When It Rains It Pours: Inside the ACF’s Mid-Year Environmental Accelerator
Some gatherings are measured by the conversations they produce. Others are remembered by the places that shape them.
From June 24–26, leaders from Arizona and across the nation traveled to the Navajo and Hopi nations for the Arizona Community Foundation (ACF) Mid-Year Environmental Accelerator Project, a three-day convening designed not around conference rooms or presentations, but around relationships, shared experiences, and the landscapes that continue to sustain generations coming ahead.
Representing nonprofit organizations, municipalities, Tribal communities, academia, philanthropy, and national partners, participants came together to embark on the following: strengthen statewide collaboration, deepen relationships, and collectively shape the path toward Arizona's Environmental Convening this December in Phoenix.
The Mid-Year Environmental Accelerator was a continuation of a story that began in September 2025, when a similar set of cross-sector leaders gathered in Greer, Arizona, to lay the groundwork for a collective approach to Arizona's most pressing environmental challenges. Within the first gathering, deliberately held off the grid in the mountains to ensure neutrality, something invaluable was produced: trust. From that trust came an invitation. Two leaders offered to host the group in their own communities on Navajo and Hopi lands for the mid-year convening.
Throughout all three days of the Mid-Year Environmental Accelerator, a quiet participant accompanied the group.
Rain.
It arrived in gentle bursts during conversations, field visits, and meals. While unexpected for visitors, both Navajo and Hopi hosts shared a different perspective. When guests arrive from outside Tribal lands, they come as clouds. And in this instance, these were rainclouds. Over three remarkable days, that symbolism became impossible to ignore.
Day I: Arriving at Cameron
After traveling, coming from various places across Arizona and the nation, participants gathered, surrounded by roses, chrysanthemums, daisies, and other colorful blossoms, at the historic Cameron Trading Post’s garden, where the Environmental Accelerator officially began. Rather than opening with presentations or keynote speeches, the gathering opened with conversation.
Bijiibah Begaye, Executive Director of Cooperative Catalyst of New Mexico, and Monica Nuvamsa, Interim Executive Director of the Hopi Foundation and an ACF Board of Director, whose presence shaped the Accelerator's culture from the beginning, welcomed participants and set the tone for the next three days. The garden, green and unexpected against the surrounding desert, invited participants to answer a deceptively simple question: How do we tell Arizona's environmental story together?
Community organizers spoke alongside national funders. Tribal leaders shared perspectives beside municipal practitioners. Academic researchers contributed alongside nonprofit executives. Hierarchies dissolved as participants worked together to imagine what a truly Arizona-led conference could become.
Then, almost on cue, the weather shifted, as it often does in Northern Arizona in late June.
Soon came the clouds. Instead of interrupting the momentum, the weather reinforced collaboration. Gathering into breakout groups, participants moved inside, spreading across the historic Cameron Trading Post, tasked with what had brought them together: designing a collective keynote for Arizona’s Environmental Convening.
Ideas came from participants. Maps were spread across tables. Notes were passed and posted. The conversation moved from what the conference could say to what Arizona's environmental leaders needed the nation to understand. Through this work, several participants made commitments that afternoon to lead planning sessions across the state in the months ahead, implanting statewide ownership of the December convening.
By evening, conversations gave way to amity.
Participants gathered for dinner inside the Cameron Trading Post restaurant before making one final stop together. As the sun descended over the Little Colorado River, west of the historic Cameron Old Bridge, the group paused for a photo against a breathtaking canyon sunset. Behind them, the Little Colorado River canyon opened into the kind of silence that would make many reflect, observing bats dancing across the desert air, chasing supper as participants admired the breathtaking hues that painted the twilight sky, preparing for the adventure ahead.
Day II: Into the Heart of Hospitality
The next morning, participants traveled a little under an hour to Kerley Valley, where the Environmental Accelerator shifted from conversation to lived experience.
Hosted by the Bikooh Agricultural Cooperative, the day offered an opportunity not merely to observe community-based environmental work, but to understand the generations of knowledge, perseverance, and strength that sustain it. To comprehend what the Bikooh Agricultural Cooperative is doing, one must first understand the landscape in which it operates.
The Navajo Nation spans more than 27,000 square miles and is home to over 300,000 people. Across the land, there are 13 grocery stores. Food access is not a gap in the system. It is the system's most apparent failure, layered on top of centuries of water dispossession, land loss, and economic exclusion that have shaped chronic disease rates and food insecurity in ways that numbers alone cannot capture.
The Bikooh Agricultural Cooperative, established in January 2024 by Kerley Valley farmers, built a clear and urgent mandate: food sovereignty, food security, cultural preservation, and land stewardship, catalyzed in part by the disruptions of COVID-19. The cooperative has become one of the most compelling models of Indigenous-led food systems work in the Southwest.
Supported through its partnership with ACF, the cooperative represents an investment not only in farming, but in restoring systems that have sustained Navajo communities for generations.
As participants walked the fields, they heard directly from those carrying this work forward.
"I love my culture. It heals, I pray, and I don't have to pay for it. With you all visiting here, I want to show you it's possible when you want something, you don't have to pay for it; you work for it."
-Rose Marie Williams, President of the Bikooh Agricultural Cooperative
Her words echoed throughout the day.
From Kerley Valley, the group descended into a canyon shaped by sandstone walls to Pastor Canyon.
Exclusively accessible through the invitation of the families who continue farming there, and by vehicles with four-wheel drive, Pastor Canyon is not a destination open to the public. Being welcomed onto this land represented something far greater than a site visit. It reflected years of trust cultivated between ACF and community partners throughout the Navajo Nation. It was a privilege extended with intention.
That trust became apparent through shared work.
Joined together in preparing a traditional Navajo meal by chopping wood, cutting watermelon, and preparing mutton, participants listened to stories that stretched across generations. As ingredients were prepared and meals were assembled, conversations naturally unfolded, without judgment, releasing the notion of philanthropic power dynamics.
Participants enjoyed watermelon, frybread, blood sausage, and stew made of blue corn, white corn, yellow corn, squash, and mutton; all served beneath intermittent rain showers. Those in the canyon understood it as something more than weather.
Time spent in the canyon not only cultivated a meal or a lesson; it dissolved the distance that so often separates funders from practitioners. Funders who had flown in from across the nation stood in the same dirt, passed the same bowls, and heard the same stories as the community members who had prepared them.
"Being on the land and seeing the work changes the conversation because it offers context. When you are in a Zoom meeting, and someone tells you what they do, but you are not in the place, you can miss important pieces of the story. Being here gives you a deeper understanding of what we are talking about."
-Rodrigo Sierra Corona, Executive Director of the Borderlands Restoration Network
By the close of Day II, participants departed Pastor Canyon carrying far more than photos or notes. They left with a deep appreciation that environmental resilience begins not with infrastructure or investment alone, but with people willing to share their stories, traditions, meals, and ultimately, trust.
Day III: Lessons Rooted in the Land
The final day opened with Dr. Michel Gelobter, Director of the Yale Center for Environmental Justice, offering remarks during breakfast that anchored the morning in both global context and local specificity. His work on climate change, AI tools, data centers, clean energy, and tribal co-management certificate programs enlightened the group, providing context on how technological advancements can influence environmental work, specifically in Arizona.
After breakfast, participants once again set out early and ambitiously set off for multiple site visits across First and Second Mesa, where yet again another community would generously open its doors, its fields, and traditions.
Hosted by the Natwani Coalition, a program of the Hopi Foundation, participants witnessed how a mission manifests in actuality. The Natwani Coalition, formed in January of 2024, operates to honor and preserve Hopi farming traditions and the development of sustainable wellness strategies, ensuring that practices carried through generations are not lost to the pressures of modernity, climate disruption, or economic marginalization.
Participants traveled from farm to farm, listening to stories from multigenerational growers who cultivate traditional crops, inspiring younger generations to reconnect with farming practices that have sustained Hopi people for centuries. Along the way, they learned how conservation extends beyond preserving landscapes. Preservation is interconnected with relationships between people, water, soil, and future generations.
One of the day's most memorable moments was thanks to Clint Lomawunu, the coalition's Program Coordinator. From the Village of Sipaulovi, belonging to the Sun Forehead Clan, Lomawunu led participants through the coalition’s farmlands, where dams and Zuni bows, traditional water management structures, are deployed to replenish water tables, mitigate erosion, and recover what has been lost to drought and land degradation. Digesting his teachings on the relationship between a single place stone and the movement of water across an entire hillside was the kind of education that a slide deck could never deliver.
With a background in watershed development, bio-archaeology, and, by trade, a skilled stone mason, Lomawunu shared not only the technical aspect of the restoration work, but also the philosophy that guides it.
"We're creating healthy challenges for our children. By encouraging them on their hands and knees, tending the land, they'll discover how much they're capable of. From this, they either learn their personal characteristics or how to work the land and harvest water."
–Clint Lomawunu, Program Coordinator, Natwani Coalition
Capturing a sentiment participants experienced throughout the accelerator, environmental resilience is not measured solely by the project completed today, but by the opportunities created for future generations to inherit knowledge, responsibility, and hope.
Following the morning's site visits, participants gathered one final time over a meal hosted by the Hopi Foundation. Watermelon, apricots, Hopi-style pozole, and traditional foods filled the tables while each participant received parting gifts that included Piki bread, corn nuts, and a bundle of herbs for tea, a small reminder that meaningful gatherings leave folks carrying something home. Yet, the greatest gift shared during lunch was time.
One by one, participants reflected on what they would carry forward. Some reflected on friendships formed while preparing meals together, navigating canyon roads. Others shared that they arrived expecting a conventional convening but departed, experiencing something far more personal: a renewed understanding that environmental leadership begins with listening before leading.
Carrying the Rain Forward
Looking back across the three days, it is grounding to remember the destinations—the lush garden at Cameron Trading Post, the captivating fields of Kerley Valley, the towering walls of Pastor Canyon, and the breathtaking land of the mesas in Hopi.
But perhaps the most enduring memory was something far less predictable.
Rain arrived each day, gently falling across farms, mesas, and canyons. For many participants, it became more than weather. Through the teachings shared by Navajo and Hopi hosts, the rain came to symbolize welcome. Visitors had arrived as clouds, bringing water to the fields and, in return, receiving stories, knowledge, and trust that cannot be replicated in any conference room.
That exchange captures the heart of the Environmental Accelerator.
The rain eventually moved on, nourishing relationships that will continue to grow. And together, they will help shape the next chapter of Arizona's environmental future.
Voice of Collaboration
Throughout the duration of the accelerator, participants highlighted the importance of working across sectors, geographies, and lived experiences.
"...Collaboration creates space to better understand one another’s work, hear different perspectives, and explore new solutions to shared challenges. At the end of the day, the Arizona Way is about getting things done. We don’t have the luxury of being held back by ideologies or identities. We need to work together and move forward."
–Benjamin Thomas, Senior Philanthropic Advisor, Arizona Community Foundation
"The Foundation for America’s Public Lands strives to set the biggest table possible, needing as many voices and perspectives as possible, coming together to tackle the seemingly insurmountable challenges we’re facing today. Here at this gathering, we are literally setting a big table — bringing together an incredible group of perspectives and voices, all for the betterment of Arizona and Arizona’s environment."
–Daley Burns, Wildlife Program Officer, Foundation for America's Public Lands
"I work on climate change in different parts of the world, but for me, this has been a very meaningful experience. Seeing people who live in a place take the challenges ahead seriously.... Within our work around the world, there is this idea of the right to stay. What I see here is a community of practice that is not going anywhere. People who are committed, even at 122 degrees, in keeping this place livable. A place for community, a place for history, a place for living, and a place for raising your family."
–Dr. Michel Gelobter, Executive Director, Yale Center for Environmental Justice
Building Toward December
The Mid-Year Environmental Accelerator was never intended to be a standalone event. Instead, it conveys an important milestone in a year-long journey that will culminate this December at Arizona’s Environmental Convening in Phoenix. There, many of the same leaders who gathered in Northern Arizona will continue shaping conversations, workshops, and collaborative initiatives designed to accelerate investment in Arizona's most pressing environmental priorities.
If you believe that Arizona's environmental future should be shaped by the communities who know this land best, this is the moment to be part of that work.
Learn more about Arizona’s Environmental Convening and how to get involved→
Support Arizona’s environmental future. Invest in ACF’s Environmental Fund.→
For partnership opportunities or to learn more about the Environmental Accelerator Project, contact Nicolas de la Fuente, Director of Environmental Strategy at ACF.