ABUNDANT BEGINNINGS COLLECTIVE (ABC) is a Black-led liberation ecosystem. We believe that our children and families deserve to be free, connected to nature, and honored as their full selves. For over 10 years, Abundant Beginnings has activated this reality by raising activist youth, conscious educators, and empowered parents. 

And now at this critical juncture, we need you to help amplify, strengthen, and sustain this movement.

With your offering, we will raise $1,000,000 to implement and share our tools and practices so that Black and Brown children all over the United States can see themselves as the brilliant, powerful, and generous beings that they are.

Join us in activating our networks to raise $1,000,000 to fuel the future of Abundant Beginnings Collective. Support today’s black educators and invest in the next generation of activists, leaders, and revolutionary thinkers! Donate today or Text ABUNDANT to (202) 858-1233 + peep our digital toolkit resources to get involved. Whose future? Our future! 📣 

You're also welcome to start your own campaign on GiveButter! And join the ABC Fundraising Slack channel to be in community and keep updated on what’s new with the campaign! 

Learn more about ABC’s values and mission: http://abundantbeginnings.org/
Keep up with ABC on social media: https://www.instagram.com/abundantbeginnings/

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WE BELIEVE it is a child's right to explore their interests and create lasting relationships within an atmosphere of support and freedom. Our central commitments are to provide an education that centers social and environmental justice, creates constructive engagements across differences, and cultivates connections to the earth and our ancestral ecological practices.

WE EDUCATE our children through a black, queer, ecofeminist lens. In the words of Greta Gaard, this lens requires embracing diversity and “building coalitions for creating a democratic, ecological culture based on our shared liberation.” We strive to create individual, community, and environmental change by fostering intergenerational, land-based learning practices.

WE ARE a collectively run, black-led community education and empowerment initiative that is re-imagining how communities can grow learners who think critically, live responsibly, and create meaningful change. Curriculum development, community education, Forest Freedom School and Summer camps, are the focus of our work in the Bay Area. 

WE CENTER the needs of those who are currently marginalized from meaningful educational experiences, with emphases on Black students, gender expansive and queer students, disabled learners, students holding trauma and all the intersections. Our long term goal is to utilize a residential Non-Profit/Co-Housing Model that will be part of a larger network of urban and rural land projects that are led by and center the knowledge and experiences of queer people of color.

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Your investment today puts us on a two year sustainability plan to: 

• Purchase and build out land. Abundant Beginnings Collective has a 2-year goal to open unique Children's Houses using a residential nonprofit/cohousing model for -prenatal-kindergarten children and families- and develop Learning Communities (first - ninth grade) that will be hubs of education for our youth and all of the adults connected to them. The residential space will be a part of a network of urban and rural land projects that are led by and center the knowledge and experiences of people of color.
• Provide tuition free schooling for Black and Brown families. Abundant Beginnings Collective operates under the premise that all young people should have access to joyful, affirming, expansive, and transformative educational experiences.  
• Invest in our educators. Abundant Beginnings Collective educators have been working for subsistence wages for over a decade  because they are passionate about their vision. ABC aspires to pay their educators not only a living wage, but a *thriving* wage.  Our educators give tremendous energy, love, care and passion every day to create the magic that is Forest Freedom School. They need and deserve  an ABUNDANT wage to make this work sustainable!! 
• Develop curriculum. Abundant Beginnings Collective has created curriculum and pedagogy that has the power to revolutionize our current educational systems. They need monetary resources to make it available to everyone, and to create sustainable income streams from these channels.
• Expand extra curriculum, teach-ins, camp, and after care programming. Abundant Beginnings has been providing after-care programming and camps and organizing teach-ins for over ten years. These services help make the program sustainable and allow ABC to reach more young people. 
• Hire a full-time growth coordinator responsible for documenting institutional knowledge and creating sustainable systems with the goal of reaching financial sustainability within 2 years.

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BUDGET BREAKDOWN OF +$1 MILLION: 

PHASE 1: $150,000
Phase 1 will give us the ability to continue our operations, as well as provide tuition free schooling to students who would otherwise be unable to attend. 

PHASE 2: $300,000
Phase 2 will help us expand our capacity by giving us the funds to hire additional educators to contribute to our curriculum and expand our offerings. We can then share our tools at scale to reach kids nationwide with social justice curriculum.

PHASE 3: $700,000
Phase 3 will help us purchase collective land near Oakland, which we will operate and share with like-minded organizations and partners. 

PHASE 4: $1M+
Phase 4 will help lay the groundwork to build and open unique Children's Houses using a residential nonprofit/cohousing model for -prenatal-kindergarten children and families- and develop Learning Communities (1st to 9th grade) that will be hubs of education for our youth and all of the adults connected to them. The residential space will be a part of a network of urban and rural land projects that are led by and center the knowledge and experiences of people of color.. This will be part of a larger network of urban and rural land projects that are led by and center the knowledge and experiences of queer people of color.

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Abundant Beginnings Community has a pending application for 501c3 status. We are fiscally sponsored by Sarah Webster Fabio Center for Social Justice. If you would like your donation to be tax-deductible, please contact us: [email protected]