[Sdpg] Cuyama Learning Center Santa Barbara NEEDs Help and Support

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

Subject: A Birth Announcement


  Please pass this announcement on to other individuals groups and 
organizations for broad distribution



We are very pleased to announce the birth of the Cuyama Learning 
Center.  This learning center was born during this past fall in the Cuyama 
Valley, just 30 miles east of Santa Barbara.  Wilderness Youth Project has 
found its wilderness home for a camp, a place to host a permaculture 
designed farm site, and a locale for many people and organizations to 
gather and learn from one another and from the land.

  **If you would like to receive future updates, event and program 
announcements pertaining to the Cuyama Learning Center, please send your 
email address to clc at wyp.org.


The Where: The Cuyama Learning Center (CLC) is on a large ranch surrounded 
on three-sides by national forest, spanning 3,700 to 3,900 feet in 
elevation in a remote yet accessible area in the shadows of Mt. Abel and 
Mt. Pinos.  This land has been secured thanks to the generosity of a local 
family foundation. We have initiated a capital campaign to begin developing 
this site to be both a youth and family camp and a working permaculture 
designed farm.

  The Why: The CLC is dedicated to becoming a place where youth and adults 
are mentored in nature and life skills, life awareness, mentoring skills, 
vocational apprenticeships, and eventually where other organizations and 
groups may find respite, rejuvenation and assistance in accomplishing their 
own missions.

  Our Vision: The Cuyama Learning Center is a place where people and land 
can feed and honor one another in an authentic learning journey of 
stewardship, vitality, intactness, and balance.

  Our Purpose: To be in and inspire a state of constant learning where the 
lessons gained are shared through right action and the mentoring of the 
inheriting generations to bring about vitality in the land and ourselves.

  Our Principles:  We have seven core principles that keep the light on our 
purpose clear and bright as we move toward it.  Please put your own “I” 
into these principles to see how they articulate individually through you:

  1)      We (I) remember through our(my) actions that stewardship allows 
all life to continue in a state of cooperative interdependence.

2)      We (I) acknowledge that children embody and reflect many of the 
aspects of what we (I) model.

3)      We(I) strive to understand the tracks of the past, the realness of 
the present, our impact on the trails of tomorrow, and the hopeful picture 
of how we think things ought to be.

4)      We (I) live as though the “picture of how things ought to be” is 
already true.

5)      We (I) continue to move with “doing the best we(I) can with what 
we(I) have now.”

6)      We (I) nurture relationships with the things we(I) wish to know and 
understand.

7)      We (I) strive to understand and appreciate the origins of what 
sustains us (me).


The How: We are in the planning process (and some work has already begun) 
of developing, caretaking and preserving aspects of this land to foster 
ecologically integration where our presence and that of the youth and 
families will bring vitality to this unique canyon.  We will learn the 
origins of many things that sustain us with our gardens and orchards which 
will supply fruits, nuts and vegetables.  The animals will provide meat, 
eggs, butter, milk, cheese, wool, skins, bone tools, and fertilizer for the 
plants.  The artesian spring provides gravity fed fresh water where you can 
drink like a bear on hands and knees right from the water’s flow.  All our 
shelters will draw from the forefront of earth materials technology by 
using straw bale, cob, recycled materials, and will be built in a way that 
honors the lay of the land and its inhabitants.  The community fire of this 
special place ignites through the diversity of all the individuals who join 
with us in building this special learning center for many generations yet 
to come.


The When: We have several projects at the CLC that are already underway, 
more that will unfold in the near future and others are in our long term 
strategic planning.  Currently at CLC, we are operating family camps, teen 
weekends, cultural mentoring, and vision fast initiatory passages for 
teens.  We will soon begin the planting of our gardens and orchards, a cob 
construction workshop is being planned for September 2005, we will have 
summer residential camps for youth this coming summer, and we will be 
offering a residential internship here this summer for young adults.  You 
will have to get involved to see what exciting ideas are in-store over the 
coming years




HOW DO I GET INVOLVED?

  There are many ways to involve your skills, learn some new ones, and 
contribute to this experiment in learning from the unique place in which 
you stand.  Familiarize yourself with our vision, purpose and principles to 
see how your unique gifts may be offered to our “potluck” of diverse 
people, skills, and understandings.  The following projects may need your 
involvement:


Receive our regular email updates and event and program announcements by 
sending your email address to clc at wyp.org.  We will assume you do not wish 
to receive further emails about the CLC unless we get an email request from 
you.

)
Get your hands in the dirt
help us prepare the site, plant trees and 
gardens among many other tasks during one of many work weekends listed 
below.  RSVP TODAY to clc at wyp.org or call 805.886.7239 to receive specific 
details:


January 14,15, 16 – Preparing irrigation systems and  prepping to plant 
hundreds of trees in February

February 4, 5, 6 - Planting a plethora of orchard, shade, and ornamental trees

following months TBA


Attend any of our bimonthly development meetings held the 2nd Friday and 
4th Saturday of each month at 11am at the CLC.  Contribute to the design, 
administrative development, and sustainability planning of the site.


Offer your skill sets in a unique way (i.e. Permaculture design, 
construction, solar technology, green thumbs, food storage and 
preservation, etc.)


Attend and/or help us market the cob construction workshop in September 
(details will be available in a few weeks)


Administrative support.


Join our capital campaign fundraising committee, and/or contribute to, 
and/or open a door for other people to contribute to this modest 
campaign.   The purpose of the capital campaign is to build a community 
hall and kitchen, administrative building, eco-cabins, workshop, and other 
infrastructure.  Our goal is to raise $850,000 for the full development of 
the facility.


Donate goods, services, farm equipment to the project.


Join with us in this unique experiment in learning.  Together we will offer 
our successes and failures to the next generations as rich humus in which 
to plant their seeds of life.  Let us celebrate
the Cuyama Learning Center 
is born!!!

In Peace and Appreciation,

  Warren Brush

Founding Director, Wilderness Youth Project

Cuyama Learning Center, California

January 1, 2005