AmeriCorps at EarthDance: A Legacy, Continued, & A Year of Service in Ferguson
For 5 years, members of AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) , a federal program aimed at eradicating domestic poverty, have been building capacity at EarthDance Organic Farm School. VISTA workers joined the organization just 2 short years after its genesis (2008), and, by necessity, assumed a great deal of responsibility. (Many of them have since assumed pivotal roles at the organization like Director of Programs Rachel Levi, and former 2014 VISTA LaTia Thomas, a “farmie”, or participant in this year’s Farm & Garden Apprenticeship; Rachel’s and LaTia’s stories exemplify how the EarthDance VISTA experience personally and professionally transforms its members.) Past VISTA’s volunteer on the farm, at fundraisers, and community outreach events, too.)
EarthDance AmeriCorps VISTA’s rose to the challenges their service presented then, and continue to do so to this day. We have high hopes for our latest crop, whom we are thrilled to introduce. For the first time, the EarthDance staff will include 4 AmeriCorps Summer Associates: Alan Prater, Dan Mueller, Liz Essman, and Sami Tellatin. They will be tackling a variety of field, office, and community projects, including compost and energy systems (Sami), food distribution (Liz), graphic design and media (Alan), and a new program series, the Practicing Peace Initiative (Dan).
Dan is “excited to be a part of growing an organization that she [I] believes in, in a city that needs the extra care.” In many ways, it’s an apt description of our home right now. AmeriCorps recognized this need too, which is why they allocated funding to create more VISTA positions at St. Louis non-profits. The only semblance of a silver lining people seemed to able to muster in the wake of Michael Brown’s death sounded like: “One day, down-the-road, we will be able to see some positive outcome from this.” According to headlines, Ferguson was burning. In this, I am lucky–I can point to the responses of EarthDance and the Ferguson community and find two such linings. The gratitude I feel when I remember affirms that becoming a VISTA is exactly the direction in which my life was meant to twist.
A practical, invaluable takeaway from my time here as our marketing coordinator: a heap of professional and interpersonal skills. I am more marketable. Equally transformative, but a different animal altogether, was becoming part of a new family. Everyone is grateful to grow the EarthDance family by 4 more.
Two weeks ago, we hosted Paul Monteiro, AmeriCorps National Director, several national and regional AmeriCorps staff, and the team from Mission St. Louis, a non-profit that focuses on community empowerment; Mission St. Louis reconstructs neighborhoods into “places of opportunity” where people “know and serve their neighbors…” Founding Director Molly Rockamann delivered an overview of our mission, the history of the Mueller Family Farm, and the role AmeriCorps members have played in sustaining EarthDance’s ability to advance the local good food movement through growing food, farmers, and community. EarthDance has taught me that strengthening this movement likewise creates neighborhoods of opportunity.
Having contributed to this endeavor has been incredible for its own sake, but, for me, in the richness of my term, place has been second only to the mission. The VISTA program has enriched the experience further still by both framing work as stewardship and connecting all of the VISTA’s who serve in St. Louis.
So the place. Yes, Ferguson brought the national AmeriCorps executives to the farm. VISTA’s, Permaculture Projects Coordinator Suzanne Hart and Development Associate Becca Pace, detailed EarthDance programs before the discussion steered towards our 3 accounts of serving in Ferguson. On everybody’s mind: How has everyone been affected by the unrest? Visitors canceled tours. The Ferguson Farmers Market was canceled, too. People were nervous.
But what I come back to each time I parse out what has been a very surreal year, the outpour of support EarthDance received from friends and neighbors stands out. I remember fielding phone calls of concern, people asking if the staff were safe and if had the farm been affected. The Saturday after Michael Brown was shot, we had our most successful market day. The most poignant part of that success was not sales-related. It was, as overly-sentimental as it may sound, the smiles and the free hugs. But you know what? There is something to be said for our need to focus on the sentimental when we are inside a situation where rationality feels both nonexistent and hopeless. Whatever sentiment was seen or felt that day is what I imagine when I hear this word I have used more times in the past year than probably all my years’ combined: community.
The exchanges between market-goers as well as market-goers and the EarthDance staff said “all is not lost and we because we refuse to lose it.” The day was not exuberant but the atmosphere felt like exactly what everyone needed: the quiet hope of a deep breath held and expelled from toe to head. That day reminds me of how a farmers market serves as a powerful community space, and how down-in-my-bones-lucky I am to have spent my VISTA year working at a farm in Ferguson.
