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OUr Core Programs

At CEI, we create innovative, meaningful experiential education programs for people across the lifespan.

CFIN: Community of FAMILIES IN NATURe
Families with one child or more
A Community of Families in Nature (CFIN) provides fun, friendly opportunities for families to spend time together in nature. We offer a variety of programming aimed at fostering greater connection with nature and among participants, increasing environmental awareness and action, supporting the well-being of participants, and strengthening family relationships.​

Agroecology
​in action
All Ages
Agroecology in Action provides participants the opportunity to collaborate from start to finish in the growing of food for our local food system. We employ and teach regenerative growing practices in a variety of demonstration gardens to model the role they can play in a community as a food producer, economic driver, and a tool to tackle climate action. The food grown is distributed to local food assistance programs and at our farm stand.

Roots & Wings
Ages 5 - 17
The Roots & Wings Learning Community provides children with opportunities to develop both their roots and their wings through holistic, experiential learning programs.
Roots & Wings aims to provide an educational experience for home-schooled children where their knowledge, creativity, and voices are nurtured through nature-infused lessons and activities. 

Nourishing Gardens
All Ages
​Nourishing Gardens transforms lawns across Howard County into ecologically beneficial growing spaces. We teach community members how to take lawns at homes, businesses, community organizations, and schools and transform them into gardens that nourish people, our community, and nature.

Green seeds Internship
Ages 14 - 24
Our high school and college internship program gives students experiential education opportunities in a variety of areas related to our mission - from growing food and exploring issues of food sovereignty, to learning about and supporting ecosystem health, to thinking through what it means to create a resilient community, to how time in nature supports physical and mental health. ​

Sustainable skills workshops
Age depends
Sustainable Skills Workshops provide classes on how to grow food, environmental stewardship, creativity and conservation, and community and wellness (i.e. special topics include foraging and medicinal plants). We welcome guest educators!

Eco-Stewards volunteers
Ages 14+
The Eco-Stewards form the backbone of CEI’s volunteer program by helping participate in the organization’s garden care and Maker Space work. The Eco-Steward program is open to individuals 14 and older to join at anytime during the year, and our farm and garden volunteers do not need to have previous garden care experience. CEI also hosts volunteer groups for day trips to help work in our garden space at both Freetown Farm and the Green Farmacy Garden.

Participant Privacy policy

special projects

Freetown Walkable watershed

A Walkable Watershed integrates the flow of water and people into a cohesive strategy to improve the overall health of a community and its surrounding watershed. The Freetown Walkable Watershed is an ongoing initiative uniting the community around our vital waterways. 

Climate Action Education: A Toolkit For All Ages

In 2024 we ventured on a cross-organizational examination on how we can center climate action into each of our programs. With funding from the Howard County PREP grant we adapted our approaches to make climate action an explicit part of each of our programs. This toolkit is the culmination of our strategies, challenges, and lessons learned after a year of getting our hands dirty - both metaphorically and literally! We created this toolkit with other experiential educators in mind and hope that it can act as a resource for anyone interested in engaging people of any age in climate action.

food by Freetown cookbook

Our team loves food. We grow food, we eat food, we share food with our community, we even dream about food sometimes. We have wanted to put together a book like this for many years and are so grateful to finally be able to share our love of food in this format with y’all!

Our goal for this book is to highlight recipes that are special to our team, volunteers, and community. We also hope that sharing these recipes can help show how to use the delicious produce our farm grows, and how we can eat our way to a more just, sustainable, and resilient future.
​Special thanks to:
  • Molly Cooper who designed the beautiful cover
  • Our community and team who shared these delicious recipes; especially our food distribution partners at Laurel Advocacy and Referral Services and Feeding Forward.
  • All who shared their time and energy working at Freetown Farm to help grow the produce that nourish our bodies and souls in these recipes.
  • The Howard County office of Community Sustainability who helped fund this project through their Plastic Reduction and Environmental Protection Grant.