Sustainability: Philanthropy
Committed to Philanthropy
In our philanthropic efforts, we partner with organizations that meet one or more of the following criteria:
- Focus on human health
- Act as environmental stewards
- Work to further the accessibility and awareness of organic food, farming and traditional herbal medicine.
- Contribute to community life in the Brattleboro, Vermont area - our hometown.
Sacred Seeds:
A global initiative to save endangered plants and healing knowledge
In 2005, New Chapter created Semillas Sagradas (Sacred Seeds) at our Costa Rican farm, Luna Nueva. It began as a single sanctuary for medicinal plants that were vulnerable to the loss of habitat, inappropriate harvesting, or climate change. We worked with indigenous communities, a leading Costa Rican ethnobotanist, and passionate student interns to maintain this unique sanctuary. Our hope was that through the protection of these culturally and scientifically significant plant species, we would promote awareness of critical plant conservation, preserve biodiversity, and reconnect indigenous communities to their healing heritage.
Today we are working with the Missouri Botanical Gardens William L. Brown Center, and our collective goal is to have a sacred seed sanctuary in ecosystems throughout the world. Currently there are 12 foundational sacred seed gardens around the globe, benefiting indigenous communities, universities and individuals. For more information, please visit http://sacredseedssanctuary.org/.
Monteverde Conservation League US, Inc.:
Supporting the conservation and rehabilitation of rainforest in Costa Rica
In 1987, Swedish school children started a worldwide effort by sending money to Monteverde, Costa Rica, to purchase rainforest and protect its priceless natural treasures forever. Today children from 44 nations have preserved 54,000+ acres and helped the Children’s Eternal Rainforest become the largest private reserve in Costa Rica.
We have partnered with the Monteverde Conservation League US, Inc., and raised funds to purchase a tract of land, which was donated to the not-for-profit organization responsible for maintaining the Children’s Eternal Rainforest. We are now reforesting and protecting this land – creating an important wildlife corridor for migrating species and connecting the Children’s Eternal Rainforest with the Luna Nueva rainforest. For more information on this extraordinarily beautiful and biologically significant private reserve, please visit: www.mclus.org.
Bumi Sehat:
Ensuring vital whole-food nourishment to malnourished expectant mothers in Indonesia
Because of widespread malnutrition, a significant number of pregnant women in Indonesia have severe complications and life-altering injuries during birth. Postpartum hemorrhaging, in particular, has contributed to increases in the country’s maternal mortality rates. To address these needs, renowned midwife Robin Lim is operating birthing clinics in Bali and Aceh through Bumi Sehat (Healthy Mother Earth Foundation).
When Katherine Bramhall, a midwife from Barre, Vt., traveled to Bali in 2006, she approached New Chapter for a product donation. Inspired by her and Robin’s dedication, we have committed to fulfilling the clinics’ supplement needs with New Chapter’s Perfect Prenatal multi-vitamins. To learn more visit: www.bumisehatbali.org or www.amillionmothers.org.
Nourish America
Since 1999, Nourish America has provided nutritional support and education to hundreds of thousands of children, prenatal mothers, teens, senior citizens, veterans, and natural disaster victims throughout the United States. New Chapter supplies a steady flow of donated products to this cause. Our products have aided New York City homeless, Louisiana and Texas hurricane victims, and American Indian reservation residents in South Dakota. To learn more visit: www.nourishamerica.org.
Our Local Stewardship
Brattleboro has been home to New Chapter since 1986 when Founders Paul and Barbi Schulick chose it for a progressive flair that matched their fledgling venture. Throughout the years the company has inhabited several locations within the Vermont hills and currently employs over 150 area residents. The Brattleboro area supports a lively, conscious community with vibrant non-profit initiatives in the arts, local governance and community service that speak to a commitment to “Community” in the truest sense of the word. Here we find a level of responsibility, ownership and neighborly ethic that is unique and inspiring. New Chapter delights in contributing yearly to area organizations supporting the sustenance of community life.
Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center
Brattleboro, Vermont
The Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center (BEEC) is a member-based, nonprofit organization founded in 1991 to sustain an ecologically informed citizenry through education and action in order to enhance the vitality of southern Vermont’s bioregion.
BEEC is southeastern Vermont’s leading outdoor education center. Programs include:
- Environmental education initiatives, including science-based school programs;
- Youth camps and after-school programs for children in grades pre-K through 8;
- Natural history hikes and workshops.
BEEC also coordinates and leads important community-based environmental research and conservation programs, including watershed stewardship, reptile and amphibian conservation initiatives, and biodiversity planning and protection.
New Chapter has been a long-time sponsor of BEEC, specifically their Roots and Shoots summer Camp. Roots and Shoots is a conservation-based initiative, in which campers become intimately familiar with the north slope of Heifer Hill, where at-risk native, woodland flowers thrive in the rich soil surrounding the Waits River Formation bedrock that dominates the geology of the landscape, a section of BEEC’s property that has been fortunately preserved from logging efforts. Each year the campers contribute to a fledgling demonstration garden, home to a sampling of the plants found on the north slope of Heifer Hill. The children are not only busy in the woods, but in the kitchen, helping to distill rosewater from freshly gathered roses, and then using it to create a rich rose hand cream, or preparing a healing salve using St. John’s Wort, calendula, comfrey and plantain – plants all available at BEEC and in many of their own yards. www.beec.org.
International Biodiversity Day
New Chapter has always been dedicated to preserving botanical species. From our Biodynamic® farm in Costa Rica where we are stewards of the rainforest to the many farms around the world where we source organic botanicals, the preservation of biodiversity has been a core part of our mission since we opened our doors almost 30 years ago.
This year we wanted to make an impact in our home state of Vermont. We chose to participate in the International Day for Biodiversity and the Green Wave Program (www.greenwave.cbd.int) and direct our educational outreach to local communities and schools.
The Green Wave (www.greenwave.cbd.int) is an international project to educate children about biodiversity and to inspire the planting of native trees across the globe. Every year, people all around the world celebrate biodiversity on what’s called the International Day for Biodiversity. The Green Wave is an effort focused on working with schools to educate on the need for biological preservation.
Seven Vermont food Co-Ops and New Chapter ran a 6 week campaign to raise money for trees to be planted at a local schools. Every purchase of a New Chapter product corresponded to a leaf. 20 leaves bought one tree to be planted at a partnering school. On May 22nd, the trees were donated to the partnering school and planted by students!
We are happy to report that by working with these amazing local food coop’s we not only joined a global reforestation effort, but we empowered school children across the state to learn about the critical need to preserve biodiversity. We also got some hands dirty, enlisting students from ten local schools in tree plantings. We chose public and private schools, representing all different backgrounds and learning styles.
Plans are already in place to take this program to a national level, working with larger retail chains as well as the national Green Wave Campaign in areas around the world.
Kindle Farm
Kindle Farm opened its doors as an independent school in 1996. The creation of the school was a response to the need for alternative educational approaches for boys and young men who do not succeed in the traditional classroom structure inherent in the vast majority of public and private educational settings.
The students entering the Kindle Farm Program are individuals who have experienced trauma or disruption in their lives that significantly impairs their ability to participate in the regular public school system. They often have a mix of academic, social, emotional and behavioral disabilities.
The mission of Kindle Farm is to provide a physically and emotionally safe school environment using a combination of diverse activities, and strong supervision and guidance so students can discard old patterns and habits, and discover and practice new ways to communicate, problem-solve, and learn more effectively.
The partnership with Kindle Farm has been extremely fulfilling. Their holistic approach to learning deeply connects with our philosophy of whole healing. Going beyond traditional learning styles, their students are welcomed to learn through experience. Horticulture, forestry, bike maintenance, mechanics, carpentry, and culinary arts fill out a student’s day. Their organic farms provide the space for vegetable and market garden, a greenhouse, and extensive forested land for creating mountain bike trails and studying aspects of plant and animal life. While learning about garden planning, seeding, transplanting, watering, harvesting, and cover cropping, students are also learning about teamwork, problem solving, dependability, goal setting, and cooperation. Students engage fully as community members as they participate in creating meals and snacks for their fellow students, maintain the building and grounds of their campus, repair bicycles that are used by themselves and their fellow students, maintain campus vehicles, and participate in a variety of vocational experiences that build their breadth of knowledge for post-high school life and help them to maintain and support the community they are a part of. www.kindlefarm.org.
