commission for her town, is a board supervisor for the White River Natural Resources Conservation District, and is on the board of directors of the Soil Carbon Coalition and the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition. While serving on the state appointed Payment for Ecosystem Services and Soil Health Working Group, she helped to reorient the program back to its public roots. She led a successful effort to conserve the Zebedee Headwaters Wetland while serving as a Vermont Conservation Commissioner. She is a lineage holder of the Change Agent Development Community founded by the late Carol Sanford. She has worked closely with Walter Jehne for many years, hosting retreats together at Lake Morey, where they co-founded the "Can We Rehydrate California?" initiative, and helped inspire Pre-Monsoon Dry Sowing in India. |
Why are we gathering? Things are changing fast. New patterns are forming. We want time to think together.
The foundational agreements and regional systems that most people thought were relatively stable are rapidly reorganizing. This involves everything from rainfall patterns, to food systems, to governance and public services. Different patterns and systems will emerge, for better or for worse. Many people are panicking, and looking for new approaches and new leaders. Are we those leaders? I'm pretty sure we are. Those of us who have been working to understand and communicate a "living systems" approach to decision making ("the living climate", small and large water cycles, the biotic pump, the soil sponge, holistic management, and hydrological cooling) have a unique opportunity to step up and be resources during this time. As a community of practice, we know alternative approaches (to planning. policy, and practice) that transcend divisions and adapt to real-time changes. We have knowledge and collective experience that can create healthy societies and biosystems, and provide food sovereignty, abundant clean water, and regional resiliency to fires, floods, heatwaves and drought. Our approaches can reduce forced migration and conflict over resources, address the public health crisis, and bring life back to degraded land. How do we want to work together during these interesting times, to bring forward something that wasn’t possible before? We have found each other in online spaces and begun our work. Now it’s time to nourish and sharpen our community of practice by gathering in person. Join us May 10-14 for a retreat in Vermont. We will gather for deep discussion and strategic thinking using living systems frameworks. There will also be plenty of "being" time for jumping in the pond, walks among the lilacs, music, food, sleep, laughter and maybe some tears of grief and joy. We will (finally) get to know each other in person (and for some of us, reunite) as we share and sharpen our understandings of living systems at work and design effective interventions during these exciting times. This deep dive will be designed and led by Didi Pershouse, Founder at the Land and Leadership Initiative, with occasional presentations by various participants of the retreat. Australian scientist and systems-thinker Walter Jehne will join us via Zoom for part of the retreat. Otherwise we expect it to be entirely in person (not hybrid, and very few screens). Here are some of the kinds of questions we will look at:
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