CRAF apprentice Elia Meyer-Arrivillaga (right) with Natalie Reigle, Addison County Regional Director, Vermont Adult Learning.
Community Roots Apprentice Fellowship
In the fall of 2024, the New Perennials team—with input from students and community partners—designed and launched the Community Roots Apprentice Fellowship (CRAF). This project creates a cohort of five Middlebury College students who apprentice with five practitioners drawn from local Middlebury nonprofits, community organizations, and businesses. Over the course of ten weeks (approximately 25 hours), students connect with well-rooted Vermont practitioners who share their crafts and skills in a low-stress, off-campus setting. This immersive experience offers students a break from the rigors of campus life and their worries about grades and deadlines. Instead, they begin to feel connected to a place and to mentors where they will live and work while they’re at Middlebury—and maybe longer, as many Middlebury College alums demonstrate.
Since its pilot semester, New Perennials has paired 15 second- and third-year students with 15 local practitioners. These specialists represent a wide variety of nonprofits, art organizations, museums, conservation organizations, and include:
A Revolutionary Press, ACORN, Courageous Stage, Elderly Services Inc., Henry Sheldon Museum, Caleb Kenna Photography, Middlebury Area Land Trust, Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, Proxemia Sound, Rokeby Museum, the Teen Center, the Yoga Equity Project, Town Hall Theater, Vermont Adult Learning, and the Willowell Foundation.
“I’ll be continuing my study [with Elderly Services] in the fall [2025] semester to create a larger, more robust sample size, which will then be presented at the upcoming 2025 Health Equity Summit in Burlington in October this year! I want to extend my gratitude to you both for giving me this opportunity.”
Each semester adds to the knowledge and workings of this evolving program. Not only do the mentors and students develop effective learning relationships, but they also often realize common ground and begin working together outside the CRAF context. These mutual-aid relationships have been part of New Perennials’ vision since the beginning, and we are extremely happy to see this development.
At the end of each semester, the participants offer demonstrations and presentations about their experiences. Some pairings have continued beyond the initial semester, and both students and practitioners recommend CRAF to their friends and colleagues. CRAF has been supported in part by Middlebury’s Center for Career Engagement and the Center for Careers and Internships. We appreciate their support and the enthusiasm shown by our campus and community partners.
“Our ‘apprentice’ is a lovely human and such a fantastic role model for our youth. Seeing our teens—and especially our trans teens—connect with them was very rewarding.”