posted by Susan Arterian Chang
One of the qualities we seek out in the projects and businesses we highlight for the Field Guide to Investing in a Regenerative Economy is a striving for right relationship. In their book Right Relationship, Peter Brown et al. describe this quality as something that underpins all wisdom traditions, encouraging people to “live life according to cherished values built on caring for other people and being stewards of the earth’s gifts.” We’ve been discovering that wherever we see people and projects operating in right relationship we are also seeing all the other qualities of regenerativeness emerging.
This month’s Field Guide “Share your Story” teller Sara Day Evans is the founder of Accelerating Appalachia. She has been fortunate to have had many opportunities to experience right relationship and it has informed her life’s work. A sixth generation Kentuckian she grew up in a family that loved the outdoors and spent her childhood in it “from sunup to sundown.” She also counts Wendell Berry and his daughter, Mary, as lifelong friends and mentors. Sara Day founded the accelerator to nurture nature-based businesses, and has been supported and guided in that effort by the collective wisdom of people like Kevin Jones and Rosa Lee Harden of SOCAP and Good Capital, and Ross Baird of Village Capital.
Like all regenerative projects we have studied, Accelerating Appalachia does not take a needs-based approach to healing the regional economy in which it operates. Instead it tunes into the region’s abundance of human and natural capital, but always in right relationship. “Even though we know there is plenty that is broken,” says Sara Day, “we are working to support a post-extractive, post-coal economy for Appalachia and beyond, by building on our region’s assets.”
Read Sara Day’s story here.
This month’s Field Guide “Share your Story” teller Sara Day Evans is the founder of Accelerating Appalachia. She has been fortunate to have had many opportunities to experience right relationship and it has informed her life’s work. A sixth generation Kentuckian she grew up in a family that loved the outdoors and spent her childhood in it “from sunup to sundown.” She also counts Wendell Berry and his daughter, Mary, as lifelong friends and mentors. Sara Day founded the accelerator to nurture nature-based businesses, and has been supported and guided in that effort by the collective wisdom of people like Kevin Jones and Rosa Lee Harden of SOCAP and Good Capital, and Ross Baird of Village Capital.
Like all regenerative projects we have studied, Accelerating Appalachia does not take a needs-based approach to healing the regional economy in which it operates. Instead it tunes into the region’s abundance of human and natural capital, but always in right relationship. “Even though we know there is plenty that is broken,” says Sara Day, “we are working to support a post-extractive, post-coal economy for Appalachia and beyond, by building on our region’s assets.”
Read Sara Day’s story here.
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