Mission
Mission
22 years of Healing the Human-Earth Relationship
The Eco-Institute at Sanctuary Farm is an Earth Sanctuary and Learning Community dedicated to Healing the Human-Earth Relationship, founded in 2003. Our non-profit educational center resides on Sanctuary Farm, in the Piedmont of North Carolina, eight miles west of Chapel Hill, on what is—to the best of our knowledge—ancestral lands of the Occaneechi-Saponi, Eno, Tutelo, Tuscarora, Sissipihaw, Shakori, Saura, and Catawba.
We offer what we strive to practice: skills for community resilience, spiritual ecology, and regenerative permaculture. Our foundational understandings have been guided by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Richard Louv, adrienne marie brown, Charles Eisenstein, Joanna Macy, and Thomas Berry. Our offerings have reached children, young adults, Elders, teachers, policy-makers, clergy, and community organizers around the world.
The Eco-Institute recognizes the detrimental effects of the industrial growth economy, and we see ourselves as part of a shift toward a life-sustaining society. In the words of our friend and teacher Thomas Berry, we dream of a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship.
We are a community-supported initiative: click here for more info about how you can help.
Vision
Vision
contributing to new narratives
Through community resilience, spiritual ecology & permaculture
As a land-based sanctuary, we envision a place of healing... where both trauma and beauty are acknowledged, where we remember and are guided by sacred interdependence—which contributes to healing amongst and between all members of the Earth Community.
We envision a world where we are all both teachers and students, where water is honored as sacred, where every child is supported in their fulfillment, and where communities are deeply interwoven with intact and resilient natural ecosystems.
Core Values
Core Values
All LIfe is Sacred
“The universe is not a collection of objects but a communion of subjects.”
Every being has fundamental worth. None are disposable. All deserve respect.
Social and ecological injustices are rooted in disconnection from the sacredness of all lives, human and otherwise. Confronting planetary ills involves restoring a humble appreciation of the sacredness of every living thing.
All Phenomena are radically interdependent
The natural state of our world is health, balance, and reciprocity. Since the harmful beliefs and systems that have disrupted our culture and climate are interlocking and perpetuating, our response must be so dynamic.
“The relationship between self and world is reciprocal... As we work to heal the Earth, the Earth heals us.”
To Face Today’s Crises, We Must Swim Upstream
“To conduct a revolution of love, we must reconnect with the reality of our system and its victims. When we tear away the ideologies, the labels, and the rationalizations, we show ourselves the truth of what we are doing, and conscience awakens.”
To create lasting change, we must confront the root systems and stories that underlie the symptoms of a crisis, not just the symptoms alone. Healing requires compassionate sensitivity to traumas, the interrogation of harmful narratives, the disruption of systems of oppression, and the imaginative co-creation of a more beautiful and just future.
Nature Has Inherent Wisdom for Systems Change
In nature we witness adaptability, interdependence, decentralized power, capacities for self-healing and self-regulation, transformation and resilience. Caterpillars, in their voracious final days of hyper-consumption, trigger the formation of imaginal cells, which un-differentiate to form what’s called “nutritive soup.” Then, the imaginal cells orchestrate the transformation of the caterpillar into a completely new being: a butterfly.
“Tune in to the prevalence of spiral in the universe—the shape in the prints of our fingertips echoes into geological patterns, all the way to the shape of galaxies. Then notice that the planet is full of these fractals—cauliflower, yes, and broccoli, ferns, deltas, veins through our bodies, tributaries, etc.—all of these are echoes of themselves at the smallest and largest scales...there is a structural echo that suggests two things: one, that there are shapes and patterns fundamental to our universe, and two, that what we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale.”
Diversity is Resilience
“I couldn’t go outside without being surprised and amazed by some small green life. I suppose it was their great diversity of form that first drew my interest: that on a small patch of ground there could be so many different ways to exist. Each plant seemed to have its own sense of self, yet they fit together as a community.”
Diversity is the way of ecological resilience. To create a life-enhancing society, we must honor universal worth and celebrate the magnificently complex and diverse ways that LIFE emerges! To collectively heal from the systems that divide us, equitable access for those from historically marginalized communities must be a priority.
Leadership
Leadership
staff
Megan toben
Meg co-founded The Eco-Institute as a sanctuary for nature connection, renewal, and Healing the Human-Earth Relationship. Meg has 28 years of experience as an environmental educator, and 20 as an executive director, during which time she has learned useful techniques for cultivating balance while keeping a holistic level of awareness. Meg knows and loves the land here deeply, having raised her family on it for the past 22 years. In 2015, Meg was honored with the Piedmont Environmental Leadership Award. Her love for art, ritual, Earth, and humanity inspires her to offer healing space of deep renewal to all who are working to heal our world.
ADVISORY BOARD
Carolyn Toben
Carolyn Toben is an educator, counselor, and creator of new social forms with a spiritual dimension that foster cultural renewal. Her background includes degrees from the University of North Carolina Greensboro (Phi Beta Kappa), extensive postgraduate studies in spirituality, world religions, and depth psychology, and teaching in both secondary and college settings with an emphasis on alternative and interdisciplinary education.
Carolyn led the formation of a School-Within-a School in the Greensboro public school system and was a pioneer in the shaping of teacher renewal education at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching in Cullowhee, NC, and the Center for the Advancement of Renewal for Educators, in San Francisco, CA, where she conducted seminars for more than fifteen years.
In 2000, Carolyn founded what is now the Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World, a work inspired by cultural historian and author, Thomas Berry, which offers children and teachers a new understanding of the human-earth relationship.
For ten years, Carolyn spent many hours with the renowned priest, author, and cultural historian, Thomas Berry, engaged in deep discussions about his foundational thinking on the human-earth-Divine relationship. Her memoir, Recovering A Sense of the Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry is based on her personal notes, practices, and reflections from these conversations.
A grandmother of nine, Carolyn currently creates programs, retreats, and events for individuals and groups seeking spiritual renewal and reconnection with the natural world on her family-owned land, Timberlake Earth Sanctuary, located in Whitsett, North Carolina.
dAN wAHPEPAH
Dan Wahpepah is from the Anishinabe, Kickapoo and Sac & Fox tribes. He grew up with his community’s cultural ways and has been politically active with the American Indian Movement and spiritually active through tribal ceremonies. Dan started the Rogue Valley Pow Wow, an American Indian Cultural Center, Red Earth Descendants and is also a board member of Natives of One Wind Indigenous Alliance and Rogue Climate, Pipeline Fighters. As part of his tradition, he is a Drum Keeper and Drum Chief. Dan’s efforts are focused on the preservation of this Earth for future generations.
Dan believes that “Permaculture combined with Traditional Ecological Knowledge is a powerful pairing. To contribute to life is what we need to feel. We are moving into a giveaway society. The best way for us to train for this new paradigm is to garden. By gardening, we contribute to life while gaining a harvest, feeding pollinators, sequestering carbon, feeding sugars and carbon to the billions of microbes and miles upon miles of mycorrhiza, connecting to community for excess giveaway, connecting with the seasons, connecting.”
Founding Story
Founding Story
Megan and Tim Toben founded The Eco-Institute at Pickards Mountain in 2005 out of their love for the Earth and their concern for the future of life.
Meg and Tim believe that humanity has never before had access to such abundance, technological resources, power, and potential—potential for both good and for destruction. The exploitation of Earth’s ecosystems has taken our planet beyond a tipping point. They began to ask themselves: How might we contribute to the healing of our world?
They began to open their home and farm to this conversation, birthing a beautiful and resilient community, now known as The Eco-Institute. Members of this community include parents, teachers, entrepreneurs, students, artists, professionals, activists and children of all ages. Field trips for local school groups, residential internships, workshops and classes in a wide range of sustainability topics, retreats and community gatherings have all taken place here.
Meg and Tim have raised their two spirited children on this land, and feel deeply fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from the thousands of inspiring people who have passed through this place.