Many of us working with young people in and out of schools in urban communities have witnessed how restoring the land can also support social networks and hope in the face of challenges and barriers such as institutional poverty and racism. At this roundtable discussion we will briefly share experiences from Great Lake Stewardship Initiative (GLSI) efforts in Flint and Detroit where place-based stewardship methods have been used as an approach to community renewal. We will then have a discussion focused on two questions: 1) What are the challenges and possibilities in working on such projects? 2) How does our own social positioning (e.g., race, culture, class), impact how we facilitate such efforts? Finally we will share a framework for thinking about the challenges of race and class disparities in stewardship work and provide a safe atmosphere for discussing these challenges.
