Wild Hometown Movement

At A Glance

Contact: 

Jacob Freedman

Location: 

Middlebury, Vermont

Primary Issue Area:

  • Climate Change & Energy
  • Land & Water
  • Environmental Health

Active since:

2018

Tax Status:

Ad-hoc

Core volunteers:

25

Our Purpose

The Wild Hometown Movement is an alliance of place-based, youth-powered environmental clubs and educational programs. Each Wild Hometown Chapter is an on-campus club at an academic institution that collaborates with local youth and community conservation partners to help young people to connect with their local conservation community and advocate for the future of these shared natural resources.Wherever you live—whether a rural area or a big city—nature lives there too. It’s the forests and streams around your town, birds that fly overhead, and the life that exists in your backyard. We all belong to “wild hometowns,” the communities of species and ecosystems intimately connected with our human communities, a web of life that we belong to and that makes our lives possible. At the same time, the ways that we have set up our society, businesses, and governments are bringing the natural systems that sustain all life—our air, our water, and our land—to the breaking point. Climate change, deforestation, and species extinction are threatening our wild hometowns, and us. Additionally, the growing disconnect between humans and our natural communities threatens our ability both to feel belonging and speak on behalf of our planet. We protect what we know and love. That is why the Wild Hometown mission is to get young people outside to reconnect with and advocate for the natural world that our future depends on.