Please Join us for our guest speaker Jonathan Gonzalez! Followed by Fireside chat & snacks!

Jonathan Gonzalez (he/him/his) was born in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, Mexico to Carmen Patria Arbolay and Raul Gonzalez Castillo and the youngest of 4 brothers. His enjoyment for working outdoors started at a young age after moving to and growing up in Southern California. Riding bikes around the dirt tracks the neighbor kids made in the empty lot behind his neighborhood and spending all his free time outside playing was the norm. It wasn’t until his late 20s however that his enjoyment turned into deep passion and insatiable curiosity for ways of living with the earth. Jonathan spent the next 12 years learning earth living skills and ancestral ceremonial ways with many teachers and elders. Learning the earth living skills combined with participating in indigenous earth-based ceremonies along with a quest to connect more deeply with his ancestral lineage (Indigenous Taino ( Puerto Rico), Chinanteco (Mexico), African, and European) has dramatically shifted Jonathan’s life over the last 13+ years. He considers himself lucky to have his background and be able to share his love of these ways with folks from all walks of life. Jonathan combines all this with a bachelor's degree of Social Work and many years of experience working with folks with neurodiversity, traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury. He also has a certification in permaculture and spent several years working in gardening and landscape design.

When: Thursday, October 13th @ 4:30 PM, followed by discussion and snacks

Where: Good Work Institute 
65 Saint James Street 
Kingston, NY