Women Empowering Climate Action Network (WE-CAN) is kicking off a certificate program in community-based Climate Justice and Gaian Thriving. A project of the Institute for Earth Regenerative Studies, with a maiden cohort in Fall 2015 in Portland, Oregon, the WE-CAN program is recruiting a first cohort of 9-12 women and queer women activists interested in arts-based, ecopreneurial, and/or regenerative design/permaculture approaches to community-based climate resilience. We are connecting with project sponsors, partners, internship sites, and mentors while generating a nexus of support for our experiential, project-based programs for Cascadian Climate Resilience.
The WE-CAN Program year offers a dynamic, interactive learning and action context for community-based climate change resilience projects. Whether projects such as increasing community-based organic gardening or food forests, bootstrapping a public-benefit enterprise in transition skills, or increasing community climate behavior change through large puppetry or murals, we nurture Gaian thriving, in learners' growing vision, along multi-disciplinary dimensions. Our mentor match program is excellent.
Supportive Circles of Mentoring – Model
Meet regularly with the cohort with guest presenters and demonstrations.
Meet monthly with project mentors.
Meet monthly with the entire circle of action learners and mentors.
Custom design of a project inside a circle of support.
Field trips and site visits as well as intensives for immersive learning.
Mentoring one-on-one and the mentor learning circle bridges generations of successive waves of contribution, talent, and creativity. All this with the intention of creating planetary thrivability.
Other Features
The program in Women Empowering Climate Action Network (or WE-CAN) will feature research based and culturally responsive vibrant practices for learning and collaboration, including regenerative creativity inspired by biomimicry and fractal patterns from nature and bioculture as well as sustainability education, complex living systems, and ecoliteracy combined with approaches for environmental justice. Cohort members will also study and practice agile project management and collaborative leadership. The project hopes to nurture each learner with a project mentor, internships, and accelerator-style resources and micro-investments in project start-up. The Pacific Northwest women's community will be an amazing hothouse of support and social incubation for these practical visionaries. 
Our community is uniquely positioned to interconnect and galvanize action: Innovators, mavericks, healers, dirt-builders, ceremonialists, and tree-huggers mixed with tech-savvy social mediums, creatives, and connectionists. Together, we can make space for Earth thriving.
The Institute for Earth Regenerative Studies is a learning organization for Gaian thriving at the intersection of creativity, ecological restoration, and the living wisdom traditions in the Pacific Cascadia bioregion. The living Earth system is our first teacher. 
We look forward to collaborating with you to bring this and other amazing projects to life in the heart of Cascadia. 
Program Key AttributesTech-savvy
Our programs help build literacies in project delivery utilizing decentralized and appropriate technology.
Quick launch
Learn what you need to launch your climate resilience project catalyzed by a deeper understanding of how you can collaborate to make a difference.
Deep insights
Alternatives to industrial growth culture include, according to Joanna Macy, a mixture of the hands, the head, and the heart (resistance, embodied alternatives, inner work). The body becomes a source of clarity and strength.
Unearth the gifts
Leaders shift from crisis thinking and learn to catalyze gifts during times of intense transition. Critical place-based experiential learning encourages decolonization and reinhabitation.
Agile & writing
A balance of writing, art, and action, within a flipped curriculum supports whole-mind intelligence. Learn agile project management to prototype, iterate, and organize.
Practical magic
Harness the power of the circle to help bring your visions to life. Group genius and earthflow practices infuse enthusiastic support from the living Earth.
Strengthening community
Climate justice includes actions of solidarity, intersectionality, and resourcery. We learn to look at our own privilege as well as heal the wounds of oppression and internalized oppression to catalyze projects that liberate.
Webs of learning
Creating space to empower the potentially underutilized potentials of the current and next generation. Bridge across cultural divides to mentor, inspire, and connect.
Investing in women
The UN confirms that women are the best investment for ensuring survival through climate change. From the circle song, "Women's voices, raised up the silence can be heard a long way": "We believe in the power of women to turn this world around."

Marna Hauk, Ph.D., is a professor, regenerative designer, and collaborative creativity catalyst. She innovates experiential educational programs for wild Gaian thriving. Marna serves on the faculty of Prescott College where she mentors graduate students and teaches courses in group genius, biomimicry, regenerative design, and women’s voices. Marna directs the Institute for Earth Regenerative Studies at the convergence of creativity, ecological restoration, and the living wisdom traditions in Portland, Oregon. Marna graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Reed College, with an M.A. from the Sophia Center at Holy Names University, and from Prescott College with a doctorate in Sustainability Education. She has been studying, designing with, and teaching permaculture and natural building for twenty-seven years. She has advanced training in contemplative listening and poetic medicine. Marna is also an agile process architect and strategic consultant for small and large corporations and organizations.  Marna publishes and presents internationally. Her research interests include regenerative creativity, wisdom school design, complex living systems, queer studies, social justice, Gaian Methods, terrapsychology, and community-based climate action and resilience.