Welcome to the Carolinas

We have started this web site to focus the interest expressed in having a regional gathering of the Carolina rainbow family and any rainbow family from outside the Carolinas that chooses to come join us of course. This web site is intended to help coordinate efforts towards such a gathering, but should not be mistaken as an official site representing the rainbow family in whole or part. As always, we operate by consensus and no one of us can speak for all of us, so this is to gather thoughts, opinions, and information for use by the family and not as an authoritive source intended to represent the family to the world at large.

Currently the suggestion has been to have a gathering later this summer in central or Western North Carolina in a forest location to be determined by scouts and consensus on the ground about a month before the main gathering. As these details of date and location are discussed, we must also begin finding the volunteers needed to make a gathering thrive. A gathering like this might not be as huge starting out the first year, so maybe we only have to plan for a few hundred or perhaps as many as 1,000, but this is not currently expected to reach anything near the size of a national gathering (i.e. 10 - 20,000 or more). We will still need to coordinate a significant effort to take care of even just a few hundred people. So our current task is to put out a call for the people and supplies we will need and make sure we can arrange the logistics to have what we need when we need it.

If you have an interest in helping with any of the following needs please let us know, we need as many people as we can get and the way gatherings work we all help out somehow and that's how they turn out so beautiful. So how can YOU help?

We Need:

- Scouts
Those to go in, scout out the area, and help decide on the BEST location for the gathering. (Considering water, parking, and environmental impact)

- Foculizers (including a "Street Team")
People to help recruit and coordinate the volunteers and supplies needed for the time we are out there and help inform family (old and new) about the gathering.

- Medical personnel
People who are doctors, EMTs, or nurses back home and also folks with some first aid experience, people good with radios, and at least one or two designated medical evac people (means you need an appropriate vehicle) for evacuating what we can't treat on site to the nearest facility.

- Water crew
People to set up and maintain water lines and filters for the safe distribution of drinking water to the gathering. (Need commitment on these supplies too)

- Set-up and Clean-up
People committed to being there before the gathering and after it for a few weeks to make sure we set it up right and (more importantly) leave no trace after we leave.

- Kitchens
This is self-explanatory, but we need to know that at least a few will be set up to feed everybody. This also requires some commitment from family that we have enough supplies to run these kitchens and feed the hundreds to 1000+ people that could show up.

As we confirm enough supplies and volunteers are available to do this we can schedule a council for scouting the site and make a final decision by consensus on the ground and then announce it at least a few weeks before the gathering. By the time we hold a scouting council I would expect we at least have it narrowed down to where we can select a place for that council close to the forest we plan to be in.

If for some reason we all reach consensus that we have not heard enough support to pull it off by the end of summer this year, then we suggest we plan for early next summer before nationals. We would love to have one this year if we can and there are a couple of things listed above that some of us already involved have experience with, but we must know that there will be enough others helping to pull this off, since none of us can do all these things at the same time (i.e. Medical evac or kitchen crew, but maybe not both at the same time). So start letting us know if you are seriously interested (and in what ways you can help) and ask that others start spreading word too.

May we all walk in the light and we look forward to meeting all our Carolina family. 

- Fox & Monkey (& others)