09/07/2026
This week, the community resilience and leadership (CRL) cohort at Southern Oregon University learned landscape-level coordination from our amazing guest speakers and longtime collaborators at the Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative (SOFRC): Ben Ho, Amelia Liberatore, and Jennifer Payne.
Students applied skills in engaging the community and communicating complex topics throughout this week in and outside the classroom. Through thoughtful discussion and group work focused on collaborative, intentional, and equitable public outreach, students embodied resilient leaders and embraced ambiguity while facing one of the greatest challenges to our Southern Oregon community: increasing severity and frequency of catastrophic wildfires.
To address how fire shapes our landscape, students learned about the importance and history of prescribed burns in the preservation and management of our forests from Marko Bey and Belinda Brown with the Lomakatsi Restoration Project. While a long history of fire suppression and the removal of indigenous peoples stewarding the land with fire has left our forests overcrowded, stressed, and at greater risk in a changing climate, the CRL students know there is a path forward and are equipped to advocate for sustainable solutions.
Here in Southern Oregon, community resilience is defined by the issues the community faces and the solutions taken to recover and come back stronger, while “moving at the speed of trust”. - Belinda Brown.
Thank you so much to our guest speakers and community members at Lomakatsi and SOFRC for sharing your time and bountiful knowledge. Find out more about our community partners and support resilience in our community at https://lomakatsi.org/ and https://sofrc.org/.
