Regenerative Arts Learning Center

First off, thank you for being here and taking the time to support small nonprofits that care and commit to bettering our engagement with the planet.

   The Regenerative Arts Learning Center & Day Camp (RAD Camp) was started and founded by Ilanna Greenfield Spring 2023. The goal is to offer an alternative center for kids and all ages to come learn about Regenerative practices like sustainable/earth friend arts and crafts, growing food, building soil, solar cooking, eco building and more. We want to empower students to feel confident in working with natural and recycled resources to create a healthy future.

  The reason we started this Learning Center is because we see the need. Kids and all ages have the desire to work with the earth. Learning through art and gardening empowering health and well-being for ourselves and in turn the planet is so incredibly necessary and not practiced in an educational setting nearly enough. It was a dream of ours to offer these classes more regularly through our own off-grid family farm but because of access (40 minutes from downtown Mt. Shasta), we’ve found people don’t want to travel so far to drop off their kids daily or come and take a weekly class. For the last 3 years we've been located at a beautiful 2 acre property just outside of Mount Shasta city limits. Our intention was to  be able to create a more sustainable framework on this property like bring in solar power, a solar pump in the well, seed with native plants, expand the garden, water catchment, micro farming and so much more… We are so happy to say we doubled our gardens this last year, started a mobile greenhouse, added chickens, earth worms, many native plants, saved many seeds, added wooden play areas and more!

  Three years ago we started with a summer camp which was an instant hit. RAD Camp ran for 2 months with an average of 20 students a day. We had 4 wonderful counsellors who led the children though a newly built Kids' Garden, play structures, music, dance, arts and crafts, solar cooking, mushroom cultivation, food exploration and many interactive games. The summer was abundant with positive response from parents appreciating this option for their children and coming home with more interest in growing and trying a range of foods, new ways of looking at "waste" as exciting materials for art and crafts, learning new skills and growing leaps and bounds in their social and emotional interactions. Today we have 10 regular staff members who support up to 30 kids a day in the Summer and an average of 15-20 kids year round 4 days a week. New families are still finding us each month and the response has been nothing but positive and full of gratitude to have a program like this in our community. During the school year we offer Day Camp to kids that aren’t of school age quite yet as well as extra curricular for kids who are homeschooling and kids who go to other schooling programs with limited hours or days. We now have multiple teachers and tutors on staff to be able to offer tutoring support to any school age child. After school hours we are starting to offer special classes like Ukulele Class, French Café, Latin Club, tutoring all subjects and specialized art classes. We plan to extend our afterschool program more this year.

  This year we have big needs for Giving Tuesday as we have a big new transition.. We’re moving to a new property! This move is needed as we’ve outgrown our space and found the perfect new location just a mile up the road! This property gives us the opportunity to have healthy growth and to serve our community even more for many years to come. With the new location comes new costs that we gratefully need your help with. We have a big building that needs a lot of inputs to make it a comfortable space. Some of the specific needs are: fencing, tools, flooring, rugs, furniture, paint, mower, gates, chicken coop and a new play structure. Additionally, we need help finishing funding our mobile greenhouse to be able to continue to offer this educational experience to the community with it being on wheels! So far we have taken our greenhouse to 4 large community events to share about simple and advanced growing techniques and how a mobile greenhouse can help many with cost, location and flexibility of mobility year-round. This greenhouse is still in need of $10k worth of inputs including ADA ramp, irrigation, mini solar system, water catchment, heating, lighting and leveling jacks. Lastly and very importantly, we are raising funds to help support the cost of RAD Camp for families who need assistance with tuition. We try to keep it very affordable for our community but do depend on tuition to run our program. If we can sponsor even one family this year it would make a world of difference for that family. Thank you!