ARCO IRIS
  • sm16
  • sm15
  • sm14
  • sm01
  • sm13
  • sm12
  • sm11
  • sm10
  • sm09
  • sm08
  • sm08
  • sm07
  • sm05
  • sm04
  • sm03
  • sm02
  • sm18
  • sm17
Members with new Earth School Sign

Sign donated by Berryville sign maker James Abbott, Owner of Abbott Signs.

What is The Earth School?

Arco Iris Earth Care Project

Your help will make it a Reality

The Earth School is our vision. The Earth School means sustainability for our low-income rural Ozark community. The Earth School will be a community based facility promoting conservation and utilizing a natural and holistic approach that incorporates the cultures of indigenous and Ozark people to promote and teach sustainable living practices to all peoples.

Arco Iris Earth Care Project is a volunteer-run, grassroots non-profit organization in northwest Arkansas which holds in trust 400 acres of Ozark Mountain wilderness for conservation and education. The Earth School is Arco Iris’s way to contribute to the community and to care for our greatest resource – Mother Earth, our sacred responsibility.

Arco Iris volunteers

Arco Iris volunteers

Arco Iris was founded by working class women of color, and is now made up of local poor and working class people and allies from around the United States.

Our rural Ozark community sustains itself by a strong will to survive and the versatility and resourcefulness of its members. Jobs are scarce and often far away. Most locals grow gardens, raise animals, or hunt. Some earn meager earnings as artists, carpenters, musicians, mechanics, handymen or wood workers. Some work at the few county or state jobs, while others work in some aspect of the poultry industry or seasonal tourist industry. With few exceptions, all travel extended distances for work, to shop or for health care, or they do without. Most local rural residents have developed valuable self-sufficiency skills, required to survive in these lean times. Many well-educated community members earn below poverty level incomes due to the rural isolation. Making a living can be very challenging but health care is next to impossible with rising costs of insurance, fuel, and services over an hour away.

The Earth School project plan is to build a facility that will house a local natural health care clinic on our 400-acre property. This will not only provide local health care services to our rural community but also provide local employment for rural health care providers and others in our community who otherwise must travel great distances to work in their field.

Mario

Earth School activities:

  • A natural healing clinic comprised of local healers and teachers including massage therapists, herbalists, nurses, chiropractors and midwives. This clinic would meet two important community needs by providing access to natural health care for a rural community and by providing a local facility for health practitioners.
  • Classes on the principles of permaculture, organic gardening, natural healing, native plant uses and walks on the land to identify medicinal herbs
  • Retreats for community members, activists, and community organizations and groups.
  • Children of the Earth camps that focus on sustainable living practices, cultural work and leadership development skills.
  • Workshops will include intergenerational community organizing, activism skills and leadership development. The skills and ability to work on behalf of the environment, workplace and community rights are an integral part of sustainable living.

    • In additionto increasing community sustainability skills by providing community based services, micro enterprises for local rural residents, workshops and leadership development, The Earth School will provide sustainability to the 400-acre Wild Magnolia Land Trust.

    proposed building

    The current Earth School design

    consists of three two-story timber frame structures. The first structure is a dining hall with a commercial kitchen, which can also be used as a meeting or training space.

    The kitchen will be multi-purpose, providing meals for groups attending activities at the school, serving as a teaching facility for natural cooking and herb use classes, and micro enterprises based on herbal preparations.

    The second structure will house the Arco Iris office, information center/gift shop and the treatment rooms for natural practitioners.

    The third structure will have a large meeting room that can be divided into multi-purpose spaces. There will be an upstairs dormitory to house retreat and training institute residents.

    Arco Iris Earth Care Project is currently involved in a capital campaign to raise funds to begin this construction. You can help make the Earth School a reality. All proceeds will go to The Earth School and Arco Iris Earth Care Project, an Arkansas 501(C)(3) non-profit organization. All donations are tax deductible.

    The first structure will cost an estimated $75,000. We are excited at the prospect of beginning this first structure in 2010. With this first building we will be able to increase programming and implement new phases of the Earth School Project.

    Rainbow woman

    Please make your contribution payable to:

    Arco Iris Earth Care Project
    H.C. 70 Box 17A, Ponca, AR 72670
    memo: The Earth School

    For more information contact:

    Maria Christina Moroles, President
    of Arco Iris Earth Care Project
    or Silver Wolfe at (870) 861-5080

    For a printer friendly version of this to share with friends click here

    Return to the Homepage