Join us for free weekly virtual community discussions
EcoGatherings
What to Expect
After a couple years of working hard with friends and partners to put together a repository of 24 courses, we still felt like something was missing from EcoGather. We realized we needed someplace to take the ideas packed into the classes, some place to spread them out and let them breathe. We needed to connect with others who, like us, crave an education that makes sense in a world that does not. We wanted to invite our friends over for dinner or for tea. We wanted to bring ideas to life, consult conversations that unfurl and meander, and imagine together.
Our intention with these sessions is to create a space that feels like walking into the cool bookstore-café down the road with good coffee and comfy chairs, the place where people meet up to exchange and dig into big ideas, loan you a copy of that book they just read, and articulate what it means to live through the concentric crises of our time. EcoGatherings are spaces defined by thoughtfulness and laughter, creativity and vulnerability, emergence and ease, joy and care.
So how will these EcoGatherings work, you ask? We'll usually have some suggested (but not required!) reading or listening that you can do beforehand, and we might ask you to bring something along, whether that's wine and cheese, an object that reminds you of our topic, or a response to a prompt, all of which will help get our conversations going. We'll start with check-ins, a grounding, an introduction to this session's topic, and a variety of breakout room conversations before reconvening for a large group discussion.
New themes for our EcoGatherings are introduced almost every week, so there are frequent opportunities to connect with the EcoGather community in a warm, welcoming virtual space. We alternate days and times to accommodate as many friends as possible. Check the calendar for the next EcoGathering or scroll our Events page to see what topics we’ll be gathering around in the coming months. All listed times are in ET.
EcoGatherings are free to participate in - the only requirement is to agree to uphold our community guidelines for sharing an online space. Of course, if you would like to support the continuation of EcoGather, you can make a tax deductible donation.
Hope to see you at the next EcoGathering!
Meet Your Hosts
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With training in biology and entomology, Nissa offers a natural sciences perspective to EcoGathering conversations. She has enjoyed expanding her perspective from one of a traditional reductive scientific understanding of the world to a more holistic systemic understanding through her work at EcoGather and conversations with all the EcoGatherers.
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Lauren is learning to understand and claim her identity as a white woman with Appalachian roots, and is working to decouple her identity and self-worth from “wage labor” to give space for her full humanity to unfurl. Simultaneously, she is working to “unravel” herself from dominant systems, while braiding an ever more intricate and beautiful vision of what she hopes humanity can be, and how she might be able to create spaces where that vision can become reality.
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Always ready to talk about overshoot, collapse, and finding meaning under dominant culture, Erik oscillates between working agricultural jobs and living out of his car to visit folks involved in radical work across the country. He grounds his own work and worldview in deep ecology, local community, and the pursuit of kinship and solidarity with the living world.
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Mackenzie moved between New Jersey, Brooklyn, and Colorado before returning to Vermont. Her training in sociology and humanities-focused environmental studies translated into a love for food systems, which she studied after a couple years of hopping from small farm to small farm. Nissa's shown her how to ask better questions and reminded her that science is fun, too - especially when it involves potions, bees, and candle-making. Mackenzie has since moved on from her official role at EcoGather, but she played an integral part of making the space what it is today.