“The way to sustain life is to build and nurture community. This is the profound lesson we need to learn from nature.”
-Fritjof Capra
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek.
-President Barack Obama
Join Us in Cultivating Healthy Community
The change we seek is to recreate, to recapture, and to return to a sense of human scale, connection with nature, and real belonging to meaningful community that is all-to-often absent from contemporary life.
As we contemplated the themes of “local” and “human scale” and “community” that characterize our collaborative work, our friend and colleague Bob Lanphear, reflected,”The yearning to connect at a human scale is encoded into our DNA, both individually and collectively.”
Providing a viable response to this yearning is at the heart and soul of the Heller Family Foundation’s mission and vision. We believe that investing in schools, in individual and community health, and in local, sustainable initiatives is an intelligent investment in a healthy, connected future.
“Inspiring Change, Cultivating Change, Nourishing Change, Demonstrating Change and Promoting Change”—we chose these categories to introduce the programs and projects initiated and/or supported by Heller Family Foundation. Developed through the participation of many partners, these innovative programs and projects work together to reinforce their initial purpose, strengthening and enriching the local community.
Thank you for visiting this website. Its purpose is to emphasize the synergistic nature of these programs and to illustrate their potential as models that can be implemented elsewhere. We encourage others to partner with us in providing funding and support for these programs.
We hope you will join us in celebrating and supporting healthy, vibrant, local and sustainable community wherever you are.
Michele and Steve Heller, Founders
Heller Family Foundation
Programs
The L.I.F.E. Garden Program teaches K-12 students how to grow and eat organic, healthy food…
Evening Meals at School serve up organic, affordable communal dinners for the whole community…
S&S Homestead Farm demonstrates principles of sustainability and takes a leadership role in educating youth…
The Vita Parcours Lopez Island Fitness and Ecology Trail offers a scenic fitness experience for all abilities and ages…
Local initiatives support cultural diversity, a connected community, and healthy, well-informed individuals…
Collaborating with a local effort to bring clean water to a village in Ethiopia with the Water for Anasi project…