(Some of our team places down an occultation tarp to prepare a new garden site under ITAV)

Beginning in Fall 2025, working the Upper Headwaters of the Roanoke River in the Appalachian Mountains, we began implementing an ambitious project. Within the constraints of a Gun Violence Prevention Grant, we were awarded $300k for ecological education, fruit tree and garden installations, access to community composting, arts programming, workforce development with trade unions, and other family support programming.

When he first came across the grant application, Greg gave me a call and invited a conversation about how we could take our past work together and build on our successes and lessons learned. Greg's position with the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority (RRHA) already allowed us to install a vegetable garden, and to provide workforce development in agriculture for high-school aged students.

This application was only open to Public Housing Authorities in the state of Virginia, and given the context of instability in the USA, we felt it was worth the time to explore because 1) the competition was limited, and 2) the funds were not likely to disappear compared to federal funding. So we met up after work, grabbed a quesadilla at a dive bar, and began to talk. Over the next month, we met regularly, connecting with potential partners, drafting budgets, doing site visits, and writing.

(Preparing the first garden site for RRHA)

We knew the success of the first garden could be replicated, expanding fresh produce access throughout the community. And while we do not believe this approach to agriculture is, in and of itself, the long-term solution to food security—or a solution to the planetary crisis—we see it as a fundamental place in which we can connect with natural cycles, especially for those who have have only ever seen life from within the decaying structures of modernity.

We also took time to understand the limitations of our previous youth program, Take Root. We had offered training in annual farming, perennial food forests, career development, and food safety and preparation. While the youth who participated showed short- and long-term benefits, the wider impact we had been intending did not materialize. And with the high costs per participant, we could not justify continuing the programming.

(Our last season of Take Root, with youth planting Fall kale for the community)

So in approaching this new opportunity, it was critical that our design would go beyond the funding cycle, regenerating engagement and cultivating intrinsic incentives. So we started to construct a vision with youth at the center, but the support systems they rely upon being nurtured along the way. We discussed what would be critical infrastructure that we should build with an initial upfront investment that are without regular large maintenance costs. So while It Takes a Village is funded for two-years, we are already laying the foundation for this work to continue after 2027.

This effort exists in relation to many others in our community: our distributed community-farm, where we plan, plant, pick, prepare and preserve collectively; our community compost facility, where we redress the failure of industrial civilization to understand that "there is no 'away' where we can throw things"; and our community meetings, where workers gather to engage in civic education and organize in response to society's shortcomings in the management of our current common pool of resources.