Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
(Ongoing) Action Steps Towards Dismantling White Supremacy
As we observe, reflect, imagine, and take action steps towards reparations and educating ourselves, we engage in a continual process of movement and change.
Transformation is unending.
BIPOC in leadership teams
It has been our ongoing commitment to include BIPOC in our diverse leadership teams. Any updates to our teams can be found here.
Centering sources and texts from BIPOC
Here is our incomplete community reading list from Place Corps at Hawthorne Valley 2019/20. Additional to our reading list, our 2019/20 curricular syllabus included texts from Sherry Mitchell, Jenny Odell, bell hooks, adrienne maree brown, Ibram X Kendi, Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, and many more. Our social media continues to uplift content from BIPOC thinkers, authors, and creators.
Opportunities for BIPOC
participant leadership
We provide space for BIPOC-led facilitation and practice centering BIPOC voices during group discussions and meetings. Additionally in 2019-2020, we provided work study opportunities that created platforms for the leadership and voices of POC.
Collaborating with BIPOC speakers, guest educators, and workshop leaders
In 2019-2020, we partnered with Omega Institute OCSL, Soul Fire Farm, Bard’s Hannah Arendt Center, Good Work Institute, Wild Earth, Troy Innovation Garage, and others to offer workshops, lectures, and training led by BIPOC.
Allying with partnering organizations to support distribution and production of farm produce to benefit BIPOC communities
Hawthorne Valley Farm supports its initiative Rolling Grocer which is a Black founded and led organization that addresses food insecurity and access to communities in the county with a system of sliding scale grocery costs. It also supports its initiative Long Table Harvest, which gleans farm foods to be distributed to the local food pantries and salvation army which disproportionately serve BIPOC in the county.
In the 2019-2020 program year, part of the design of the homestead garden is tithing— growing a portion more than what is needed for the sustenance for the single household to be shared with the local community in need.
Decolonizing place-based learning and agriculture
In 2019-2020, we worked with Abrah Dresdale author of Social Permaculture and co-founder of Regenerate Change as well as diverse educators from Center for Whole Communities to decolonize permaculture and Wild Gather for decolonized herbalism.
Empowering social justice civic engagement
In 2020, we lobbied with NY Renews and protested for climate justice and participated in racial justice protests and rallies throughout the Hudson Valley.
We continually use our social media platforms and newsletters to routinely uplift opportunities for engagement.
Creating Scholarship for BIPOC
Equity, access, and reparations are all areas for our continued diligent and creative efforts to problem solve in relationship to the costs of our programs.
In 2019-2020, we did not have BIPOC scholarship for the Place Corps at Hawthorne Valley program, but instead distributed need-based scholarship only.
In 2021, we worked with Hawthorne Valley to reallocate budgetary funds and create the BIPOC scholarship fund of $5000 for any incoming BIPOC participant to be a step towards reparations while still providing need-based scholarship to any incoming participant to the Regenerative Design Fellowship.
Educating and practicing allyship
In 2019, the Place Corps cohort and team participated in a Just Transition Primer with Good Work Institute and an anti-racism workshop with Soul Fire Farm. Weekly, we workshopped interpersonal skills and co-governance; within these areas of study, we continually addressed the practice of allyship.
Cultivating relationship with
the indigenous community
As a young and small organization, we look forward to growing our relationships with indigenous community. We have aligned with our affiliates who have cultivated relationships with indigenous communities. Farmscape Ecology and Institute for Mindful Agriculture (initiatives of Hawthorne Valley), Land to Learn formerly known as Hudson Valley Seed, and Soul Fire Farm have relationships with the Stockbridge Munsee who were dislocated from these lands— their homeland— and moved to Wisconsin. Our 2019-2020 residents share more about the Stockbridge Munsee in their reflections in the yearbook.