Invitation to the Black Dirt Farm Teen AgroEncounter
Dear Friend and Colleague,
We would like to invite your young leaders to participate in Black Dirt Farm Collective’s AgroEco Youth Encounter scheduled August 12-15, 2017, on the grounds of Black Dirt Farm, in Preston on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; home of the powerful ancestral lands of Araminta Ross (Harriet Tubman). Your young people have been identified as critical youth movement weavers by the Political Coordination Committee of the Encounter. We would like to invite you and your teens to participate in this Training of Trainers for People’s Agroecology for the U.S context. We are accompanied in this process by the Black Dirt Farm Collective, Soil Generation, Soilful City, and other regional farmers, farmworkers, women, youth, elders, advocates, artists, healers, community members and organizations from the Mid-Atlantic.
The Agroecology Encounter will include these elements:
Debate on the struggle of Black and Brown peoples as it relates to the industrial agriculture model in the US (i.e. Afroecology, History of the Eastern Shore/Underground Railroad, Migration, Colonialism in the present day, Seed Sovereignty, Feminism etc)
Leadership and personal development through activity-based lessons on identity, family ancestry, critical thinking and organizing.
Technical skills-building using Farmer-to-Farmer methodologies like seedkeeping, trellising, companion planting, biological fertilizers
Space for healing, cultural expression and self transformation (visual arts, theater, music-making, restorative justice activities, reflective time)
Survival skills like tree identification, foraging for medicines, building fires, knot tying, and natural shelters
★★★★★
“The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now.”
Sam F.