Y Tho?

City shelters euthanize millions of adoptable animals every year due to lack of space. An indoor-

outdoor shelter in a rural setting such as a farm can receive surplus animals from these shelters, saving

their lives. By providing for the physical, mental and social needs of these animals, we can make their

days joyful and interesting. By adopting them out, including facilitating easy adoptions by residents and

interns, we can open up more spots for more animals.

Children in the foster system suffer from a lack of stability, loving community and adult guidance

that can cause permanent emotional harm. We target this problem first through integration into

pseudo-familial household units, then through traditional talk therapy and an array of additional

techniques and best practices. Children will be housed in family-sized structures in groups of no more

than six with a state-licensed foster parent, potentially pets, and possibly one or more senior residents

as well in each unit. They will attend school in a central building (school will initially be online) and

participate in a wide range of activities from crafting, to working with animals, to helping garden. By

integrating these children into a larger community, we hope to form organic familial bonds and nurture

a feeling of being cared for and accepted. By exposing children and teens to a broad variety of roles and

challenges, we allow them to safely explore their own strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes,

ultimately leading to lives of productivity, pro-social behavior, and self-actualization. Finally, urban kids

and teens in particular are often completely out of touch with nature, and returning its presence to their

lives has proven health benefits both physical and psychological. Growing one’s own food creates a

sense of contentment, and caring for animals is extremely healing.

Teens and young adults in the foster system are often left with little after the age of 18. They

may struggle not only financially but with feelings of abandonment, confusion, and aimlessness. The

internship program is designed specifically for these young people. It offers a stable job and living

situation for as long as the intern needs (expected minimum one month), giving the intern a broad array

of duties to choose from to help them determine their career goals. Many of these duties (childcare,

farming, working with animals, and elderly care) have known uplifting psychological effects. Indeed, all

these fields have proven to lead to increased levels of professional and personal fulfilment.

Elders can feel lonely and cut off from their communities at home, especially when they live

alone, but resist retirement homes as places full of plastic plants where people “wait to die”. This

nonprofit is a radical alternative to that paradigm: a place where elders can live with nature and find

new friendships and relationships, integrated into a multi-generational community – and, if they want,

contribute to that community. At this retirement home, residents will have quite a few unusual

opportunities: to work with animals ranging from kittens to cows, to garden, to cook, to build and

repair, to consult, and many more. Most of all, they can spend time with children – teach them, babysit

them, eat with them, or just sit and chat. These children, most from the foster system, will likely be

thirsty for adult support and positive role models, and most would appreciate more encouragement and

attention. Seniors can decide for themselves how much of their golden years will be spent relaxing, how

much will be spent being productive in whatever manner they choose, and how much will be spent

guiding and connecting with the next generation.

Study after study tells us that much of what seniors, adults, children, and animals need is simply

each other. Therefore, the approach taken at every level of this project is to rely on mutualism and

symbiotic relationships, most fundamentally the relationship between children and domestic animals. It

is guided by Permaculture, a sustainability methodology that focuses on drawing new connections to

allow problems to “solve each other”. In this case, the connections are numerous. For example, the

problem of children needing parental figures solves the problem of lifeless retirement homes, and the

problem of struggling young people without jobs solves the problem of surplus animals in city shelters –

and, of course, vice-versa.