Fund the Journey to Horticulture Therapy

(visual video story)

Once upon a time in 2020, I asked my community for support to begin a career switching journey to study agriculture and plant medicine. Without hesitation, you all showed up and showed out helping me raise 75% of the costs in donations to pay for my Sacred Vibes Herbalism class. Quickly, I learned that my community was behind me.

Encouraged & inspired, I began hosting workshops to share the knowledge gained. I co-hosted and hosted over 20 workshops and events from 2022 until now that centered plant medicine, agriculture, native plants, beekeeping, urban farming, and wellness to folks of all ages. I partnered with groups like Chi Eta Omega of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, The Hillary Rodham Clinton Children's Library, Sankofa Village Arkansas, Calm and Confidence Beekeeping, DP True Serenity, Urban Patchwork 501, local community gardens and more to share the wealth of knowledge I had gained access.

After spending 2.5 years working for local community gardens and urban farms in Little Rock, Arkansas, I started my newest creation...the urban wildlife haven project. This project functions as a portal to offer restorative nature-centered gatherings & educational workshops to underestimated communities. With this project, we collaborate with local wellness practitioners, liberation-minded people, and earthworkers to create restorative spaces to help people cope with the chaos of the world.

Now, 2024 I am committed to taking the next step in this journey and seek to become a Horticulture Therapist. The goal is to combine plant medicine, agriculture, and restorative gatherings with a certificate in horticulture therapy to continue the pursuit of opening a healing center and farm.

Will you support as I continue to create & build a healing center for the community with others? We are in a time of needing to return back to the earth, return to the ways of learning to being in healthy relationship with the natural world, and opening ourselves to receive the healing properties of nature while also learning how to care for it. Help me become the facilitator and earth guide that I know I can be!

Three years later, it is still my dream to one day to steward a cooperative community healing center where artists, community organizers, & healers can share their gifts and create liberatory spaces for BIPOC. To steward a farm where we can provide food for families and my neighbors. To teach the future generation how to be in right relationship with the land. For me, it’s about the freedom that comes when someone feels peace in their mind, body, and spirit.

The hybrid certificate cost $1850 and lasts for 9 months at the North Carolina Botanical Gardens in partnership the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I will be relocating to North Carolina so the extra funds will go towards travel (I'm driving from Arkansas to North Carolina)!

I truly appreciate you all!

Bio

Kendra Danielle (she/her/hers) is a practicing multidimensional creative, painter, writer, and restorative facilitator. She uses the artist moniker arkansawblk to intentionally center her creative work exploring the fluidity of queer & Pan-African diasporic religion, mysticism, & the tradition of freedom fighting in the American South. Currently, arkansawblk is the founder and creative director of the Urban Wildlife Haven which offers nature-centered education and outdoor adventures to urban communities to foster and nurture the relationship between people and the natural world.