A Reflection on HearthLands’ Community Convergence

These days, knowing your neighbors is a dying art. While some may meet others through systems like school, faith groups, or country clubs, it can be a challenge to meet new community members if you exist outside these spaces. For young people, this is exacerbated by social media and the rising cost of participating in social events. In response, there is a movement of young organizers in Santa Barbara dedicated to creating gatherings that prioritize creation over consumption, cultivating a “home to come back to.” 

HearthLands is an organization with the goal of uniting like-minded people, with a bioregional focus on returning to the land we live on. The name HearthLands is an homage to the hearth, where in traditional homes, families gathered to swap stories and break bread around a crackling fire. On a sunny Saturday in March, in an intentional community nestled in the woods north of Gaviota, they held their first public gathering. The so-named Santa Barbara Community Convergence continued long into the night.

At the Community Convergence, 70 intergenerational people, many meeting for the first time, participated in workshops held by elders and community leaders spanning multiple disciplines including business, art, and intentional living. The evening culminated in a communal dinner, with options to participate in a silent disco or a storytelling circle afterwards. For this article I spoke to four people integral to organizing HearthLands’ first event. I learned in the process just how central is the social isolation phenomenon, and how it ultimately led each of the members on a unique journey to find one another.

David Effron, one of its founding members, had spent his entire life living around the globe in Santa Barbara, Hong Kong, and ultimately in Boston to pursue music at Emerson college. Nevertheless, he had a “grief” he was unable to shake. “I was living in the city, surrounded by people, and I just felt disconnected. There was so much competition with my colleagues that it was so hard to collaborate, and that was exactly what I was there to do.” 

Leaving college behind, he came back to Santa Barbara hoping to heal his relationship with his surroundings and others. “I went all in, asking, ‘What does it mean to be local and have neighbors in the community?’” He signed up for the Destiny Blueprint workshop, hosted by Mark Tollefson, who would later lead “The 3 Core Griefs: Why Some Communities Fail” workshop at the Community Convergence. There, David met Alex Van Valen, another local who’d been mulling over the same questions. But HearthLands wasn’t made that day. 

Many moons later, Alex sat in Handlebar Coffee, stirring over a revelation he’d sat on since the workshop. “Everything that I’ve done in my life has been motivated by community. Maybe I should be organizing a community event.” Right there, he began creating a poster for an event that didn’t yet exist. And as if divinely ordained, David, coffee in hand, spotted Alex and asked if he might introduce him to his friend Malia, a community builder and local democracy practitioner. 

Malia Josephine is a professional collaboration facilitator who helps groups collaborate together on projects, policies, and programs with the goal of advancing community and climate resilience. Currently, she’s the Network manager for the Santa Barbara County Regional Climate Collaborative. She also has extensive experience working within intentional communities, describing them as the following: 

“In our modern world, intentional communities can be urban, rural, suburban, and they’re all guided around intention. Each community gets to define what that is. It could be an artistic community, a music community, yoga, spirituality or sustainability. But the thread that binds them all together is that it’s a group of people who are willing to live cooperatively together, to share resources together, and to navigate their everyday lives together to ultimately support the purpose of whatever that community is gathering around.”

Together, the team embarked on the year-long project of gathering the resources for the Community Convergence. A few months into their efforts, they held a Visioning Gathering at Skofield Park. Amidst the trees, they invited the community to plan the event with them. Having just moved to Santa Barbara, and with previous experience with community organizing, Laura Brower attended the gathering, feeling her passion ignite. The others quickly noted how her support could enhance the team. Finalizing the four-person team took many more months of meetings, networking, and planning before the quartet coalesced into an incredible group of facilitators, volunteers, and attendees.

I asked the four of them to name some of their favorite moments from the Community Convergence. Malia and Alex spoke at length about a garden tender at the event who shared gratitude with the participants in the community garden. He was absolutely ecstatic to have young people eager to learn how to tend the land, showing them the community garden and even becoming tearful. “One of our workshop facilitators spoke with the gardener and planned that day a gardening workshop with her own group. That is the kind of stuff that we were dreaming of, that a space like this could catalyze partnerships,” Malia said. Alex spoke about how for him, this event illustrated an intergenerational healing moment. 

David recalled the joy of listening to an elder talk about what he did in his retirement, chasing wildflower blooms with his wife. “What struck me was the joy he was expressing, of just going out and appreciating nature. I was jealous in a good way.” Encompassing the love felt at the event, Laura said, “I think the inspiration that a lot of us are looking for is that we’re not alone in our fears, and that we can be in a community that holds us in that, because they’ve been there, too.” 

As HearthLands considers its future, some members hope to establish a community center to hold meetings and workshops, as well as purchase land. “We’re still in the early stages of clarifying our goal, but eventually it would be nice to be in greater proximity to each other,” David noted. As it grows, HearthLands aspires to connect locals, creating a space where every community member is supported,encouraged, and feels a sense of belonging to something bigger
than themselves.  

Stay up to speed on HearthLands on

Instagram: @hearthlands. Their next event is a Community Bonfire: Friday, June 12th, at Haskell’s Beach, 5-8:30 pm