About Us
Soil & Souls is emerging as a global mission enterprise that
establishes resilience hubs through educating faith communities
and training local young adult leaders. Each hub responds to its
unique social and physical landscape. Components include land
based spiritual formation, food and water systems, ecosystem
repair and solar energy. Our native and medicinal plants nursery is a worker owned cooperative that helps people earn as they learn.
Meet our amazing team.
Our partners are also our leaders. Working in locations around the U.S., we’re inspired to help heal soil & souls nationally.
Darciea Houston
Marketing & Health Education
Entrepreneur
Dallas, TX
“I have a passion for wholistic health & wellness, family empowerment, nutrition, farming, horticulture therapy and permaculture. I graduated Summa Cum Laude from Paul Quinn College. My area of focus was health and wellness with an emphasis on nutrition. I have certifications in conversation coaching, horticulture, food handlers and international resilience training for permaculture.
While in undergrad, I participated in a few notable progress programs like the DukeImmerse at Duke University, Nicholas School of Environment and the Emmett J. Conrad Leadership Program. Additionally, I was nominated and won the 2014 National Black Caucus Regis Groff Award for leading social entrepreneurship.
As a result, my mission is to “Inspire Healthy Habits” as a: health coach, motivational speaker, panelist, farmer, curriculum creator, teacher and manager of a few local farm-to-table markets. My vision is to wholistically empower individuals, encourage neighborhoods as they transform into communities.”
Rev Dele
CEO & Permaculturist
New Paltz, NY
Rev. Dele is a grandmother, theologian, & visiting professor in permaculture, who uses her skills as a Climate Reality Leader and Contemplative to train eco mission leaders in underserved communities.
Jason Lindsay
Farm Education
Entrepreneur
Durham, NC
After spending time in the public school system as an educator, he turned his focus to community development through agriculture.
He soon registered the first urban farm in his town, selling organic vegetables to local CSA’s, juicing companies, and a mobile food market. After that, he moved on to develop a youth agricultural training program – Cultivating Youth Entrepreneurs (CYE). In addition he also created an urban farm school curriculum. Graduates from CYE have gone on to establish their own production farms and enroll in university seeking agriculture-related degrees.
Through Soil & Souls, Jason shares his cooperative business development experience and his journey of reclaiming his agrarian identity, with faith communities.
The Soil & Souls concept is meeting with great enthusiasm from Christian denominations, Cuban permaculturists, millennial farmers, conservationists, cooperative business folk as well as underserved communities.” -Rev. Dele
Our History
Being Planted
Climate change hit me with hurricane Katrina in 2005. I co-convened a
national coalition in D.C. and produced townhall radio broadcasts for the
200,000 survivors in Houston. Following that, in New Orleans I opened a healing arts
center, sharing yoga therapy and contemplation for residents and relief
workers. There I was introduced to “land therapy” in the form of
permaculture design and bio-remediation for toxic soil, polluted water and
poisonous air.
Taking Root
I taught permaculture design at the College of William & Mary and thought I
would practice these skills with contemplative ministry on family land in
southern Virginia. I began the Nature’s Friends network, and became
increasingly alarmed at how difficult it was to transfer resilience knowledge
to communities of color. In March 2012 God told me to teach churches how
to model sustainability. While my Climate Reality Leader training in
Johannesburg taught me great climate science and how to shift national
conversations to benefit communities of color, guess what? No one was
asking to be taught.
Sprouting
I have spent the last 7 years traveling the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. researching culturally relevant ways to engage African American faith communities in acts of resilience. As an Audubon Toyota Together Green Fellow, I learned critical lessons while testing the Soil & Souls pilot at St. Paul’s Baptist Church, an 11,000 member church in
Richmond, VA. I then took an interfaith, 14 member multi-cultural, intergenerational delegation to Cuba to get further answers. That tour completed the circle of knowledge.
Blooming
The Episcopal Diocese invited me to return and teach climate science to clergy and install a medicine garden on the grounds of the Episcopal
Cathedral in downtown Havana. We returned in 2018 with 4 leaders from
DC, Texas and North Carolina. We are leveraging that invitation into a
mission enterprise that trains college aged leaders in contemplation and
permaculture design; and then dispatches them in groups of ten to perform
sustainability service for members of Green the Church network.
Continuous Growth
The Soil & Souls concept is meeting with great enthusiasm from Christian
denominations, Cuban permaculturists, millennial farmers,
conservationists, cooperative business folk as well as underserved
communities. And guess what? People are now asking to be taught.
I helped create a Creation Care class at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School
of Theology at Virginia Union University. In addition, I have begun business plans for
the worker owned native plant nursery that trains and employs the mission leaders who help faith communities model sustainability.
My greatest lesson learned is that many churches don’t have young adults able to
perform necessary services. Soil & Souls is an economically viable solution
to meet that need. -Rev Dele
Past Projects
Our favorite experiences creating and growing Soil & Souls. These are parts of what helps incubate Soil & Souls as a Global Mission Enterprise
See what they’re saying.
Growing a global mission enterprise takes people. See for yourselves the life-changing experience of Soil & Souls!
I appreciate the genius of the planning. Every day was exciting and educational. Just when I though it couldn’t get any better, it did!
Zandra Chestnut, staff for Senator Mark Warner
Cuba, 2015In Cuba I learned my community can begin to change the world through sustainable practices including food sovereignty through circle gardens, team building, and holding traditional spiritual practices with the land.
Student
Cuba, 2018This trip was life changing. There is a whole bigger world out there that needs help! I appreciate you.
Akin Carter, 18 years old
Cuba, 2015I am thankful for the opportunity to be a sponge and soak up so much wisdom and knowledge from our lesson plans and through the beautiful Earth itself.
Student
Cuba, 2018…Now I know how to focus my career. I’m changing my major when I get back.
Eliza Wilkinson, American University Graduate Student
Cuba, 2015Our Supporters.
We could not do this without these organizations. Thank you.