Rebuild Long Branch's Community Center

We are Long Branch Environmental Education Center. Set aside in 1974 as an ecological sanctuary and land trust, we have developed into an educational center for sharing courses, workshops, and examples of ecological design, passive solar construction, organic orcharding, renewable energy, resource conservation, wildlife protection, land restoration, and improved environmental quality.

We are currently raising funds for multiple projects, the largest of which is reconstructing our beloved Community Center building. Over the past several decades, this building has hosted homeschool groups, ecological scholars, various teachers, bright students, and community gatherings, and the structure is in need of many repairs in order to do so again. Inside the Community Center is a vast library on environmental, social, and scientific studies that is a great resource for many in such a rural area. The Community Center additionally holds Long Branch's passive solar greenhouse, the kitchen for our residential volunteers and community potlucks, a wood stove stone hearth around which we gather in the cold months that heats the building and greenhouse, and our bath house facilities.

The Community Center's largest obstacle is the building's infrastructure: some walls need to be reinsulated or reconstructed, it is in need of all new windows (currently all single pane without proper sealing), new flooring, lights, and other safety measures such as re-doing our electrical system. Our attached passive solar greenhouse is also in great need of reconstruction so that we can start seeds and saplings for our gardens and orchards, and also keep some rare and exciting plants! We want to both ensure all visitors of Long Branch have a safe and educational time and we want to grow to host a larger number of people for our courses and gatherings now and well into the future. Please share this fundraiser with your friends and wider web of community so that we can make this a possibility!

We aim to work with our community, skilled volunteers, and local businesses to accomplish the vision of building a clean, beautiful, functional, and well-maintained space with a combination of timber frame and natural building methods to be an example of “appropriate technology” in the permaculture and natural building world. As well as financial support, if you or someone you know can contribute these building skills, please let us know in what way you would be interested to support this project.

Thank you!