About
Sankofa Village Arkansas is a forming intentional community centering Black healing, liberation and regeneration. We are fiscally-sponsored by the Foundation for Intentional Communities.
Mission: Our nonprofit mission is to transform multigenerational community health through education and land stewardship for the purposes of housing affordability, community wealth building, and climate resiliency.
Vision: Our dream is that Black Arkansans have access to intentional communities where they can safely engage in healing and liberatory practices in relationship with each other and Mother Earth. We embody the transformation from extractive to regenerative systems - shifting values, policies and practices from separation to interconnection, scarcity to abundance, and from simplicity to complex resilience and beauty. We hope to inspire community-based efforts to design communities in alignment with a more sustainable and just future.
Timeline
2026
Building on the sociocratic processes from 2025, we recruited and hired our first two contractors. Onboarded in January, Sarah Martin has been working in the 10hr/wk, 6/mo Administrative and Development support role. Sarah has helped Sankofa make major gains in terms of our Mobilizing People recruitment and onboarding, Development Manager onboarding, and the establishment of our advisor circle. Segann March was hired in the Development Manager role, 20hr/wk, 6/mo. Since May, Segann has been laying the foundation for both grassroots and major donor cultivation.
As part of the concerted Mobilizing People recruitment this year, we are currently activating our first Project Pods: Community Land Trust, Events, and Communication.
As of July, we are working hard to stand up the "Seeding the Future" tour, a learning journey and a long-term infrastructure-building project connecting SVA members and collaborators with established Black and Indigenous-led and community-rooted land, housing, healing, food, and cooperative initiatives across the U.S. South.
2025
With the support of funding from 2024, we were able to take a break from grant writing and focus on building our internal capacity. We continued our monthly CC meetings and bi-monthly advisor meetings, held a September Strategic Planning 2-day virtual session w/ CC members, as well as our second annual CC gathering in Little Rock. We gained a new CC member and advisor. We designed and participated in two democratic decision-making processes using sociocracy, which helped us practice building consent and holding and processing discomfort. Through proposals and conensus we decided to use the surprise funding to hire two contractor roles focused on Admin and Development. We simplified CC connector roles to increase support and accountability. An internal airtable training facilitated more shared responsiblity and accountability.
CC members attended several conferences and trainings, including: the NACRP (National Association for Climate Resilience Planners) member gathering in Atlanta, GA, BUGS (Black Farmers & Urban Growers) Conference in Detroit, MI, as well as a 6-month program with NBFJA (National Black Food Justice Alliance).
In April we sponsored the Radical Release Retreat, a 3-day creative rest portal for Black mothers impacted by incarceration or SA, hosted by CC member Sarah Martin in the Petit Jean Mountains. We also held two half-day Community-Driven Planning sessions at The Village Place, designed to inform our Community Land Trust priorities. CC member Clarice Kinchen led a beautiful Summer Solstice gathering in June at Pettaway Commons. Finally, during our second annual gathering for the Community Collaborative in November, we had a heart-warming community potluck at InTRANSitive where we invited current and potential partners and supporters.
2024
2024 was a robust year in terms of events, funding and leadership. We onboarded 5 new leaders, 2 Community Collaborative members, 2 Working Pod contributors, and 1 advisor. We received our third year of funding from NEC's Black Solidarity Economy Fund. Additionally we received funding to support Community Driven Planning work from the National Association of Climate Resilience Fund and surprise funding from the Southern Power Fund.
In April Sankofa Village Arkansas sponsored Poetry of the Orishas, a healing retreat for Black and LGBTQ+ Arkansans in the Petit Jean mountains, facilitated by CC member Sarah and supported by Convenor Clarice. We tabled at Polly Dee Farms’s Eclipse campout in Pine Bluff and held our first annual Summer gathering for the Community Collaborative in June. We engaged in strategic planning, relationship-building, and visited the homestead of our advisor Shelly M Connors. In July Weaver Danielle attended the Black Democracy Convening, hosted by the New Economy Coalition in Durham, NC. In addition, Convenor Clarice and CC member Dawn are served on the planning committee for the Sept 27-29 Southern Movement Assembly, held in Little Rock, Arkansas.
2023
We held our first strategic planning sessions in January and April 2023. Our strategic planning brought clarity to our goals, which included: growing our leadership circles, creating a membership structure, Community Land Trust (CLT) formation, and resuming the land search. In July we were selected for CoFED’s (Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive) regranting program CoFUND, providing $10,000 and 12 months of technical assistance. December found another round of funding from NEC’s Black Solidarity Economy Fund, at $7,500. This funding went towards towards Community Collaborative stipends, professional development, and technology and subscription costs. In November we launched our Mobilizing People Recruitment - an effort to broaden our capacity through recruiting members to join our Community Collaborative, Working Pods, Wisdom Circle, or as an advisory.
Weaver Danielle was a guest on the Founding Mothers podcast in January and a member of a roundtable discussion on the Resilience of Black-led Intentional Communities, hosted by The Foundation for Intentional Communities.
2022
2022 saw the continuation of the Community Collaborative, meeting once a month. We continued to build relationships, knowledge, and refined our movement forward. We became fiscally sponsored by the Foundation for Intentional Communities (FIC) in July. In September, we held our first stakeholder meetings in Little Rock, organized by Convener Clarice (she/her). We held several in-person events - Nature Church, Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice healing events - co-hosted by Weaver Danielle and Quilter Kendra. Danielle and Kendra attended the Highlander Center’s 90th Homecoming celebration in October and Sankofa became recipients of our first grant - the New Economy Coalition’s Black Solidarity Economy Fund.
2021
Danielle successfully raises over $17K for the land down payment. However the combination of the parcel being overpriced, along with a racist land appraisal process and elitist proof of funds requirement would cause her to end the purchase process. In the spring she shifted her focus from buying land to building community. The first iteration of the Community Collaborative began meeting in June. Danielle was a guest on TRHT (Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation) Chicago’s November talk about Black land, City Repair’s Village Building Convergence, the Roots Watering Hole podcast, and the story of her land search was covered by Arkansas Soul.
2020
In November 2020, Weaver Danielle (she/her) found a 5-acre piece of land in Granite Mountain, a historically-Black neighborhood in her hometown of Little Rock, AR. She had long-dreamed of starting an ecovillage in her hometown. In December she began a several month long journey to try to purchase the land.
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