ATTUNE: Nature-Based Leadership for Community Resilience

ATTUNE: Building Resilient Communities Through Nature and Leadership

Climate action begins with connection—to the land, to each other, and to ourselves. ATTUNE is a community-centered leadership program that deepens connection with nature while building skills and relationships essential for addressing today's interconnected ecological and social crises.

Bringing together community leaders, educators, organizers, healers, and frontline practitioners (73% BIPOC, 90% LGBTQ+), ATTUNE centers those historically excluded from outdoor education and environmental spaces. Grounded in environmental justice and community care, the program equips participants with 3 practical certifications that include land-based skills and trauma-informed leadership practices that strengthen both livelihoods and collective resilience.

What sets ATTUNE apart is its interdisciplinary, community-rooted approach. Built on 20+ years of experience, the curriculum weaves together somatic practices, justice-centered leadership, and creative expression alongside ecological skill-building—recognizing that healing the Earth requires healing our relationships with ourselves, each other, and place. Through immersive, hands-on learning, participants gain training in ecological literacy, climate resilience, watershed stewardship, fire ecology, ancestral arts, emergency response, and trauma-informed facilitation. Educators, organizers, ecologists, artists, and healers co-create learning experiences grounded in real community needs while prioritizing mental health and burnout prevention.

Participants leave ATTUNE with certifications and practical tools they can immediately bring back to schools, nonprofits, tribal communities, and grassroots organizations. By increasing access to trainings that are often financially or culturally inaccessible, ATTUNE strengthens local ecosystems of care while expanding economic and leadership opportunities within the communities participants already serve.

Increasing Access: Lifeways Back

ATTUNE participants are supported by our Lifeways Back Fund, a commitment to participating in the restoration of ancestral lifeways for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). The fund holds a prayer for the full expression of what reparations and land return can and will mean in the world, while focusing specifically on one aspect of that larger vision: the return of Lifeways.

We are guided by the articulation of our kin and co-collaborator, Pınar Sinopoulos-Lloyd, who reminds us that many of the so-called “skills” taught in the fields of nature connection and ancestral arts are not simply skills at all, but Lifeways:

“…not skills — these are Lifeways — indigenous, multi-species pedagogy for time immemorial. We have the right to access and reclaim our Lifeways.”

Together, ATTUNE is growing a diverse network rooted in care, ecological stewardship, and environmental justice—prepared not only to respond to crisis, but to help build more connected and thriving futures.

Learn More About ATTUNE’s curriculum & certifications

See ATTUNE testimonials video