Culture's Edge

12/19/2025

Warm holiday and Solstice greetings to all friends (and soon-to-be friends) of Earthaven!

As the days grow shorter and the nights deepen, we tend to turn inward — gathering close, reflecting on the year behind us, and sharing the stories that help us remember who we are and what we care about. We're remembering the story of you. You, who followed us online, attended an educational program, joined us for a tour, stayed with us for a while, donated to an Earthaven initiative or our hurricane recovery, mourned our losses, celebrated our joys...

Your care, presence, and generosity make it possible for this place and its people to continue telling — and living — a hopeful story about how humans can live in compassionate, regenerative relationship with one another and the Earth.

You helped our School of Integrated Living programs welcome 354 people for in-person tours, 271 for in-person programs, 232 in online programs, and 22 students and professors from the College of Charleston. Thanks to you, we were able give over $23,000 in scholarships and Earthaven discounts for our programs. And our Mountains to Marshes program, which included Experience Weekend, was recognized as the "coolest summer program" at the College of Charleston!

We would like to thank you by inviting you to join us tomorrow night for a free online Winter Solstice offering, hosted by the School of Integrated Living.

Storied: Engaging the soul tools of story & ritual to deepen into the fertile darkness
🗓 Saturday, December 20, 2025
🕓 4–6 pm Eastern
💻 Online via Zoom
Facilitated by NikiAnne Feinberg and Siobhan Asgharzadeh

This gathering invites us to tend the stories we carry — personal, ancestral, and cultural — and to listen for the small, quiet voice that emerges when we slow down and listen from the heart.

Free registration here:
https://www.schoolofintegratedliving.org/storied-solstice-ritual/

🎁 Our Holiday Fund Drive
This season, Culture’s Edge invites you to donate to our holiday fund drive. All holiday season donations are matched dollar-for-dollar up to $20,000, doubling the impact of every gift!

If Earthaven has mattered to you — as a place of learning, refuge, experimentation, healing, or hope — we invite you to support this work in whatever way feels right. Every contribution helps sustain the programs, people, and land that make this living laboratory possible.

Donate here: cultures-edge.org/donate

As we cross the threshold of the solstice, may we rest, reflect, and remember that stories can change lives — and cultures. Thank you for being part of this one.

With gratitude and warmth,
💚 Earthaven Ecovillage, Culture's Edge, and the School of Integrated Living

12/03/2025

There’s still time to have your donation to regenerative culture at Earthaven Ecovillage doubled. Today, your $25 becomes $50 and your $100 becomes $200, thanks to a generous matching challenge by a sponsor.

Ecovillages offer real-world models for a regenerative future — where land is restored, communities are resilient, and people are deeply connected. The Earthaven Ecovillage living laboratory teaches skills the world urgently needs — from climate resilience to cooperative economics, ecological design, and conflict transformation.

Your contribution supports:

• School of Integrated Living (SOIL) scholarships to make regenerative education accessible to more people.
• The Culture’s Edge Innovation Fund for community-led, village-scale solutions to the challenges of our time.
• The Earthaven Economic Relief Fund, helping villagers in crisis so they can stay and thrive in this bold experiment.
• The Ecovillage Development Program’s post–Hurricane Helene restoration of our land, creeks, and access routes.

Donate here: https://earthaven.org/donate

12/02/2025

It’s Giving Tuesday—and thanks to a generous donor, every gift to Earthaven and Culture’s Edge today is MATCHED 1:1 up to $20,000!

That means your support for our mission goes twice as far.
Earthaven is one of the longest-running, continuously active ecovillages in the U.S. — teaching, modeling, and living a regenerative way of living.

Donations made today support:
• The School of Integrated Living's scholarships that make regenerative education accessible to more people.
• The Culture's Edge Innovation Fund for community-led solutions to the challenges of our time
• The Earthaven Economic Relief Fund, helping villagers in crisis so they can stay and thrive in this bold experiment
- The Ecovillage Development Program’s Post-hurricane restoration of our land, creeks, and access routes

Giving Tuesday is a global day of generosity—and what could be more generous than devoting ourselves to building and modeling a more regenerative future. For nearly 30 years, Earthaven Ecovillage has demonstrated that another way is possible: living together with compassion, cooperation, and partnership with the land.

Today, you can help grow this living laboratory for a regenerative future. Your impact is doubled and your donations are tax deductible through our nonprofit partner, Culture's Edge.

12/02/2025

This year feels different. There’s a ferocity in the air to hold on to what’s dear to us. Even the simplest gifts are not being taken for granted. For our family, this was a year of change - shedding the extras so we could rediscover the essentials.

Earthaven holds lessons for the future. Not just for our family, but for humanity. That's why we want to amplify its voice and reach in the world.

Thanks to generous matching program by our own employer, our family is a force multiplier for .

Give today and your support makes twice the impact.

With love and thanks,
Grace, Christian and Pearl Birch

Donate to Culture's Edge here: https://www.schoolofintegratedliving.org/donate/

09/27/2025

We are so grateful for the support Earthaven Ecovillage received after Hurricane Helene last year — from friends, loved ones, and neighbors who stepped in to help — maybe including you. That care made all the difference.

This Fall, Culture's Edge is holding an Earthaven Friendraiser, inviting people to support the ecovillage movement by becoming a Friend of Earthaven. Friends of Earthaven strengthen the ecovillage's role as a living laboratory for resilience. Friends receive an insider newsletter with insight into daily life and Earthaven, invitations to events, and free online experiences.

The Earthaven Friendraiser runs through Oct 24, the International Day of Climate Action. I’d love for you to be part of it. Would you also share this post with your peeps? Thank you for all you do to make the world a better place.

Become a Friend of Earthaven

The Friends of Earthaven Ecovillage are friends, family, and members of the extended Earthaven community who provide financial support.

06/10/2025

Earthaven is featured on NPR for Climate Solutions Week, starting at 12 noon Eastern Time, on June 10.

NPR sent a reporter and a photographer to Earthaven this April to find out how the resilience our community has developed over the years — through our self-governance and conflict resolution skills, farms and gardens, off-grid infrastructure, mutual aid, and other areas — helped us through Hurricane Helene. And how we’re learning, rebuilding, and sharing what we learn with others. Tune in or log in to find out what they gleaned from their two-day visit.

If you're in Western North Carolina, Here & Now airs on Blue Ridge Public Radio (88.1 FM) from 12 pm - 2 pm Eastern Time. https://www.bpr.org/show/here-now

If you miss it, you can find it online at Here & Now Anytime.
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510051/here-x26-now

There will also be a web story on June 10 at NPR's Climate Solutions Week 2025: Rethinking Home. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/10/nx-s1-5340713/north-carolina-climate-change-solutions

Culture's Edge is harvesting what Earthaven is learning from Hurricane Helene about climate resilience and sharing it in hopes of supporting others. If you're curious what we're learning, you can download our first offering: Rooted In Resilience: 6 Simple Tips for Climate Resilience → www.earthaven.org

Earthaven Ecovillage fared remarkably well after Hurricane Helene. The community had backup power and water systems, as well as food supplies, but members also knew how to work together in a crisis.

06/03/2025