Rest Month

From July 17th through August 11th, 2023, SPROUT staff will lay down their tools as all operations pause for a month of rest. SPROUT is taking this month to rest because we value ourselves, and we know that our work depends on our long-term health and well-being. 

Our organization has been in a state of swift growth in the last few years, both in budget, staffing, partnerships, and program offerings. This demonstrates a deep need for and trust in SPROUT’s work supporting growers in Louisiana. We are energized by our plans for the future as we close out a strategic planning process and prepare to make the transition to shared leadership. Taking a month off during a period of organizational evolution isn’t an easy choice, but it is the right one for us, so we have worked to prepare for it over many months. We always deserve rest, but this break comes at a time when our team needs to commit to valuing rest for ourselves and our teammates. 

We see our work as our collective liberation, and self-care must be part of sustaining that vision. We prioritize supporting Black and Indigenous growers. Half of our staff and board are People of Color. For us, rest means resisting the white supremecist and capitalist idea that we are only worth the value of our labor. So we do not rest so we can be more productive when we return. We can hope that devoting time to rest will help us recalibrate our pace, but we enter into this period of rest without a goal in mind. We rest simply to rest. 

Please be in touch with how we can preserve our best ways of working with and for you before and after our month of rest, and we will do the best we can with the time we have (which is always the case isn’t it?). 

Some of our inspirations were Beloved Community and Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto. We hope that our organizational closure will encourage more organizations and individuals to make space for rest.