"How can we best utilize our communities to support the education of our children while also encouraging community participation?"

Sienna Wildfield, Activist, Community Organizer & Founder/Executive Director at Hilltown Families (West Chesterfield, Massachusetts USA) 12 October 2013

Hilltown Families Founder/Executive Director, Sienna Wildfield, shares her story about why feeling connected to where you live matters, and how communitybased education/communityservice learning can help grow active citizens who care about where they live. Feeling connected to where you live is a vital ingredient in creating sustainable and resilient communities, and supporting our children's education through community engagement is one way to get there!

Sienna has worked towards supporting strong and healthy communities for the past 20 years. Her work on the forefront of the global environmental movement in the 90's awoke her to the importance of supporting and developing value systems that stem from one's local environment. As the Founder and Executive Director of Hilltown Families, Sienna believes in creating resilient and sustainable communities by developing and strengthening a sense of place in our children. Sienna works to accomplish this by supporting and creating community building events, community based educational opportunities, and community service learning experiences.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, selforganized events that bring people together to share a TEDlike experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, selforganized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are selforganized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

More TEDxShelburneFalls videos can be found at http://www.TEDxShelburneFalls.com

All videos from the "A Sense of Place" conference on 12 October 2013 are at the following YouTube playlist:    • 12 October 2013 VIDEO from TEDxShelbu...