Mission Statement
Unbound Grace is a non-profit organization with a growing membership of active social stewards committed to promoting the health and well being of each and every individual and family. Our mission is to provide the community with health-centered activities rooted in the ideals of sustainable agriculture, the arts, and classical horsemanship, where individuals of all ages are encouraged to find and share their gifts, talents, and passions.
Board Members
President: Kerry Kurt
Vice President: Marni Willms
Secretary: Marni Willms
Treasurer:Jim Geier
Directors: Sonny Provetto
Rick Mason
Zachariah Cota-Weaver
Olivia Daniel
About Us
Unbound Grace is a non-profit organization with a growing membership of active social stewards committed to promoting the health and well being of each and every individual and family. Our mission is to provide the community with health-centered activities rooted in the ideals of sustainable agriculture, the arts, and classical horsemanship, where individuals of all ages are encouraged to find and share their gifts, talents, and passions.
Unbound Grace has an active board that meets and brainstorms every Wednesday evening at 5:30. The meetings are open to all community members who want to become involved. We are asking for scholarship help to support 20 one week camp sessions at 300/week of day camp for Starksboro youth for a total of 6,000 dollars. This broad community support equates to approximately six dollars per Starksboro household. Sentinel Farms Arts, Ag and Equine Camp includes Classical Horsemanship in the mornings and a variety of afternoon activities including visual arts, animal husbandry, sports and woodworking. We provide overnight campouts on Thursday nights as well as early drop off and late pick up to respond to the needs of working parents.
In August of 2010, 22 youth attended Sentinel Farms Arts, Agriculture and Equine Camp. Thirteen scholarships were extended to campers. Thirteen campers were Starksboro residents, along with three campers from Bristol, two from Lincoln, two from Ferrisburg, one from Charlotte and one from Hinesburg. Three scholarships were offered by individual community members to support camper attendance. The remaining ten scholarships, along with meals and snacks, and additional costs, were supported by the Horse N Rebel, Sentinel Farms and personally underwritten by my partner Sonny Provetto and myself. In the summer of 2011 we intend to offer nine weeks of camp programming. If the trend continues to be 6 1/2 campers/week needing scholarships for the 9 weeks of camp there would be a need for 58 scholarships.
We actively seek community partnerships to help the youth in our own backyard receive the support they need to grow into active and interested community members who continue the tradition of sharing their gifts, talents and passions to the benefit of our entire community. Our community can enjoy being part of the process as mentors and work with the youth in the riding camp and throughout the farm.
As most longtime residents know we have spent the last five plus years transforming a historical homestead and farm that was no longer in use into to a vibrant community welcoming center for both Starksboro residents and visitors to our town. Since November 2009 Sentinel Farms has hosted four community celebrations of our historical and agricultural roots with the time-honored tradition of the community barn dance, which included our community’s abundance of gifts and talents in the form of plenty of food, fun, music, dancing, arts and conversation between friends old and new.
These enjoyable community events are inclusive to all people with a suggested donation to benefit the scholarship fund for the growing Sentinel Farms summer camps and year round programming. In our first year we generated broad community involvement in healthy events that helped to cover the costs involved with hosting the series of events. It is hoped that as the events come around for the second year the increased publicity generated by the 2010 attendees will help boost attendance to continue a legacy of healthy memory making events and a fun way to help support the Sentinel Farms youth camps and programming.
Respectfully yours, Kerry Kurt and Sonny Provetto