Rootwork Commons restores shared land by building shared responsibility.
Our work is not organized around programs or short-term projects. It is organized around ongoing practices that allow land, labor, and neighborhood relationships to strengthen over time.
Restoring the Commons: We steward vacant city land and return it to shared use. This includes restoring soil health, building simple infrastructure, and establishing long-term care so land remains productive and accessible to the surrounding neighborhood.
Creating Dignified Employment: Rootwork Commons pays local residents to steward land, grow food, maintained shared infrastructure, and create value-added products. By compensating stewardship labor, we reject the idea that care work should rely on unpaid volunteering or extraction-based markets.
Following Community-Led Design: Decisions at Rootwork Commons are shaped by the people closest to the land. Neighbors — including young people — participate in shaping how sites are used, what is grown, and how work is organized. Design emerges through use, repetition, and local knowledge.
Rootwork Commons is building a model where:
Land is shared
Work is valued
Design follows lived experience