A Word on The Power of Spaces
For nearly a decade, I have worked in spaces that have opened my eyes to the power of infrastructure. I have witnessed the impacts of how we design our spaces on communities, children, and the natural world. I am very passionate about creating and investing in spaces that nurture community care, support children and families, and create abundance in local ecosystems. I strongly believe our healing and survival as a species are deeply tied to remembering and honoring our connections to each other and the planet when making decisions about local infrastructure. We have so much room to be visionary about creating spaces that secure food access, make beauty accessible to everyone, nurture education, provide child care, and heal the planet. My efforts over the last decade of my life have been aimed towards broadening my impact in a global movement making this a reality.
Passing on Knowledge in Library Land
As a Youth Library Associate at my local library, I curate programs for children and youth year round. I thoroughly enjoy getting creative about engaging local youth and families in public spaces free of charge.
In my Seed to Salve program, I gathered materials and taught children how to make herbal salve for free. The children learned how to infuse oil and took home a plant they seeded, a spearmint oil they infused, and spearmint salve they poured. I was very honored to give this knowledge freely as many of the materials needed to engage in herbal remedies can be quite expensive and out of reach for many who would greatly benefit. I look to expand my impact beyond the library by embracing opportunities that allow me to enrich communities through creative programming.
Food Access & Community Agriculture
Food access and community agriculture lie close to my heart. It has been a place where I have cultivated abundance. Farming in urban spaces has taught me a lot about the infrastructure and efficiency needed to feed a neighborhood. I am grateful to my teachers who have helped me cultivate invaluable knowledge on supporting communities through food.
Youth Mentorship
My work is never complete without learning from those in my community and passing on what I know. For this reason and many more, adolescent mentorship and community stewardship matter to me. While working at Growing Gardens in 2022, I helped lead and manage our Cultiva Youth Program where we helped ten teens develop farm skills, educated on social responsibility regarding agriculture, and cultivated food and camaraderie. But the teens were certainly not the only ones gaining from the experience.
I am so grateful to these youth for their diverse personalities and how they showed up as the funny, passionate, and creative people they are.
Public Investments & Communications
From 2020 to the end of 2021, I worked as a Communications Associate with the Colorado Fiscal Institute, an economic and tax policy research organization based in Denver, CO. Together we worked on informing the public and policymakers on the economic impacts of our public investments and social decisions with a focus on racial equity and tax fairness. My role was to help communicate those values through digital mediums such as social media, digital briefs, photos, and video content. This role gave me valuable insight on the state and national policy decisions that can create or destroy healthy outcomes for the public and planet.
louise 