We are… 

We are a collectively run, black-led community education and empowerment initiative that is re-imagining how communities can grow learners who think critically, live responsibly, and create meaningful change. Curriculum development, community education, Forest Freedom School and Summer camps, are the focus of our work in the Bay Area. We center the needs of those who are currently marginalized from meaningful educational experiences, with emphases on Black students, gender expansive and queer students, disabled learners, students holding trauma and all the intersections. Our long term goal is to utilize a residential Non-Profit/Co-Housing Model that will be part of a larger network of urban and rural land projects that are led by and center the knowledge and experiences of queer people of color.

We Believe...

We believe it is a child's right to explore their interests and create lasting relationships within an atmosphere of support and freedom. Our central commitments are to provide educational programming that centers social and environmental justice, creates constructive engagements across difference, and cultivates connections to the earth and our ancestral ecological practices in the form of learning communities.

We educate our children through a black, queer, ecofeminist lens. In the words of Greta Gaard, this lens requires embracing diversity and “building coalitions for creating a democratic, ecological culture based on our shared liberation.” We strive to create individual, community, and environmental change by fostering intergenerational, land-based learning practices.

Founding Principles

ANCESTRAL PRACTICES

We believe our children are best nurtured in a community rooted in land-based rhythms, rituals and practices that honor the connections to the Earth, our ancestors and each other. We look towards Black Land Liberation movements and Richard Louv’s “Last Child in the Woods” that echo that our program’s outdoor, place-based learning, which allows our children to go beyond schoolhouse walls and connect with their senses, their bodies, and their awareness of our planet.

Radical Inclusion

We create avenues for constructive engagement across difference. Our children and families hold a multitude of identities. We have found that a culture of including, respecting, and celebrating diverse perspectives enriches the learning environment. Children learn best in mixed aged environments. At Abundant Beginnings, we acknowledge and celebrate that children of the same age, may not have the same interests, abilities or learning styles. In order to connect and support the whole child we must be informed by their whole story, including race, family creation and trauma experienced. In addition, children need to see themselves reflected in their places of learning through curriculum, books, and activities. Our program aims to act as both a mirror and a window: we want our children to learn about themselves, and about others different from them.

Freedom

We believe in providing an atmosphere and environment that centers support and freedom. Our program structure is child-led and child-created, with an emphasis on children’s enthusiastic consent. We look to Black Panthers’ Freedom School, Akilah Richards and Self-Directed Learning Communities, Democratic Schools, Radical Unschooling, Forest Kindergartens and other alternative education models to inform our praxis. These sources have shown us that, given the chance to create and engage with their own worthwhile intellectual pursuits, children learn more than when forced.

Social Justice

We engage our children in education that centers social and environmental justice movements. More specifically, we encourage them to notice and challenge oppressive systems in little and big ways. Children experience and see injustices beginning at an early age. We believe it is our responsibility and our opportunity as educators and families to engage in dialogue in an explicit and developmentally-appropriate way with our children, about how our world is unfair and how we can use our power to create a better one.