Shoutout to our amazing board member @natureboynerd for all the work he is doing up at Soul Fire Farm & with RIC. Making the ancestors proud! ✊🏾👨🏾‍🌾🌺 RP: @soulfirefarm Noah McDonald, Farm Apprentice, (he/they) is the grandchild of tobacco and cotton sharecroppers from Harnett County North Carolina, and grew up gardening and working as a farmhand in central Ohio. Before coming to Soul Fire, he served as the Cynthia Hayes – Fannie Lou Hamer Fellow at SAAFON, identifying a collective landholding model for the prevention of Black land loss within SAAFON’s farmer network, and organizing for land-based liberation with the Black Land and Power Coalition. He also participated in the 2018 BIPOC FIRE program. In 2016, he served as a FoodCorps Service Member at two elementary schools in High Point, NC. While in High Point, he focused on cultivating school gardens as intergenerational community spaces brimming with beauty, wonder, cultural significance, and food. While there, he also the opportunity to plan and co-emcee the Rooted in Community Youth Summit. As a member of the RIC leadership team, he continues to play a role in organizing for youth empowerment through food sovereignty. He is passionate about getting back to his rural roots, working for ecosystem restoration, and fulfilling his ancestral responsibility to hold and pass on southern Black land-based traditions. #soulfirefarm #blackfarmers #RICheart #RICisLit