Our goal is to improve the quality of community members' lives by educating and organizing community members to be able to support one another in times of grief, death and dying. The Northeast Kingdom (NEK) Death Care Community is a grassroots initiative that grew out of local Death Cafes, gatherings that have attracted new members to our community of care. We have been working to encourage more compassionate conversations about loss, grief, and dying, and to broadly share resources related to those topics. We have been partnering in our area with local libraries, faith groups, hospice & health care providers, and end-of-life caregivers to expand support and information around death and dying. The result of our first year of work shows up in growing interests in green burial, ability to care for family and neighbors at home before and after death, reducing the cost of end of life practices by learning death wellness practices that avoid dependence on medical and funeral systems, and the ability to support one another in times of grief and sorrow.