Liberating Love & Light Auction

Liberating Love + Light Auction
Telling our truths and sharing our gifts so we can set us free! Water Wanderings’ annual auction is back with a visionary theme!  Our community has come together to offer some amazing items from their homes and hearts to support Water Wanderings this year. Our goal is to create a space for equitable exchange and to raise funds to support Water Wanderings' vision that young people will disrupt oppression by building healthy and equitable relationships with themselves, each other and the earth.

The auction offers many items, including unique made-in-Vermont products, outdoor gear rentals, art, and exclusive opportunities to engage with Water Wanderings. A new addition this year offers the opportunity to save your camp slot for 2024! We hope you will consider bidding on some of these amazing community-donated offerings. Each bid helps Water Wanderings continue to build anti-racist, regenerative communities through our camps and within our organization. 

And if you feel inspired to give to the auction directly, there's still time to contribute new items. We're accepting gifts you love to make for people (e.g. Nikki's nut butter), gifts you love to share with people (e.g. Heidi's song leading), or gifts you have in your home which others might value, but which you do not use to its full potential (e.g. my film camera). 

The auction opens this week - stay tuned for the grand opening! 

Email us if you're inspired to contribute an item!

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Harvest Fest 2023
A fabulous collaboration with Mama's Farm

Our Harvest Fest event with Mama's Farm in Williston was a great success! Several Water Wanderings families, many farm customers, and a crew of Burlington High School student volunteers came together to celebrate the Harvest with delicious food, music, apple cider making and conversation. Despite rainy and cold weather, roughly 45 people attended the event. People came together to share food and connect across differences in celebration of the earth's bounty.

Mama's Farm is one of few Black-owned farms in Vermont and the chicken and goat meat they provide for the local community fills an important need for many New American households in Vermont. Water Wanderings is proud to have collaborated with them on this event and we are so excited to build off this year's success and make it a tradition to have our alumni reunion in conjunction with Harvest Fest at Mama's Farm.
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Learn more about Mama's Farm

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Save the Date: November 28th
"Sowing Seeds for Sustainable Growth"

"Sowing Seeds: Growing Roots" is the theme of Water Wanderings' end-of-year Annual Campaign for 2023. It is inspired by the opportunities that our camps provide to families and young people to learn, grow, and flourish in the outdoors through inclusive community building, outdoor adventure, and environmental education that nourishes resilience and integrity. 

Our first goal is to raise $500 by Giving Tuesday (November 28th) to fund Sonya's Lifeguard Instructor Course, which will enable Water Wanderings to train our counselors in-house. This training has a huge return on investment because it costs over $300 for each counselor to get lifeguard training and having Sonya certified as an instructor opens up the possibility of Water Wanderings offering lifeguard instructor courses for wilderness settings, which is potentially an untapped niche in the lifeguard training market. 

To ensure cost is never a barrier for campers, our over-arching goal is to raise $8,000 by Sunday, December 31st. This will enable Water Wanderings to enter the new year with the resources we need to engage in strategic planning and to grow sustainably. 
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Make an Early Campaign Gift Today!