Program Description and Core Competencies
The Move Mountains Project seeks to revive stories hiding on the lips of elders and youth alike, trickling down arroyos and acequias, and locked behind the gates of La Sierra. Stories are the lifeblood of a people. Whether historical or mythological, stories provide a context of culture and identity for individuals in a society. Today, cultures and peoples around the world are grappling with their identities; remaking their mythos by composting the stories of many peoples and rearticulating them in new ways. These stories come from places very near and very far from the heirs of the Sangre de Cristo land grant. Rather than submit to the erasure of their powerful ethnic and cultural history, the Youth Leaders of Move Mountains refuse to be ignored or marginalized. The Youth Leaders refuse to let their land, history, and future be controlled by anyone other than them.
In our 5th year as a youth-led organization, we turn to the elders of San Luis and surrounding counties; to generate stories and community action. Lessons will provide youth skills and strategies to enable them to be impactful storytellers, ie: identifying hidden meaning, forming questions for deeper understanding, planning community events, accessing languages other than English, and combine oral storytelling with other art forms. Youth Leaders will also connect with mentors and youth from other communities to exchange skills, stories, and their histories. Youth Leaders will attend workshops ranging from wilderness survival, herbology, traditional healing, and resource preservation. Youth Leaders will facilitate community service projects which are rooted in tradition, such as cleaning the communities acequias.
Four Pillars:
Summer 2018 Curriculum Focus:
Facilitators will use storytelling to give youth leaders a personally meaningful connection with the elders in the community and the history of the valley. Facilitators will present a variety of ways to retell these stories using performance as well as visual and written media. Youth leaders will identify a story that they would like to tell, connecting their personal history to the history of the Valley and its people. Youth leaders will each complete a capstone project that tells this story. Youth leader will use storytelling throughout workshops ranging from wilderness survival, herbology, ecology, traditional healing and community service projects.
Visiting Facilitators and Partners
Move Mountains is proud to welcome a variety of talented facilitators and partner organizations to bring our programming goals to fruition and provide engaging challenges for our youth leaders.
Alpine Achievers Initiative, Monte Vista
Staff from AAI will join MMP for 3 Mondays in July to provide a variety of activities on wilderness survival, ecology and sustainability with a specific focus on the valley. AAI supports the positive development of youth and young adults by lifting them through academic achievement and grounding them in their wilderness heritage.
Jared Dubin, Colorado Springs
Jared Dubin visits San Luis for his 2nd Move Mountains experience, this year bringing his experience and passion for permaculture and sustainable landscaping. Jared and his colleague, Mercedes, will be advising the youth on creating a plan for the community garden and park space to achieve the desired outcomes for this important community space.
Kerry Millen, New Jersey
Founding Program Director, Kerry, returns for a road trip with Andre. While in Colorado, Kerry will be visiting San Luis and facilitating a workshop to help the youth leaders focus their attention and goals for the future of San Luis. This "cafe" style round table discussion will happen outdoors which will result in some deep data for us and potentially to be shared further about community change since MMP has been around.
Teresa Vigil, San Luis
Master Herbologist and local elder needs no introduction. Teresa will be graciously spending 4 mornings with the youth leaders focused on the stories of our herbs and ancestral medicine in the valley.
Lindsay Deen
Lindsay has served in many roles during our summer programs over the past few years. This summer Lindsay will be facilitating a 2 day workshop on using what we have to make media that creates change in the community. Using our cell phones to capture compelling images and video to create change.
Pavlos, Kirsten and Denise of the Woodbine Institute, Crestone
The Woodbine Institute has been a critical partner for the past 3 years. Denise and Kirsten are close friends and comadres to Shirley and the Land Rights struggle through their work with the Ancient Forest Network. Pavlos, Kirsten and Denise will be working with the youth leaders to address and explore ecology, environmental activism and direct action to preserve and foster a healthy environment.
Andrea Jácome
Andrea Jácome is a Colombian-Ecuadorian herbalist, writer, and organizer born and raised in Atlanta. Since 2015, she has been an apprentice with Master Spiritual Herbalist Karen Rose of Sacred Vibes Apothecary. She is currently living between Brooklyn and Philadelphia.
Cocarosa is named in honor of two of most cultivated and sought-after plants in the Andes-- the coca leaf and roses. Though highly visible across the global market, these different plants share an intimately interconnected legacy in the war on drugs. Cocarosa is a recovery and reclamation of plant medicine in their whole true forms.
Jose Rodriguez
This entrepreneur creative comes from Philadelphia. Jose is an industrious Puerto Rican who will be coming to San Luis to present and consult youth on entrepreneurship and how innovative business ideas can change a community.
Warren Longmire
Warren was present for the first year of Move Mountains. This poet hails from Philadelphia and has coached poets at the national level. Warren will be sharing stories and eliciting stories with the youth leaders.
Field Trips
Cathy Faz of the National Park Service will be leading a trip for our youth at the Sand Dunes and Zapata Falls on Friday 7/6. The following Friday, we will be headed to Cerro, New Mexico again. The Bureau of Land Management is welcoming the youth leaders to visit petroglyphs near Lobato Bridge, the Vargas Crossing, and the Kiowa Hill on 7/20. We will also be visiting the gates of La Sierra and many historic locations in town and around the Culebra community.
2018 Core Competencies
Four Pillars:
- Art: Encourage youth to explore their artistic talents and deepen their understanding of arts as a tool to connect with others and catalyze action in their communities.
- Youth Leaders are able to identify art forms that are powerful to them and articulate how art plays a role in social movements and cultural transformation.
- Earth: To connect environmental and land use issues in San Luis with similar global indigenous struggles.
- Youth Leaders are able to connect environmental and land use issues in San Luis with other indigenous struggles in the world.
- Community Action: To develop concrete strategies youth can use collaboratively to identify needs and execute solutions individually and in their communities. To stimulate interest and highlight the need for a community center and youth-driven programming
- Youth Leaders are able to develop concrete strategies to address injustice they feel passionate about in their community.
- Entrepreneurship: Assess the economic and social needs of San Luis and evoke youthful creativity to develop potential, community-derived solutions to stimulate growth and development. Learn how to match individual skills with collaborators and successfully address needs in the community through entrepreneurial initiative.
- Youth Leaders are able to work collaboratively with a team to develop solutions and projects that improve their community’s health and wellbeing.
Summer 2018 Curriculum Focus:
Facilitators will use storytelling to give youth leaders a personally meaningful connection with the elders in the community and the history of the valley. Facilitators will present a variety of ways to retell these stories using performance as well as visual and written media. Youth leaders will identify a story that they would like to tell, connecting their personal history to the history of the Valley and its people. Youth leaders will each complete a capstone project that tells this story. Youth leader will use storytelling throughout workshops ranging from wilderness survival, herbology, ecology, traditional healing and community service projects.
Visiting Facilitators and Partners
Move Mountains is proud to welcome a variety of talented facilitators and partner organizations to bring our programming goals to fruition and provide engaging challenges for our youth leaders.
Alpine Achievers Initiative, Monte Vista
Staff from AAI will join MMP for 3 Mondays in July to provide a variety of activities on wilderness survival, ecology and sustainability with a specific focus on the valley. AAI supports the positive development of youth and young adults by lifting them through academic achievement and grounding them in their wilderness heritage.
Jared Dubin, Colorado Springs
Jared Dubin visits San Luis for his 2nd Move Mountains experience, this year bringing his experience and passion for permaculture and sustainable landscaping. Jared and his colleague, Mercedes, will be advising the youth on creating a plan for the community garden and park space to achieve the desired outcomes for this important community space.
Kerry Millen, New Jersey
Founding Program Director, Kerry, returns for a road trip with Andre. While in Colorado, Kerry will be visiting San Luis and facilitating a workshop to help the youth leaders focus their attention and goals for the future of San Luis. This "cafe" style round table discussion will happen outdoors which will result in some deep data for us and potentially to be shared further about community change since MMP has been around.
Teresa Vigil, San Luis
Master Herbologist and local elder needs no introduction. Teresa will be graciously spending 4 mornings with the youth leaders focused on the stories of our herbs and ancestral medicine in the valley.
Lindsay Deen
Lindsay has served in many roles during our summer programs over the past few years. This summer Lindsay will be facilitating a 2 day workshop on using what we have to make media that creates change in the community. Using our cell phones to capture compelling images and video to create change.
Pavlos, Kirsten and Denise of the Woodbine Institute, Crestone
The Woodbine Institute has been a critical partner for the past 3 years. Denise and Kirsten are close friends and comadres to Shirley and the Land Rights struggle through their work with the Ancient Forest Network. Pavlos, Kirsten and Denise will be working with the youth leaders to address and explore ecology, environmental activism and direct action to preserve and foster a healthy environment.
Andrea Jácome
Andrea Jácome is a Colombian-Ecuadorian herbalist, writer, and organizer born and raised in Atlanta. Since 2015, she has been an apprentice with Master Spiritual Herbalist Karen Rose of Sacred Vibes Apothecary. She is currently living between Brooklyn and Philadelphia.
Cocarosa is named in honor of two of most cultivated and sought-after plants in the Andes-- the coca leaf and roses. Though highly visible across the global market, these different plants share an intimately interconnected legacy in the war on drugs. Cocarosa is a recovery and reclamation of plant medicine in their whole true forms.
Jose Rodriguez
This entrepreneur creative comes from Philadelphia. Jose is an industrious Puerto Rican who will be coming to San Luis to present and consult youth on entrepreneurship and how innovative business ideas can change a community.
Warren Longmire
Warren was present for the first year of Move Mountains. This poet hails from Philadelphia and has coached poets at the national level. Warren will be sharing stories and eliciting stories with the youth leaders.
Field Trips
Cathy Faz of the National Park Service will be leading a trip for our youth at the Sand Dunes and Zapata Falls on Friday 7/6. The following Friday, we will be headed to Cerro, New Mexico again. The Bureau of Land Management is welcoming the youth leaders to visit petroglyphs near Lobato Bridge, the Vargas Crossing, and the Kiowa Hill on 7/20. We will also be visiting the gates of La Sierra and many historic locations in town and around the Culebra community.
2018 Core Competencies
- Youth Leaders will listen to, document, and create their own stories focusing on El Valle de San Luis and weave the history of land and culture into their narratives and voices
- Youth Leaders will practice a variety of diverse storytelling styles with facilitators from a variety of backgrounds and identities
- Youth Leaders are able to find their style of storytelling and utilize their style to build connections with others through story
- Youth Leaders are able to tell the story of El Valle while directly connecting it to their own stories
- Youth Leaders utilize a variety of methods of storytelling to assess their social and emotional impact on the audiences and themselves
- Youth Leaders are able to identify, refine, and develop their own unique skill sets while working on a capstone project that is meaningful to them
- Youth Leaders are able to find a personal connection to their identity in order to gain newfound confidence in their abilities and value as individuals
- Youth Leaders actively listen to stories from others including elders and peers and generate connections to their own experiences
- Youth Leaders understand and articulate the urgency of addressing social justice issues they have identified in their communities and world
- Youth Leaders will be exposed to and encouraged to use languages other than English, especially Spanish and indigenous languages