Create a Bioregional Regeneration Team for your landscape or cause

Form a Bioregional Regeneration Team

If $100 million flowed to your landscape in three years, how can this money have the most impact, and be connected to the regenerators on the ground, as best determined by the people doing the work and as part of a coherent and long-term regional regeneration plan that has been built with the buy-in and consent of our communities? What does a practical definition of “regeneration” even mean for your landscape? right now, people are busy doing the work. The nutrients are in the soil. But without a strong mycorrhizal and mycelial web, which is able to sensemake, visualize, connect, and guide nutrient flows, no amount of water will help us achieve the regenerative future we need.

To help us do this sensemaking, we are inviting communities to self-organize regeneration teams, in parallel with other stewards, projects, and groups, to begin to see projects and groups receive the support they need as part of a nested scale and coherent regeneration strategy. Our goal is for groups to form organically around places or issues that people think are important for the long-term regeneration of our bioregion.

We envision a mycelial network of Bioregional Regeneration Teams in every watershed, helping to connect, visualize, and support regenerative work already happening in that landscape. More than that, we see groups working with on-the-ground communities to identify core design challenges and develop portfolios and priorities for what needs to be supported, and to weave across existing silos to create a long-term and whole system vision for what regeneration means in that place and a bioregional regeneration strategy for how to achieve these goals. In the backend, Regenerate Cascadia is working to connect these efforts as part of a coherent bioregional vision and to create a bioregional financing facility and funding ecosystem to partner with local teams and initiatives and flow funding into the landscape.

Our goal is for these groups to sense what needs to be supported, create the indicators for what needs to be monitored, and direct funding into their communities while leveraging and mobilizing more extensive networks of support as part of a clear regeneration strategy, which does not currently exist. Ultimately, these groups will determine what needs to be monitored and tracked, continually learn and adapt, and bring this learning back to our broader communities so we can continually update and adapt as needed. 

From this process, we will identify the stewards, teams, and groups with whom we will work over the upcoming year. Bioregional Regeneration Teams will be invited to share report backs as part of an online Cascadia showcase, and invited to an in-person bioregional financing and funding ecosystem conference in 2025. We also aim to provide groups with some initial support, and funding to regrant into their communities in our first year.

A Critical Path for forming a Regeneration Team

3) Host an Activation & Envisioning Session.

The next step will be to invite Regenerate Cascadia to cohost a community activation. This is a short, one-day event online or in person, in which we will give a 45-minute presentation, followed by an open discussion to set the context, identify essential themes, what voices need to be present who are missing, and build interest for who might want to be a part of a regeneration team moving forward. You will be invited to co-design and co-facilitate this process with us.  This might be as simple as a potluck, a cup of coffee, or a meetup at a library – or, if spread out geographically, a Zoom call.

• For place-based groups: Invite Regenerate Cascadia to host a one-day public event or potluck for a community that wants to get active. The envisioning session is intended for 5-30 people and will include a presentation followed by a community conversation and brainstorming session. Once the date and location are set, we will share them on our calendar and in our email newsletter.
• For issues and topics: If a team wants to form around a specific topic or issue they find important (such as Seeds, Permaculture, etc.), they will be invited to host an online digital activation session. 

Additional Support: When you are ready, we will set up a webpage and site for you and create your own organizing space on the backend of Regenerate Cascadia, where you can connect with others, and new members can join and get involved. We also hope that groups can begin hosting their meetings and planning for what’s next. Once you start meeting, Regenerate Cascadia will also provide stipends for teams just getting off the ground.

4) Identify Steward Mentors

To help teams just starting out, and to provide resources, wisdom and support to Regenerate Cascadia support staff, we are also forming a “steward mentor group”, to help provide advice, feedback, help in specific projects, and to ensure that learning is being captured and documented as we move forward.

Who are the incredible people who have been doing this work for decades, who hold knowledge, or are instrumental as network weavers, and who hold the trust of those around them?

Each group will be invited to identify individuals who hold incredible knowledge, wisdom, are connectors of networks, are who can help provide guidance to both participants and groups undertaking this process, and help provide recommendations, resources and strategic support as part of a “Steward Mentorship Group”. Each issue or topic will be invited to nominate “mentors” to support participants and Regenerate Cascadia with guidance, feedback, and support. 

5) Host a Bioregional Mapping Workshop.

When a group is ready, we will provide support for them to host:

• For Landscape Teams: a public bioregional mapping workshop to begin creating bioregional frameworks, layers of stewardship, a portfolio of regenerative projects and communities, a landscape vision of what regeneration would look like in that area, 1-3 tangible projects they may like to work on in the upcoming year, and finally, a budget for both their team and for actual regeneration to happen. 
• For Issues and Topics: a public session held over zoom to discuss the creation of a introduction for why that issue matters for the long term regeneration of our bioregion, an introductory course that will be freely available for regenerators, a directory of resources and groups, 1-3 tangible projects they would like to undertake and a budget for what they would need to do the work. 

6) Bioregional Regeneration Strategy & Federated Grant Application

The purpose of all this, will be to develop a bioregional regeneration strategy for your landscape, topic or issue, with the needed frameworks and layers, and to achieve the buy-in and consent from community members as both part of the planning, and as part of the long term regeneration of our watersheds and biroegion. Our goal will be to connect these strategies together as part of a bioregional vision and plan, and to begin to flow funding into our landscapes.

After hosting a bioregional mapping workshop, groups will be invited to officially form a bioregional regeneration team, which will receive stipends and support, and will join our following federated grant process for Regenerate Cascadia to receive funding starting in 2026. We also want groups to be able to use this as a way to begin fundraising and getting active in their communities. It will be from these groups that we will continue to work with for the upcoming year.

Everyone is welcome to apply (no existing group is needed). The activation aims to unite people in groups around places and topics that may not yet exist. If there is no local group, individuals will be invited to a larger regional incubator to help support these initial steps.

How we will support this process

To support this activation, Regenerate Cascadia will be meeting online and in person with applicants, provide biweekly information sessions, share updates into our newsletter and calendar, and organize an online community of practice that all participants will be invited to. Members will be able to come together to share, learn, meet and plan in different cohorts based on interest and location, and be matched with initial outreach, fundraising, and communications assistance.

We will also support documentation, developing a first draft of a bioregional regeneration strategy, and bringing this learning back to the whole. In the backend, we will provide support for groups to begin to develop their own storytelling, and fundraising strategies. 

What is Regenerate Cascadia?

Regenerate Cascadia is a 501(c)3 social movement and capacity-building program developing a vision and framework to administer a regeneration fund for Cascadia, a bioregion located along the upper Pacific Rim of North America stretching from Southeast Alaska to Northern California, and as far east as the Yellowstone Caldera. A central goal of Regenerate Cascadia is to grow capacity cohesively across the scales of landscapes, ecoregions, and bioregions—something that currently does not exist locally or globally—as part of a multi-generational strategy for the long-term health of the Cascadia bioregion. Regenerate Cascadia is addressing the complex challenges in funding connected landscape outcomes across a bioregion through a whole systems approach that: prioritizes the central role of place-based stewardship; ensures decision-making is held by those at the local level; develops trust-based networks that hold the integrity of the work; and uses a nested scale structure to facilitate information flow, representation, and learning across the whole system.

Regenerate Cascadia was formed in April 2023 during the first-ever Salmon Nation Edge Prize, where the vision to activate a bioregional movement in Cascadia won the Edge Prize for Innovation in Systems and Governance. After months of planning with 100+ local community organizers on both sides of the Canada-US border, they partnered with the Design School for Regenerating Earth to co-facilitate a month-long Bioregional Activation Tour. They traveled to 14 communities around Cascadia during October 2023, hosting presentations that asked, “How do we regenerate the Cascadia bioregion?”. They met with more than 1000 individuals, including Indigenous knowledge keepers, regenerative leaders, groups, community artists, and elders across Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia through presentations, workshops, site visits, and strategy sessions. This was followed by an online summit that brought together 50+ presentations in a ‘Festival of What Works’, and concluded with an Open Space Unconference from November 3-12, 2023, where participants cocreated working groups for Regenerate Cascadia. The vision resonated strongly with many communities across the bioregion. Jay Bowen, an elder of the Skagit people who opened the Summit, articulated the following statement in the opening ceremony:

“Gathered before us are the most important people in the world. It may be a small group right now, but in a few short years, there’s going to be a long line of people waiting to get involved in this very important movement that is overseeing the welfare of our communities.”

Since then, we have been working with more than 140 people to co-design Regenerate Cascadia as a 501(c)3 nonprofit program,  grow our capacity, and, most recently, have worked with a Cascadia Cohort through a six-month learning journey with the Design School for Regenerating Earth, connecting this work into a broader framework of bioregional groups working together around North America and the world.