Wild Abundance Social Responsibility Fund
Welcome! Thank you for your interest in Wild Abundance and in working together to support our wider community. As a woman-led school, we’ve been offering transformative, skills-based education since 2009, serving thousands of students in-person and online.
To expand the reach of our impact, we’ve created a non-profit with two primary goals:
1. To provide exceptional and accessible education in building, permaculture, and land-based skills to underserved communities.
2. To bring relief to the housing crisis in Western North Carolina by donating homes built by Wild Abundance classes.
We know that when people gain practical skills in a supportive environment, they not only change their own lives, they strengthen the resilience of their entire community. Our Social Responsibility Fund bridges the gap between empowerment and direct service, building both people and homes.
If you’re new to our work, please keep reading to learn more or visit our About Us page.
Our Mission
The Wild Abundance Social Responsibility Fund is devoted to reconnecting people with the living world through the timeless skills of building. Guided by craftsmanship and a deep reverence for land and community, we offer education in safe, inclusive spaces where people of diverse backgrounds can learn, thrive, and feel at home. Not only does the Fund further accessible education, it provides the framework for community-powered affordable housing.
In the wake of Hurricane Helene and other natural disasters, our mission has become urgent. With our students and volunteers, we have been securing materials, raising homes, and returning shelter to neighbors who lost everything. Each structure we build is more than wood and nails, it is hope, dignity, and the promise of resilience. We believe that when people learn to build and grow in harmony with the earth, they also learn to heal, to care for one another, and to imagine a more abundant world.
Our Vision
To help build a future in which people have access to empowering, skill-based education and safe, affordable housing.
The Challenge
Western North Carolina is facing a dual crisis: long-standing inequities in access to skilled trades for women, alongside an acute shortage of safe, affordable housing, exacerbated by Hurricane Helene’s devastation in 2024.
Generations of cultural messaging have kept women and non-binary people from the tools, skills, and confidence to build, repair, and create. This lack of access limits personal agency, reinforces dependence, and erases the presence of women in trades-based careers. In disaster recovery contexts, it also means a smaller, less diverse pool of capable hands to meet urgent rebuilding needs. The harsh reality is safe, affordable housing is less accessible than ever, when Western North Carolina needs more access than ever.
At the same time, our region’s housing stock, already strained, has been pushed to the brink. Storm damage left many families, including low-income and flood-impacted residents, without safe shelter. Even now, housing repairs and new builds lag far behind the need. Couple this with a shortage of skilled and affordable trades people, and someone needing home repairs, let alone a home, might feel hopeless.
Our Action Plan
To use donations and grant funding to run a 4-Month Carpentry Training Program in 2026 that does more than teach skills—it will dismantle the social and emotional barriers keeping women from tools, and channel those new skills into tangible community benefits. Throughout the Carpentry Program, our team of students and instructors will build a fully finished 12’x24’ tiny house, which will be donated as a liveable, turn-key ready home to a disaster victim or other family in need.
Over the course of four immersive months, students will learn project design, carpentry skills, teamwork, and the safe, effective use of hand and power tools, all in a non-competitive, supportive environment designed for women’s bodies and learning styles. This knowledge can then be translated to carpentry careers, marketable skills, and community empowerment.
Short-Term Goals for 2026
- Immediate, measurable housing relief for a local family in need, delivered through community-powered construction.
- To donate 15% of all of our class spaces to scholarship applicants.
- Match up to $20k in donations for scholarships.
Long-Term Goals
Wide-ranging empowerment for women and non-binary students, who will leave our Carpentry Programs with the confidence, competence, and inspiration to take on home projects, enter trades, or contribute to disaster recovery work. Over time, this will translate to hundreds more graduates from our programs who didn’t have to break the bank to participate, rippling out to create a more inspired and skilled world. It will also mean more individuals and families in need can receive the gift of secure, long-term housing.
How To Get Involved
When you make a tax-deductible gift to our Social Responsibility Fund, you’re making an investment in secure, affordable housing and skill-based education for women and diverse community members.
Want to be a hands-on part of our vision?
Join the waitlist for our 4-Month Carpentry Training School. Through this expertly-guided program, you’ll become an active participant in building affordable housing for local community members. Plus you’ll learn all the skills you need to take on a range of other building projects on your own. As a waitlist member, you’ll be the first to know when the program opens for enrollment and have first dibs on signing up.
Thank You to Our Generous Sponsors & Donors
We’ve been able to exponentially amplify the impacts of our community efforts thanks to donations from so many individuals and organizations. Your generosity helped us re-house flood survivors, train community members in essential recovery skills, repair damaged homes and structures, and continue our educational mission.
We’d like to extend a special thanks to our generous sponsors and collaborators at Watchfire Media and The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina. Your support funded something beautiful and healing. We’re deeply grateful for your dedication to grassroots restoration and repair.
Board Members
Gaia Goldhill
Gaia (she/her) has lived in the mountains of Western North Carolina since 2018. Her leadership, organizational skills, and big-picture enthusiasm brought her…
Sam Young
Sam’s first encounter with Wild Abundance was in October of 2022, when she came to the area to take the Tiny House…
Parham Robinson
Parham (she/her) is the Director of Sales and Student Services at Wild Abundance. She started her life with Wild Abundance as a…
Kaylee Walters
Originally from Florida, Kaylee (she/her) joined the Wild Abundance team in early 2021, after moving to NC. At the time, she didn’t…
Chloe Lieberman
Chloe (she/her) is passionate about nurturing a more beautiful, reciprocal, respectful relationship between humans and the rest of the living world. She…
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How The Social Responsibility Fund Got Started
On September 29, 2024, Hurricane Helene devastated the Asheville, NC region, leaving entire communities in crisis. Wild Abundance was spared from the worst of the floods, tornadoes, and landslides, so many of us were able to immediately join local, community-led recovery efforts. After the initial work of supporting emergency services, we began helping with the immense task of rehousing people and rebuilding our landscape.
Thanks to the sponsorship of the Community Fund of Western North Carolina, a generous collaboration with Watchfire Media, and donations from hundreds of friends, alumni, and contributors, we were able to re-house flood survivors, train community members in essential recovery skills, repair damaged homes and structures, and continue our educational mission. This inspired us to imagine how this work could continue into the future…
As a non-profit, the Social Responsibility Fund will allow us to gather tax-deductible donations and sponsorships in support of our mission to provide accessible, trades-based education while making a meaningful dent in the affordable housing crisis in Western North Carolina. If you’d like to support our work, your contribution will make a difference in creating a more equitable and just future.
Use the form below to contribute to the Wild Abundance Social Responsibility fund.
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