Our community-centered approach encourages dynamic collaboration between young people and the supportive network of co-learners around them. We cultivate a nurturing educational environment where everyone’s input is valued, prioritizing a shared journey of growth and discovery. Together, we create a learning experience that is as inclusive as it is inspiring.
Our facilitators, mentors, families, and dedicated advocates are an inter-generational and cross-cultural network of mission-aligned people committed to holistic development and bringing Volo’s vision to life. Together, our learning community ensures every young person’s journey is guided by the values and defining elements that make Volo a differentiated educational model of the future.
A learning community is defined as an “intentionally developed community that exists to promote and maximize the individual and shared learning of its members. There is ongoing interaction, interplay, and collaboration among the community’s members as they strive for specified common learning goals” O. T. Lenning et al. (2013) p. 7
The Volo Natural Learning Community is a cooperative at heart.
We work together and learn together. We respect each other. We value each other and our various ways of participating in the community.
The core of our community comprises participating young people, their families, and Volo professional staff.Our community extends to other partners and contributors in the broader community.
Young people, families, and Volo staff together create personalized learning plans and hold conferences to keep learning on track.
The core learning community (young people, families, and staff) participate in the general educational program. Young people and staff work regularly and consistently together to create activities and daily practices. Families meet periodically to adapt learning programs by keeping what is working well and revising whatever needs help. Over time this community participation will adapt Volo to needs and opportunities that arise.
The core learning community also contributes to the Volo business organization needs, in whatever ways are appropriate for each family. For example, a parent might volunteer to help with outdoor adventures or to teach an afternoon class. Another parent might provide a demonstration of fly-fishing or chemistry or lead a writer’s workshop. Another parent might help to build a bench, while another helps with social media. And another parent may donate financially rather than by spending time at Volo. Our talents are gathered and valuable in Volo. We also recognize that abilities to contribute time, energy, or financially vary with time; we value what community members bring to the community whenever that is, and when it’s time for families to focus on other efforts, we still value having their child in our group.
Volo contributes to the larger community indirectly and directly. Our participating young people help to make the world a better place through their attitudes and the lives they lead. We also initiate and participate in community-improvement projects such as riparian restoration.
In turn, the larger community partners with Volo to support learning experiences. For example, the Utah Reclamation Mitigation and Conservation Commission helps to provide plants and materials for riparian restoration.
Volo views the larger community as people who make a place their home, local organizations, commerce, citizens, and a diverse, multi-species ecology, among many other players. We draw lessons from ecological communities, which have a mosaic of interrelated and interacting components.
Fundamentally, we believe community members are engaged, interdependent players, each one making purposeful contributions and forming meaningful relationships. In thriving communities, members build strong networks, self-organization, flexibility, belonging, and diversity.
Founder & Lead Facilitator
Facilitator
Facilitator
Mentor
Mentor
We believe that young people need to do more than theorize about community and leadership — they need to learn from experience. That’s why at Volo we have designed a process for steering the learning community over time that will engage youth in structured decision-making processes both as participants and as leaders.
