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.

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.”