Back to School: Youth Care Circles

Lion's Tooth Project is a community-based youth project inspiring immigrant, queer, Black, Indigenous, POC youth to have more agency over their own wellness, healing, and personal stories through the art of photography and earth medicine. In 2020 we created virtual offerings to support youth experiencing isolation, increased anxiety and stress, and a desire to reclaim their agency over their wellness as the world went on lockdown due to the pandemic. Our Peer Leads led and envisioned this work by/for youth, honoring their roots and many beautiful intersecting identities. With your support, we fundraised over $22,000 to sustain this work in 2021! 

Our efforts spread like seeds and rooted in different ways as young people created networks of care and learned how to grow food/medicine for themselves from NYC to California. We served over 250 young people, partnered with five different organizations and two NYC public schools as we collectively inspired each other to uplift and sustain our commitment to advocating for young peoples needs. Students have now returned to in-person classes and teachers are struggling to attend to the high rates of youth experiencing anxiety, depression, and difficulty adapting to learning and catching up during this ongoing pandemic.

We are calling on our community again to help us surpass our $17,000 fundraising goal that will allow us to serve over 100 students, during the 2021-2022 school year. We will focus our capacity on bringing our creative and healing spaces to one of our partner schools in need of support. We will work with a deep respect for our ancestors and community as our most powerful medicine. Youth will learn how to re-grow herbs/vegetables, make herbal medicine, and utilize the arts to support their wellbeing while providing employment opportunities through our paid Peer Lead roles. By the end of the school year students will learn how to build a small DIY community herb garden in the classroom, connect to a large movement of BIPOC land stewards and advocates who care for the earth, and showcase their art work and self grown herbal medicine with their community.

In partnership with Landmark HS and local educators/teaching artists, we seek to collectively center youth on their own healing journeys as they navigate the impacts of COVID-19.

Your contribution will support our weekly classes and employment opportunities for our Peer Leads!

The funds will allow our team to work with partner organizations, engage and pay educators, provide youth stipends, and cover material costs for each week intensive.

Your donation is an investment in NYC immigrant, queer, and BIPOC youth so they can continue to connect, inspire, and thrive.

We appreciate your support! We can't do this alone.

2021

OCTOBER
Planning: meetings w/ teachers to plan year-round workshops, troubleshoot covid-19 safety protocols, and purchase materials. Hire Peer Leads and Teaching Artists who will co-facilitate sessions.

NOVEMBER - DECEMBER

Implementation: LTP Peer Leads begin co-facilitating in-person workshops at our partner school.

- In-Person Workshop Series:

- Photography storytelling Legacy project

- Plant Medicine Care Circles

- Art making with plants, seeds and recycled materials

 2022

FEBRUARY-MAY 2022
Implementation:  LTP Peer Leads begin co-facilitating in-person workshops at our partner school.

- In-Person Workshop Series: 

- Photography storytelling Legacy project and community exhibit 

- DIY Classroom herb garden

- Art making with plants, seeds and recycled materials

We want to continue to address the impact of deep-rooted inequality, discrimination, and oppression a large portion of our youth face due to their race, gender identity, status, or ability, which has become increasingly visible during this global pandemic. We hold community as our most powerful medicine so we are choosing to find creative ways to hold containers that transform grief and make space for joy. As Kazu Haga says, "if we hold intergenerational trauma, we also hold intergenerational wisdom".

We believe that creating access/projects where there is a connection to the land and plants as a form of healing and story-telling builds community and a sense of belonging. We hope this journey honors the amazing gifts and ancestral knowledge of our communities. Our youth will thrive as we strive to break isolation, connect them to needed resources to care for themselves and their families, and inspire them to tap into their creativity and sense of purpose.

We hope you can join us!