Celebrating Margaret’s Year of Service

Sharing Our Roots’ 2023-2024 Americorps VISTA Member

Margaret pulling a wagon full of Sharing Our Roots Farm soil samples (October 2023)

This month, we are celebrating Margaret Anderson, whose Campus Compact AmeriCorps VISTA service term ended at the end of last month. Margaret started with Sharing Our Roots in August 2023 and in just a year, did tremendous capacity-building work, including supporting dozens of community volunteers and Carleton College students in spending regular time at the farm.

The Campus Compact AmeriCorps VISTA position is part of a three year commitment between Sharing Our Roots and Carleton College’s Center for Community and Civic Engagement (CCCE). Each year of the program provides an opportunity for an Americorps VISTA to complete a year of service focused on the programming expansion and improvement of organizations centered on anti-poverty work.

Margaret helped support (L-R) controlled burns, soil testing, and hazelnut harvesting

Margaret worked with and alongside staff to build our volunteer system, offering opportunities for community members to engage with meaningful work at the farm. Margaret fostered a close working relationship with Carleton’s CCCE through organizing regular opportunities for students to engage with our natural lands stewardship and wildlife counts work through experiential learning. In addition to her volunteer management work, Margaret supported staff members in a wide array of capacity-building projects, from habitat restoration to document creation and translation.

About her work at Sharing Our Roots, Margaret said “I’ve learned that really good collaboration takes really good input from others. Before you make decisions, you need to ask - “What is important for the org? What is feasible for staff? What are volunteers interested in?” Patient question-asking leads to good group decisions.”

Sharing Our Roots’ staff will greatly miss working with Margaret and wish her all the best in her next adventure - heading to Iowa State University to join a graduate cohort in a dual City Planning & Sustainable Agriculture M.S. program.