Choose the gathering that feels right—or join us for both.
Member Interest Gathering
5:00–7:00 PM
Watauga County Library
Explore the vision, membership pathways, and ways to become involved.
Conversations About A Different Future
7:00–9:00 PM
Venture Chocolate + Wine
An evening of conversation, connection, and community.
Planning to join us?
• Children are welcome.
• Childcare will be available during the Member Interest Gathering.
• We’d love to welcome you.
The River of Us
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2025 | 1PM-10PM (with the option to camp)
A community gathering to remember, reconnect, and rise together on the anniversary of Hurricane Helene in the High Country.
“We grieved. We laughed. And we tapped into a different, deeper river.
It’s a river of strength, community, and resilience, and it’s as old as these hills.
IT’S THE RIVER OF US.
AND IT’S STILL RISING.”
Enjoy a day (and night) full of music, connection, and community with local cuisine, artisans, and performers. We invite you to explore local resources and meet the humans and organizations who are working together for mutual flourishing in our communities, on a gorgeous piece of land that will make you grateful to be in the High Country.
Donate what you can tickets at TheRiverOfUs.com
Building Intentional Community Using Transformative and Restorative Justice Models with Aarti Tejuja ~May 14th 5:30pm-8:30pm online
Sliding scale suggested donation of $10-$100 can be paid to our GoFundMe under the donate link on this website.
How do we create a community that is not only built on shared values and agreements, but also upholds them? How do we respond to harm in our communities so that everyone feels heard and seen, but also holds people accountable?
Transformative (TJ) & Restorative Justice (RJ) are two systems that can be used to build shared agreements, foster community interconnectedness, and address and respond to harm through dialogue and reconciliation processes.
While both systems share similar goals and values, they come from different roots. RJ, as taught by Kay Pranis, is a system that developed from First Nations people in Canada. TJ emerged from anti-carceral and abolitionist movements led by Black, Indigenous and other marginalized communities.
The current punitive system upholds the view of punishment as a means of resolution to harm. RJ and TJ approaches seek to uncover justice through the means of healing trauma, the undercurrent of where most harm originates. Both approaches are healing, work to cultivate resilience, promote safety to the overall community, and fall along the basic premise that every member of society is valued and no one deserves to be discarded.
In this half-day workshop, you will learn the basic views and practices of both RJ and TJ. You’ll also begin to understand what stops us as a society from adopting healing methods of justice in all communities and in our larger world.
My name is Aarti Tejuja and I live in the mountains of North Carolina in a tiny town called Todd where my partner and I and our three cats are co-building an intergenerational intentional community called Moya. I am an embodied ancestral spiritual coach, a ritualist and a sacred space facilitator. My ancestors are from Sindh, Pakistan, pre-partition when Sindh was India. I grew up Hindu and became Buddhist in their 20s.
Before moving to the mountains in 2023, I lived in Chicago for 25 years where I worked as the Director of Social Engagement for a Buddhist organization and served as a community organizer, an interfaith leader, a youth mentor and an advocate for those impacted by the justice system.
I am certified as: a mindfulness instructor for Shambhala International, an embodied play facilitator for Interplay, a transformative justice leader for Just Practice, a restorative justice circle keeper under the apprenticeship of Kay Pranis, A Reiki practitioner for Equilibrium Energy, and an ancestral lineage healer for Ancestral Medicine.
I am currently co-developing a Womnx BIPOC centered network, Antara Network, for contemplative facilitators who want to deepen their skills and be in community and collaboration with other facilitators.
Aarti can be reached @
IG: Aarti_Tejuja
FB: JustAarti
http://medium.com/@aartitejuja/
Cove Creek Revival May 31st
~live music~gift exchange ~potluck ~woodworking demo
At the Cove Creek Community Center 3-6pm.
The gift exchange could include but is not limited to: art, crafts, food, drinks, plants, seeds, building materials, books, clothes, skills, etc. If you have plants to swap, feel free to bring those as well!
Feel free to email us or contact Tyler for more info!
Vibrant Earth Collective 