WHO
WE ARE
We are a horizontally organized collective that is working to dismantle dominant power dynamics. We do that by sharing power, decision making and acknowledging that regardless of the role we have in the collective, all are equal and valuable. We acknowledge the places where we hold privilege whether it is in race, class, gender, creed, learning style, longevity with the collective, social capital and otherwise. We can not do this work without each other; we uplift everyone for what they bring. When we speak of our successes, we honor all those that come before us and after us in the work for liberation.
We base our work on love for each other and Earth.
TEAM MEMBERS.
Cat Buxton
Program Director
Cat Buxton is a busy cross-pollinator and change facilitator from the White River watershed in Vermont. She is an effective and enthusiastic educator, community organizer, and advocate for food system change. She works with individuals, schools, community groups, and statewide and national organizations to make a difference one meal, one compost pile, and one landscape at a time. From behavior change to climate change, local food to global food, grassroots organizing to legislative policy making, Cat is all about empowering people to affect the necessary changes to restore health to people and planet. Cat works on topics such as soil and ecosystem health, community resilience, composting, water catchment, landscape planning, monitoring landscape function, and increasing biodiversity. Cat is a musician, artist, and self-described microbe geek.
Karen Ganey
Community Director
Karen Ganey is the founder of Permaculture Solutions, LLC,a small permaculture design and education firm where she works to develop ecologically diverse and nutrient dense landscapes for humans and habitat. She has designed forest gardens and garden systems for families, schools, hospitals and communities a like. Karen is also the Facilitator for Change the World Kids, a youth-led non-profit that focuses environmental stewardship and social justice based in Woodstock Vermont. She has co-founded a number of local initiatives to build more resilient culture through re-skilling, planting fruit and nut trees for free and public picking and leading actions that are transformational in conception and implementation. She is also a lay herbalist and Reiki Master and enjoys applying earth and energy based healing to her landscape methods. When she is not gardening or organizing, Karen enjoys teaching about ecological design and regenerative agriculture, making herbal preparations and swimming in the wild waters of Vermont.
Michelle Eddleman McCormick
Administrative Director
Michelle is a mother of two and has been active in racial and social justice movements since her youth. She brings 25 years experience in nonprofit organizational development as mostly a consultant, but also as an employee early on in my career, and a decade in the global corporate sector doing business development for one of the largest travel companies in the world. She currently serves as; the General Manager of the worker-owned Marshfield Village Store in rural Vermont, a member of the Board of Directors of Cooperation Vermont and the CVT Land Trust, a coordinator of Regeneration Corp, a Trustee of the Jaquith Library and a member of the Planning Commission for Marshfield, VT. When she has a spare moment she enjoys fly fishing, kayaking and traveling.
Henry Harris
Field Organizer
Henry grew up in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, and represent the Center for Grassroots Organizing in Marshfield, VT, VT Agroecology School Partner. He is a carpenter, and has worked in social movements around the US, organizing mass actions, food sovereignty projects, and racial and economic justice work. He currently works with Northeast Kingdom Organizing (NEKO), the VT National Lawyers Guild, The Cooperative Land Trust, and the Regeneration Corps, and farm at the CGO with Nulhegan Abenaki members and the North Star Collective, a youth food sovereignty project, growing trees, medicines & veggies, and “climate farming” with cows and pigs for the first time this year!
PARTNERS.
BALE
Cedar Circle Farm
Cedar Mountain Farm
The Center for Grassroots Organizing
Creative Lives
Community Resilience Organization
Dartmouth Organic Farm & Agroforestry Lab
Grow More Waste Less
NH Academy of Science
Open Door
The Ottauquechee Water Protectors Alliance
Permaculture Solutions
Rural Vermont
Vermont FEED
Vital Communities
White River Conservation District
White River Partnership?
The White River Land Collaborative
Youth Empowerment and Action
Farm2Plate
Franklin County Conservation District
Center for Agricultural Economy