Course Guide

Financial Literacy

In this course, fellows will gain the skills and confidence to navigate capital with attention on financial capital and cultivating financial wellness. This includes a basic understanding of bank accounts, budgeting, and loans; and extends to include business planning, investing, and understanding alternative economies. This course supports fellows in stewardship of their monthly stipends and financial wellness plans for their completion awards.

Entrepreneurship Training

We need entrepreneurs to create the projects, programs and organizations that together will build a new, just and regenerative economy. We need our projects to work and be solvent within the economic framework we have now, while embodying a different paradigm, in which we are:

• Building community and ecological wealth as our primary goal (not maximizing personal gain)
• Empowering whole individuals to act in partnership (not using people as tools for profit)
• Supplying the essentials of a good life (not creating or serving artificial need)
• Serving the future as well as the present (not sacrificing community or ecological health for short-term gain).

The course is designed to equip future entrepreneurs with practical tools to enact a vision. Working through the stages of (1) articulating vision, (2) planning finances, and (3) organizing people and operations, we will explore key design questions, practice core business and organizing skills, and give space for individual hands-on planning.

Place Research and Education

Place Research will unearth and uncover a story of a fellow's place that is personally relevant. In this course, fellows put into practice skills of research, documentation, observation, reflection and oral history. Place Corps Fellows learn about their landscape and are connected with the people, organizations, and institutions of their places for effective resource sharing and access to opportunity. A few questions we'll be asking include: Why is place important? What is my place? How do I know my place? What am I learning about my place? What is my relationship with my place? How has my place impacted me and what is my impact on my place?

Living Skills

Students will learn skills for the home and daily living through professionally guided workshops including, but not limited to: food preparation, fermentation and preservation, herbal medicine making, foraging, basket weaving, fiber arts, natural dye, mending and handwork, and more.

Somatic Movement

This experiential movement course builds foundational investigations for broadening capacities of awareness, learning, and connection. It is designed for beginners, which means that no prior experience with meditation or somatic movement is necessary.

Topics of instruction include: sitting and walking meditation, methods for deepening positive emotions, methods for integrating more awareness and creativity into ordinary activities, the emerging science on the beneficial effects of trauma-informed mindfulness practice for mental and physical health, relational mindfulness, and deeper awareness of the natural world.

Arts as Activism

How can the arts affect change in communities? This course challenges the understanding of what it means to be empowered and how to be an agent of change and courageous actions. The class fosters students’ ability to apply creativity and the arts as a catalyst for change in issues of social and ecological justice. Students explore how Socially Engaged art as a genre affects personal, community, and societal transformation.

Design + Build

An introductory course in the foundational knowledge and experience of carpentry and eco-building design where participants learn how to safely and effectively use hand and power tools, design and execute an original structure, and develop the skill set and insight to design their own tiny house. Participants will work in four-person cohorts immersing themselves in all aspects of the building and design process to ensure full understanding and exposure to the learning outcome goals for the course.

Regenerative Agriculture

Regenerative agricultural techniques recognize and honor our relationship with a living earth, with each other as humans and with our own inner sense of purpose and care in our communities and the natural world. Participants will leave Place Corps; with the understanding of place as a whole complex system; with the agricultural skills to grow food, build soil, raise animals, and participate in the food system in ways that make their lives, their communities and the earth thrive; with the competency in permaculture principles to design truly regenerative systems, to creatively and holistically solve problems, and to work collaboratively to produce nourishment for a community.

Climate Solutions

Fellows practice designing just climate solutions and informed locally-specific strategies to build ecologically sustainable livelihoods that are democratic and resilient. Fellows will learn to integrate big thinking, with real-world situations through an understanding of complex systems and inter-climate relationships. This class will alternate between field trips to engage with dynamic individuals or institutions doing good work to provide solutions to our climate crisis. Fellows will also have classroom time to reflect and build upon what we’ve experienced and learned.

Digital Communication

This course will explore the foundations of human communication in social and personal interactions and examine the ways in which digital channels influence both the sending and receiving of messages. Content will focus on presentation; media literacy; small-group interaction; and interpersonal skills such as listening, language, and non-verbal communication. Fellows learn to be perceptive, aware, and confident communicators in any computer mediated setting.

Interpersonal Communication

An introductory course that blends research and theory to help students build effective interpersonal communication skills. The course explores basic topics such as listening, verbal and non-verbal messages, perception, emotions, and conflict management. Other communications topics include power and relationships, assertiveness training, and communication ethics. This course introduces fellows to the theories, concepts, research findings and practical skills of communicating with people from diverse ethnic, racial, cultural and national backgrounds.

Oral History Training

This workshop will guide participants through oral history as a methodology and genre. It will cover interview techniques, audio tutorials, ethics, and the design elements of an oral history project and ethnographic projects. Participants discuss a variety of histories (community, family, institutional) and other sub-categories, while looking at the broad range of disciplines/subjects that oral history can address and aid.

Living and Dying Better

Death and illness often remain taboo subjects, causing unpreparedness and trauma to already challenging situations. Questions and topics that will be examined include: protocols and rights that family and friends have when dealing with the death of a loved one, how to prepare for death and sickness (wills, health proxies), grief, and how to seek a variety of support for mental illness for oneself and loved ones.