Fellowship Skills & Outcomes

Groundwork fellows will be able to…

Farming & Agriculture

• Understand and teach the foundations of various food systems, whether modern or traditional, industrial, or small-scale.
• Understand seasonal planting and harvesting cycles.
• Know how to plant, transplant, weed, water, and harvest a wide range of vegetables in market-garden style.
• Understand and apply basic principles of organic agriculture and holistic soil management.
• Design, operate, and maintain drip and overhead irrigation systems.
• Plan and cook meals for large groups around seasonal harvests.
• Understand the foundations of seed saving, plant genetics, and plant breeding.
• Understand the histories of agriculture, both industrial and traditional.
• Participate in local food distribution systems.

Simple Living

• Appreciate simple living.
• Understand traditional sources of meaning and apply them to personal life, environmental work, and understanding of society.
• Compare a life with specific technologies (like cell phones, wifi, cable tv, cars) with a life that intentionally limits or excludes those technologies.
• Be comfortable living and working in close quarters with others. Treat others with warmth and curiosity even in challenging times.
• Be comfortable living outdoors. Respond well to harsh conditions.

Sustainable & Appropriate Technology

• Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of on-grid vs. off-grid approaches to living lightly.
• Maintain simple off-grid solar photovoltaic systems.
• Understand and design simple passive solar heating systems, including greenhouses, solar ovens, and passive solar buildings.
• Understand thermal performance of natural and synthetic building materials.
• Design simple alternatives to common consumptive practices, including waste management, fossil fuel-based cooking and heating, air conditioning, and car-based transportation systems.

Place & Region

• Understand and teach the foundations of water policy, river ecology, and environmental management as it relates to the Colorado River Basin.
• Understand and teach the foundations of colonial history, U.S./Indian Nation treaties, and displacement of indigenous peoples as it relates to Western Colorado.
• Establish a personal connection to place.

Activism & Nonprofits

• Apply personal, spiritual, and intellectual growth to assume leadership roles in the environmental field.
• Understand the legal and financial structures underlying U.S. nonprofits.
• Create budgets for environmental projects.
• Plan social and environmental projects that will have a meaningful impact on the communities in which they happen.
• Apply knowledge on nonprofit structures and governance to found a new nonprofit or contribute to existing nonprofits in substantial ways.
• Understand the foundations of capitalist economic systems, including their benefits and critiques.
• Lead discussions, classes, and projects that focus on various elements of this list.

Personal, Spiritual, & Philosophical

• Be present and observant as a part of the natural world.
• Cultivate a meaningful personal relationship with a place, including its seasons, plants, animals, landforms, histories, and peoples.
• Understand sustainable cultures and practices as a product of place. Discuss the origins of cultures.
• Maintain grounding personal practices as a foundation for engaging deeply with complex and emotional issues in the world, especially climate change and ecological decline.
• Articulate a personal land ethic to serve as a foundation for work as a steward of the Earth.
• Actively and intentionally incorporate learning from this fellowship into daily life.
• Display care for and responsibility to the Earth as a source of life.
• Envision deeper alternatives to current societal structures.
• Express complex and nuanced thought relating to environmental economics, natural resource management, sustainability (among other topics).