Our Strong Neighbors

by: Mary Owen

Today the Full Circles team is wrapping up our planning week for Strong Neighbor camp; which focuses on economy, government, and civic engagement. As part of the curriculum planning team I am very excited about the upcoming weeks. In Strong Self camp we talked a lot with the girls about personal and interpersonal health, justice, and empowerment. We're excited to be tying those conversations into conversations about civic engagement and ways that the girls can make a difference in their communities. We have some really fun activities planned. This camp is going to be packed with field trips to various places around Raleigh and with visits from various organizations.

With each camp we have been overwhelmed with support from the Raleigh community. I have really been impressed with how willing people are to donate their time and resources. Sometimes doing fundraising work and starting from scratch can feel really discouraging but  my faith in humanity is constantly reinforced by the fact that all we've had to do is ask. Many people have continued to support us by doing workshops with our girls, volunteering their time, and making donations. None of this is to say that we aren't working hard. We have dealt with a lot of frustrations but everything is made worth it by the people who have our backs. I'd like to give a quick thanks to some awesome local businesses for being enthusiastic about Full Circles Foundation: Ornamentea, Scentsuosity, Patina, Benelux Cafe, Meme Boutique, Uptown Cheapskate, Raleigh Rickshaw and many more in the works!

Everyone should remember to visit Tripledips and vote for Full Circles Foundation! Also, don't forget to spread the work about Full Circles Foundation's Indiegogo campaign to raise money for a veggie powered bus! Even just a few dollars would help us get closer to our goal. Thanks to all of you who have helped us out so far!

Well that about wraps it up for today. Stay tuned for more updates in the weeks to come!

Loco for LOCAL!

Loco for Local!!!
Walking through a Wal-Mart last summer, I came upon my favorite section of the entire corporate store, fruits and vegetables. While I was going through the variety (actually very limited with options) of fruits and vegetables such as bananas, cucumbers, strawberries, and lettuce, I turned to looked at the location where these wonderful healthy foods were made. For some odd reason, it surprised me. All of the fruits and vegetables, were not made in the local area, not up the street, not even in the state of North Carolina. These vegetables and fruits were grown somewhere in Florida, and even in a different country. As more Americans buy from corporate businesses and farms, the less people are purchasing from local farmers and local businesses. When I started my training at Full Cirlces Foundation, I had some sense of knowledge about community empowerment, community advocacy, and supporting the local community, but I had no idea about the significance and importance of supporting local businesses. Every time I purchased a forever 21 dress, a pair of Target earrings, and a Deer Park water bottle, I’ve always turned to a national corporate pharmacy, stores that exploit workers from having a descent pay and their right to a healthy workspace, and large farms that are mostly subsidized. This training knocked some sense into me about knowing how local businesses work and learning how to advocate and fight against a system where capitalism is the value for everyone.
    After training, I felt strongly about supporting local businesses and all of the benefits that came along with teaching others about them. At Full Cirlces Foundation Strong camps, we have a goal to teach the young girl campers about social-entrepreneurship: a different and amazing way to change the world while fixing and improving the current system through  finding sustainable solutions. Edger and passionate, I started reading and searching about this awesome and unique idea of local businesses and advocacy. I’ve never thought that combining the two concepts could change the world and advance humanity, but it really can for several reasons: products are safe, workers are treated fairly and equally, and everyone feels empowered. Now that I’ve learned how to appreciate and embrace social entrepreneurship, it was time to teach the campers!
    During the Strong Home camp, the girls learned how to love the environment, nature, and the outdoors but most importantly (I thought), they had an opportunity to make flower bombs and sell them in an event that Downtown Raleigh has every first Friday. A local business came in to volunteer and teach the young campers about the benefits of flower bombs. Flower (seed) bombs are made of wildflower seeds, clay, compost, dirt, and water. The campers, along with the camp instructors packaged them and sold the flower bombs at different prices for the first Friday event. The girls made a good deal of money. It was beautiful to see them interact with the public with confidence and some of the first graders with attitude while they were attempting to tell adults about how cool flower bombs were. Most of them impressed and shocked, purchased the flower bombs without hesitation. This was the first time I saw social entrepreneurship taking place by our very own campers.
    Seeing this phenomena happen right in front of me, reminded me of how there is hope in the world and just by creating our very own local business, you are making the Earth a healthier and more peaceful place for all humans to live in. At Full Cirlces Foundation, young girls learn about how local businesses operate, partner up with a local business of their choice and interest, and let everything else manifest itself hopefully into something beautiful and life changing.

Joanna E. Banegas
Full Cirlces Foundation Strong Camp Instructor

FCF Talent Show!

Strong Self camp wrapped up today with a grand finale with a focus on girls empowerment. Our second summer camp, Strong Self Camp, focused on personal health and expression to help the girls develop confidence through self-expression. With so many new things learned this week the girls pulled their talents together to put on the first Full Circles Strong Camp Talent Show!  The performances were a wonderful mix of all the art forms we covered in the past two weeks. The girls danced, showed visual art, performed music, and presented poetry they have been practicing all week.

Parents, volunteers, instructors, and guest gathered to watch our girls show off their talent. The talent show started off with a group hula-hoop performance from our youngest group, “The Big Girls”. The girls made hula-hoops earlier this week at Strong Self Camp. As a fundraiser the girls will sell the hula-hoops during Raleigh’s First Friday. The girls were taught how to do some daring and impressive moves that they showed off during the opening act of the talent show. Next we were impressed by our older girl’s talents.  Mekiyah read a poem by Maya Angelou, Carrie played a smooth saxophone solo, Jekiyah showed off her drawing skills, and Niecee blew us away with her singing!

After those wonderful solo acts we had a contemporary dance from our older girls, and a Big Girl streamer dance.  Both directed by our talented instructor Jessica Roy. Accompanied by streamers the girls made during camp, The Big Girls danced their hearts out and dazzled the crowd. The Big Girls showed us their acting skills with a play about a lioness and her animal friends. The play had the crowd cheering and laughing. Caitlyn played the great Leona the Lion, Chekiyah was the pig, Mackenzie the mouse, Kyla the porcupine, Jaydyn the water buffalo, and Zayana play the rowdy rhino.

The night ended with our new Full Circles song created by our girls and instructors. The girls sang with pride as our instructor Marcie played the piano beautifully alongside the girls. This was the official unveiling of our song and it was a hit! I give the Full Circle Talent Show 5/5 circles! OOOOO. The Full Circle girls have it going on, and I was empowered just watching them showcase their talents.

Full Circles Foundation Instructor
Elyse Harris

Our Context: Raleigh, North Carolina, and the South

As one of the Local North Carolinians on the Full Circles Foundation team, I decided it would be apt for me to talk a little about the community in which our Strong Camps are taking place. Now, the word community is a versatile one, and can span from the very small (our community of campers, instructors, families, and volunteers) to the very large (the state of NC, or even the world!). Since most of our entries have focused on our smaller FCF community, I would like to take a moment to reflect upon the greater communities of Raleigh, North Carolina, and the south.

After graduating from college, I decided to spend some time travelling. So, I struck out into the wild blue yonder of the world and went as far away from home as I possibly could go - to Sydney, Australia. I lived there for one year and during my travels I met many other people, mostly other young people, all from different parts of the world.  While many of them had plans to travel to America to see places like LA and New York, almost no one had ever heard of North Carolina. When asked about my ‘funny’ accent I would launch into great praise of my home state. I would say “You HAVE to travel to the south – it’s the best! It’s beautiful, we have all the best food, and the nicest people in the entire country”. A feeling of pride that I didn’t realize existed would bubble up inside of me as I spoke of things like our gorgeous weather, southern hospitality, and sweet tea. The goal was to escape from home, to see the more exotic and ‘worthwhile’ places the world had to offer. I unexpectedly ended up coming back with a newfound appreciation for my home.

 I am proud of where I am from. I am proud because we live in an amazing state. We have our unique and beautiful coastline to the east, the Appalachian Mountains to the west, and nestled right in between, in the rolling hills of the piedmont, is us – Raleigh! When you are shopping downtown or driving down 440 it is easy to forget that nature is also a part of our community, but it is. Our campers got reminded of this when they explored some of the natural beauty in Raleigh at Umstead State Park. Our state also has an economy centered in agriculture, and you couldn’t ask for a better place to live of you want to have a plethora of fresh local foods at your disposal. Our campers have gotten to enjoy preparing and eating meals made with local NC foods several times throughout camp, while also learning the importance of choosing local and healthy food options. Lastly, we have a shared culture of kindness and generosity in the south that I have never experienced in any other place in the world. This has truly been reflected this summer in our partners who have donated camp space for us, in our many volunteers, and in all of our campers’ families who have provided transportation, snacks, and helped with our fundraisers.

However wonderful our home may be, we are not without fault. Our public education system performs quite poorly in the national rankings, our local economies constantly struggle against outside forces, and our state’s natural beauty is at risk of being destroyed by things like fracking, mountaintop removal, water pollution, and industrial agriculture.  Populations in the south experience a significantly higher incidence of obesity related diseases, have higher unemployment rates, and have a higher percentage of their populations living in poverty. We have a unique set of challenges in the south. To explore the roots of these challenges will require another blog entry, but what is clear is that these challenges will require equally unique solutions.We must take great care, not only because we have too much to fix, but because we have far too much to risk losing.

From 2000-2010 Raleigh’s population increased by 46%, and that rate is expected to increase in the next 10 years. We are growing very quickly. As a community, we need to be active in shaping and channeling that growth in a positive direction while also taking care to preserve the things that make us great. This is what a sustainable community is all about!  Full Circles Foundation believes this: We decide what our future will look like. We are powerful agents of change. We must work to make our community happy, healthy, and whole. In the coming years the triangle will be gaining more and more national attention as we grow. What do we want to show them? We decide. You decide.

By FCF team member Jessica Roy

Change

Change
From the beginning of my volunteering career with El Pueblo Inc. in Raleigh N.C. to my immense activism with the Dream Act on my college campus, I feel like I have a drive to create change and help people feel somewhat empowered about making a positive difference in this world. Through reading many books and articles about environmental, political corruptions, and spiritual issues, I have came the conclusion that there are many problems in the world that we live in and attempting to solve every individual issue seems idealistic and somewhat dreamy. However, after searching for a job, I magically stumbled upon Full Cirlces Foundation. Once I read the website and what the camp represents: girls empowerment, sustainability, and economic justice, I realized this was the answer to my prayers and  what I want to do to make a difference in this world and from that point on everything made sense to me! Full Circles Foundation helps at-risk girls in Raleigh by providing them a free summer camp and transportation and educate them about the mission statement Full Cirlces represents. After the first camp at Strong Home camp in Umstead Park Raleigh N.C., I realized that making a true and pure difference in this word starts with education and teaching the younger generation about how important it is to love our environment, to love our neighbor and to love ourselves. I honestly do not know where I could  make such a huge impact at if it wasn't for this wonderful, new, and exciting organization. Instead of traveling to Washington D.C. to work on Capitol Hill for an internship, I decided to stay in Raleigh N.C. (where I was born and raised) and seek to help and mentor wonderful and strong girls of this area. Now, I know what it is to work for a new non-profit organization that was completely made by scratch (thanks to Marcie Hawkins-Smith and a couple of other amazing people), I have learned a lot about life, to work for an organization, and to feel empowered through the work I do for myself and for others. I am also learning the  meaning of sacrifice. Every morning, several of the full time instructors wake up at at the break of dawn, pick up the campers, and catch the public bus before the camp starts, and we do it all over again in the afternoon with the same big smile and positive attitudes. We love our campers and respect them in every possible way. They teach us new things every day. The satisfaction of mentoring another human and teaching them any possible useful information you know about being empowered and making a difference is a feeling that can never be replaced. This experience is an energy that is manifesting into something beautiful and unforgettable everyday I get to see the smiles of my co workers and the innocent eyes of the future leaders of America.  

Full Time Instructor at Full Circles Foundation
-Joanna E. Banegas

Our Wonderful Volunteers!

We have been very lucky this summer to have some wonderful help from community members! The camp would not be the same without them and we appreciate them so much! To show our appreciation we are going to give some of them a big shout out in this post!

First, we have Alice Ammerman who joined us on the last day of Strong Home Camp to help us learn about and cook local foods.  Alice is a nutritionist and professor at the School of Public Health at UNC and well known advocate for local foods and the importance of a nutrient rich diet.  We explored the colors of the rainbow in the fascinating food “show-n-tell” that Alice brought, including purple sweet potatoes, stripped beets, and purple cabbage.  The girls learned how to make their very own pesto with fresh basil, olive oil, cheese, and the money saving ingredient – walnuts! Our pesto was eaten with pasta, diced baked potatoes, and a cabbage and local sausage dish.  The meal was finished with some local cantaloupe for dessert.  We were very grateful to have Alice join us and we hope to keep her as a close partner in the future! Much of the food we ate came from ECO - Eastern Carolina Organics which supports local farmers.

We have also had some other wonderful and outstanding volunteers, many who have been with us for more than just one day at the camp! Hopefully no one will be left of the list, but we would like to thank Joel, John, Emily, Amanda, Katie, Joe, Rebekah, Jane, Kaleb, Aaron (and anyone else who has helped the camp run smoothly!).  These volunteers have helped us do activities with the girls including screen printing and upcycling (a wonderful activity where old possessions are dazzled up to make them look like cool, new, possessions that can be reused). We are truly grateful to all these people! THANK YOU! We hope to see many more new volunteer faces next week and at the Strong Neighbor Camp in August!

Strong Self Camp!

by Mary Owen

This week is the first week of Strong Self Camp, which centers on our theme of girls' empowerment. The instructors are all really excited because we get to lead the girls in a variety of creative endeavors. Our aim these two weeks is to help the girls develop confidence through self-expression. We've already had a lot of fun just in the first two days.

Today the girls did an upcycling workshop. Upcycling is a creative way of finding value in things that seem like trash. The girls took unwanted items and decorated them with various fabrics and ornaments. In the end they produced an impressive collection of goods that one might find in an expensive boutique. The upcycling workshop was very engaging and, in addition to being an expressive activity for the girls, it fit well with our goals of sustainability and economic justice. With each of our activities it becomes more and more apparent how connected all of our lessons are. The Full Circles puns are dropping everywhere!

There are a lot of things for our campers to be excited about this camp but there are a lot of reasons for our community to be excited as well! We have a car wash, a benefit concert, and various other community events coming up. Be sure to check out our fundraising campaign at www.indiegogo.com/full-circles-foundation. Also be sure to vote for Full Circles at www.tripledips.com (click on "featured charities" to vote for Full Circles).

This week has been a troubleshooting adventure for the Full Circles team. We are processing all of our current experiences so that we can improve our operations for next summers' camps. We are learning a lot and working really hard. We always stay open to the knowledge and experience of those in our community so if you have any cool ideas just let us know!

That's all for today! Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Mid-Summer Reflections on Social Entrepreneurship in Raleigh

It’s so hard to believe that it is already July!  This time last year, I was feeling disappointed wih the present and anxious about the future.  Like a lot of young people, I had graduated from college and discovered that the recession I had been reading about in the newspapers wasn’t just notional.  Jobs were scarce and the ones that I could find barely paid the bills and in no way satisfied my desire to help build a sustainable, restorative economy, which I believe is our generation’s calling.  I still volunteered a good deal of my time as a climate justice advocate, but I was stir-crazy for a change in strategy.  I was expending a lot of effort trying to convince people with “more power” than me to change their historically selfish and stunningly short-sighted policies and attitudes so that I could have a secure future along with generations to come. This approach didn’t seem to be bearing change at the speed and the scale that we needed it to.

One afternoon, on an especially gloomy day, I decided to outline the most meaningful, world-transforming vocation I could imagine for myself, the sweet spot between ‘What the world needs,’ ‘What I am good at,’ ‘What I enjoy,’ and ‘What provides for my life.’  I described a vocation in which I would work with girls to advance gender justice, economic justice, and environmental justice.  The injustices perpetrated against girls and women, money-poor people, and the earth itself have proven themselves exceptionally persistent and are fundamentally connected; they cannot be addressed in isolation of eachother.  However, their connection also represents enormous potential – by advancing genuine economic justice, we advance genuine gender justice and environmental justice (and vice versa all the way around).

My vocation would be a combination of some of the ventures I most admire – the Harlem Children’s Zone, a poverty-eradication with a long-term (birth through college), community-powered approach;  the Green Belt Movement, a venture started by Wangari Maathai that addresses deforestation in Kenya by empowering women economically; and the Grameen Bank, which has transformed rural Bangladesh through its world-renowned microlending program.  ‘Full Circles Foundation’ would matriculate girls as kindergartners – specifically girls who have high potential but face big obstacles.  These girls would be paced thorough a long-term series of best practice programs including:

- summer camps and afterschool programming focused on the connections between personal, community, and environmental health;
- a community organizing training program through which they identify an improvement they would like to see in their community and build a campaign around it;
- apprenticeships with local artisans and small businesses;
- and a microventure program that would give the girls social entrepreneurial experience as well as generate resources for summer camps and after-school programming.

This was all just an outline in my journal until I started hearing murmurings about the idea of social entrepreneurship – a strategy of sustainable change that works to leverage the wealth that surrounds everyday people to build the new, restorative economy.  I was so different from the charity and advocacy models I had been working through!  I first heard about this idea from Grand Aspirations (www.grandaspirations.org), an organization working to build social entrepreneurial capacity among young people and to connect them, their experiences, and their models.  I submitted my still-vague outline to Grand Aspirations in hopes Raleigh would be selected as one of their national “Summer of Solutions” sites – cities around the country where young people gather from June to August to get elbow-deep in the birthing of the new, restorative economy.

Looking back, it was a somewhat spur-of-the-moment decision to submit that application – Full Circles Foundation was a crazy dream and it was difficult for me to suspend my skepticism at my own idea enough to even imagine that such a thing would be possible.

But thankfully, I was able to do so long enough to finish and send in our application, and on Friday, July 1, the Full Circles Foundation’s 10-person pilot team wrapped up Strong Home Camp, the first installment of the Strong Camps, a series of free, holistic summer day camps focused on illuminating the connections between personal, community, and environmental health!  We have been working with approximately 20 girls whose ages range from 4 to 15.  Strong Home Camp was focused on fostering environmental literacy through place-based education.  It was an adventure!  Most of our girls had never been on a hike, been on or in a natural body of water, or asked a tree a question – things they were asked to do for the first time during Strong Home Camp.  Among many other great workshops, campers rolled up their sleeves in food labs with whole, local food, learned about the mathematical mysteries found in nature, and made all-natural body lotion. This camp will be followed by Strong Self Camp (creative communication and personal health & wellness) and Strong Neighbor Camp (community health & engagement).

One of the most exciting features of Strong Home Camp was getting to make Flower Bombs.  Flower Bombs are concentrated balls of compost, clay, water, and wildflower seeds, that when dehydrated become virtual “bombs” of perennial flower power!  You can throw them in your backyard, in vacant lots, or on the shoulder of roads, as a way to enliven our communities with color and aroma.  Flower Bombs (and “bombs” of edible plants) became popular through the ‘Geurilla Gardening’ movement – a effort spanning the globe to reclaim public spaces and transform them into beautiful (and tasty!) spots for folks to rediscover community.  FCF campers made over 450 flower bombs – a delightfully messy endeavor!  This project was led by Jenn Hales, an amazing artist and entrepreneur in Raleigh who runs the Patina Collaborative (www.patinacollaborative.com).

After making the Flower Bombs, the campers packaged them in cloth sachets which they adorned with hand-made construction paper tags.  On Friday, our campers and instructors packed themselves and their wares onto the Raleigh city bus and headed downtown for First Friday, a monthly event at which the Raleigh community comes out to celebrate our city center, local businesses, and local music.  This was the first opportunity for our campers to raise resources to support their own summer camp.

It was amazing to watch.  The girls were absolutely fearless.  Even our four and five year-olds were explaining the compelling logic of Flower Bombs to potential buyers in between hopscotch rounds!  The environment was so much fun – there were hula-hoopers, fire-dancers, drummers, and community members of all stripes.  It was amazing to watch our campers absorb the experience.  They had had the opportunity to create something that generated social, environmental, and financial rewards – an opportunity that I didn’t get until I was 24! Moreover, through that experience, they became allies. These aren’t girls whom we are “serving”; these are girls (and families) with whom we are partnering to create an unforgettable summer experience that they want!  At some point during the evening, the thought occuring to me, “This is what health looks like. This is the type of world I am wanting to build.”

Implicit in the exercise of social entrepreneurship is the question, “What does the world I’m trying to create look like?”  The beauty and the weight of social entrepreneurship is that WE have to answer that question.  We can’t just identify a problem and shout at someone “smarter” or “richer” or “more powerful” than us to find a solution.  With social entrepreneurship, individuals and communities can’t ‘outsource’ the question of what our world should look like – we have to decide, we have to explore our potential to realize our decision, and we have to take responsibility for whatever the outcome of our decision may be.  But, this is what it means to self-govern; this is what it means to be human.

by Marcie Hawkins Smith, mhsmith@fullcirclesfoundation.org

Umstead Park Church of Christ

Full Circles Foundation is a community based endeavor! Our work would not be possible if it wasn't for the contributions from Raleigh folks and beyond. A great supporter of Full Circles Foundation is the is the host for our Strong Home Camp; Umstead Park United Church of Christ. The church is an open space for people to worship,  "no matter their gender, race, or sexual identity." 

When Full Circles Foundation was searching for space for our Strong Home Camp, we were running short of ideas and resources. It was beginning to feel like Strong Home Camp may not happen, but our connection with Umstead Park United Church of Christ pulled through. The pastor of Umstead, Doug Long, met with us back in May to discuss using the space. 

"Your ideas almost perfectly align with ours," he said, "The original intention of the church was to have it as an open space for all kinds of community groups to use."

Churches and spaces for faith and spirituality are mostly used for only one to two days during the week, making them perfect spaces for community organizing to take place. Umstead is a leader in empowering social entrepreneurship by offering their space for operation. 

Originally, Umstead held church services out of a YMCA in downtown Raleigh. It has since made partnership with an architecture group for their current space, where both church and business go on in the same building. The fusion of faith and architecture have come together beautifully, creating the only LEED Gold Certified church in the southeast United States. In addition, Umstead is located a short walk from Umstead State Park, which has also been an exciting resource for Full Circles Foundation. The Umstead Park Rangers are leading the Strong Campers on a nature walk and canoeing this week. 

The blessing of Umstead Church and The Umstead State Park has made our dreams of girl empowerment more of a reality. Their generosity and innovative outlook on being a community makes them a perfect partner for Full Circles Foundation.

Kicking Off Camp and Raising Resources!

by Geri Hubbe


The first day of Strong Home Camp is here!  Everyone on the Full Circles Foundation team has been eagerly anticipating this truly groundbreaking and memorable Monday morning, when for the first time our campers and staff will be together as a group.  Early on Monday, many of us will be up before dawn preparing to navigate the complicated Raleigh CAT bus system with our young campers, destined for the Umstead Park United Church of Christ, from locations all over the city.  We have been hard at work for the past several months, planning for two eventful and transformative weeks of exploration and discovery, hiking and canoeing, creativity and play, gardening and gratitude for our natural surroundings.


Our fundraiser on Friday, Local Brews Local Swag, was a blast. Our alterative silent auction generated great interest with items like bike tune ups from All Star Bikes, a locally made organic body care basket from Nature’s Pure Essentials, original artwork by Alex Beresnyak, piercing gift certificates from Femme Fatale, and much more! While sporting outlandish Mod and Rocker outfits, we also heard live poetry and music from four local musicians, tasted three delicious local brews from Carolina Brewing Company, Natty Green's, and Big Boss, and when all was said and done… drumroll… we raised well over $800!


Please stay tuned for our up coming silent auctions and fundraisers. There are plenty more awesome concerts, bake-sales, yard-sales, and silent auctions on the way!

Big Thanks to FCF Community Members!

Our first summer of Strong Camps would not be possible without the help and generosity from some outstanding Raleigh community members.  So many individuals and small businesses have donated time and resources that will hopefully make our camps fun, energizing, and instructive.  Two very special community members include Lea J. Alston and Jenn Hales.

Lea J. Alston is the owner of Scentsuosity, a small, local business that sells a variety of handmade natural body care products.  Alston makes all the products herself and only uses the best of natural ingredients such as essential oils, mineral salts, and herbs.  Because Full Circles focuses on the importance of green living, entrepreneurship, and health, we thought she would be the perfect person to organize with and showoff her expertise to our campers.  She warmly offered to volunteer her time during all three of the Strong Camps.  We are now planning workshops that will highlight the environmentally friendly aspects of her products and help campers realize they too can make green products.  During the Strong Self Camp, topics of hygiene and health will be emphasized and campers will hopefully get the opportunity to make their own natural lip glosses.   Finally, during the Strong Neighbor camp, Alston will talk about her own experience as an entrepreneur and give the girls insight for the future. We are very much looking forward to spending time with this wonderful community member that is sure to be a favorite with the campers!

For more information about Lea J. Alston and her products you may contact her at 919-229-9139 or at scentsuosity@gmail.com. Her store is located at 300 Blake St. Raleigh, NC 27601– Downtown in City Market.  Her website, which is great for looking at all of her products, is www.scentsuosity.com.

Another one of our awesome community members who has offered to donate their time is Jenn Hales.  She too is a small, local business owner and her fine arts studio, Patina, is also located in downtown Raleigh.  We hope to utilize her creativity and artistic skills during the Strong Home Camp by making flower bombs, also known as seed bombs.  These little bundles of seeds can be made easily with just a few basic ingredients and we hope that this will be a fun interactive project for the campers.  They will learn about how to help grow more plants in their communities and also how to make and sell their own products.  The seed bombs/flower bombs can be thrown in abandon or bare lots in order to produce green space since the seeds in the bombs are hearty and thrive in barren environments.  We hope to sell them online and around the community.  Jenn has also given us great ideas about how to make our own paper and other ways of artistic expression.   She is just what we were looking for to enrich our campers’ experiences and help them find their own artistic expressions while being green in the process.

For more information about Jenn Hales and her studio you may contact her at 919-656-8713 or at PatinabyJennHales@gmail.com.   Her website is www.JennHales.com and she can also be found at the Downtown City Market. 

We are very happy and excited that we can have so many wonderful community members and hope that our community will keep growing! 

Full Circles Beginnings

by Mary Owen


Full Circles Foundation's pilot program is underway!  I am just one of many new entrepreneurial team members for the Strong Camp summer program.  My name is Mary Owen and I was born and raised here in Raleigh, North Carolina.  I am a recent graduate of Appalachian State University and I am very excited to be a part of this new venture.  My greatest fear coming out of college was that I would not find a job I could be passionate, about but I am in love with this organization! This past week was Full Circles' instructor training week, which was profoundly successful and I thoroughly enjoyed being involved.  People of all walks of life came together to share their experiences and knowledge and to learn and grow together. We talked about a lot of exciting new ideas and how we could turn those ideas into a reality.  Some of my favorite snapshots were our discussions about asset-based thinking and anti-oppression, which helped us to understand each other better as individuals so that we could develop as a group.

Asset-based community development is a transformational way of thinking that sees abundance all around us. Rather than feeling discouraged by the things we lack, like large amounts of monetary resources, we can be creative and compile all of our diverse skills, networks, time, and materials to meet our needs. This way of thinking has proved to be extremely useful to Full Circles Foundation, but it has also been extremely helpful for me on an individual level because it helps me to focus on the positive and let the negative go.

During training week, asset-based thinking tied in well with the anti-oppression workshop because conversations about oppression, for obvious reasons, tend to focus on the negative.  Oppression is something that most folks experience in some way or another and privilege is also something each of us carry to varying degrees; but by sharing our identities and experiences, our hopes and our fears, and actively listening to each other, we were able to honor the differences in our identities and experiences and understand them to be uniquely valuable to our common mission.

I was also excited to learn about social entrepreneurship.  Social entrepreneurship is a way of making change that focuses on finding ‘potential’ (anything that has value) and using it to create more ‘potential’ in a way that exponentially helps the world. Our group talked about social entrepreneurship as a biomimetic concept, which means it is a model based on natural systems. Natural systems tend to employ feedback loops (autopoietic structures), which are named as such because information or energy is fed back into the system rather than being pointed linearly.  Linear models waste hard-gained information, resources, and energy because output is not utilized or reincorporated into the model sufficiently.  An example of a feedback loop is the stomach. When we get hungry our stomachs tell our brains that we are hungry so we eat.  When we have had enough our stomachs tell our brains that we are full so we stop eating.  If there were no interaction between brains and stomachs we would either eat forever until we popped or we would never eat and eventually starve.

Social entrepreneurship is like a stomach because it relies on the transformation and interaction of resources and information. It is a model that engages many forms of ‘potential’ and produces many forms of ‘potential’ too.  In our case, our intention is that by putting our energy into the futures of young women they will in turn contribute to the well being of their communities by being empowered in various ways.  My intention is that we can in some way convey the message that money is not the worthiest goal but rather it is just one of many resources that can be used towards a greater goal.

This week we are all working very diligently to get ready for our first camp, the Strong Home camp, which starts next week. We are calling families, organizing fundraisers, improving our curriculum, and meeting with contributors about cool opportunities for our girls and young women.  The group already feels a lot like family and I am having a blast! I feel intensely connected to the work that we are doing and I hope that our collective energy and ideas will be able to reach some of you out there and inspire you to start something in your own communities.