Bioregional Organizing

Welcoming Ashley Bonn to the Cascadia Department of Bioregion

Welcoming Ashley Bonn to the Cascadia Department of Bioregion

I’m honored to share that I’ve officially joined the team at the Cascadia Department of Bioregion as a Communications & Events Coordinator — a role that feels like the perfect alignment of my purpose, passions, and place.

For nearly a decade, I’ve lived and worked across the Pacific Northwest, but my relationship with Cascadia runs deep. The forests, mountains, and watersheds of this bioregion have shaped not just where I live, but how I live. Cultivating reverence for nature has changed me. It’s softened my edges, deepened my sense of responsibility, and taught me to move through the world with more respect, humility, and gratitude. To me, Cascadia is not just a bioregion— it is a living system, a teacher, and a relative. And I’m committed to tending Cascadia with care.

The Work I Do

As a cultural organizer, educator, and designer based in Portland, Oregon (Chinook land), I’ve spent the past ten years producing place-based gatherings, facilitating permaculture education, and helping to transform grassroots spaces into thriving community hubs. My work is grounded in both lived experience and formal training—including a Master’s in Sustainability Education and Nonprofit Management from Portland State University, a Permaculture Design Certificate through The City Repair Project, and a Teacher Training with Cascadia Permaculture.

Through my work with Conscious Growth (a nonprofit supporting permaculture education and cultural healing) and Cascadia Culture (a bioregional booking and events company), I’ve seen firsthand how community shapes culture—and how culture, in turn, shapes stories we live by.

Why Bioregionalism?

To me, bioregionalism is a practice of remembering. Of returning to right relationship with land, people, and place. It’s a vision rooted not in ideology, but in intimacy: the kind that grows from knowing your watershed, honoring ancestral wisdom, and building regenerative economies.

This is why I’m so drawn to the mission of the Cascadia Department of Bioregion. Our work isn’t just about maps or merchandise—it’s about weaving people into the story of place. We’re here to uplift what makes this bioregion unique, amplify efforts for social and ecological justice, and build the relationships and institutions our future requires.

My Role as Community Organizer

In this role, I’ll be coordinating events, managing digital platforms, supporting regional projects, and cultivating meaningful partnerships throughout the bioregion. I’ll also help tell the story of Cascadia—through social media, storytelling, and systems design—so more people feel connected to this movement and inspired to get involved.

This work is not abstract to me. It’s personal. It’s what I’ve already been doing—building culture from the ground up, on a grassroots level. And now, I get to help steward that work on a broader scale—within a visionary team that’s as committed to regeneration as I am.

🔗 Let’s Connect

If you’re dreaming into bioregional futures, hosting events, or just want to get involved with the Cascadia movement—please reach out. I’d love to connect! You can follow my work here:
🌐 ashleybonn.com | 📸 @ashley.bonn

In service to people and place,
Ashley Bonn, M.S.Ed. (she/her)
Cascadia Community Organizer
Portland, OR (Chinook land)

The Cascadia DOB is excited to present at this years Bioregional Regeneration Summit: Oct 24-Nov 4th 2022

It is the time for Bioregional Regeneration!

BIOREGIONAL REGENERATION SUMMIT
Oct 24- Nov 4, 2022
English & Español

Radical Collaboration between people and places.
Ways to share resources.
Peer to peer exchange of know-how and knowledge.
Regeneration of ourselves through a deep and authentic connection with Mother Earth.

REGISTER


The Cascadia Department of Bioregion will be excited to present “Why Bioregionalism Matters”. The time and day is still being confirmed, but stay tuned.

Why a Summit

In recent years, many networks, organizations, coalitions, and collaborations have emerged to support regeneration at a bioregional and “landscape” scale. We believe we are at a moment when there is a need for and widespread interest in possibilities for “radical collaboration” so that these diverse initiatives can begin to function as a global ecosystem--one that can navigate the complexity of working across scales, across the private, public, and grassroots domains, and across the many interconnected systems where regenerative work is being imagined and enacted. The Summit offers an open and flexible invitation for participants to explore four connected contexts for this radical collaboration: How global networks can support one another How bioregions can support one another How funding innovation can support bioregional scale regeneration How we can support our emotional, physical and spiritual resilience as individuals grappling with the existential threats of the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, economic and social injustice, political fragmentation, and other dimensions of Collapse.

How to join

This scale of working maps itself onto existing places and landscapes in order to provide a meaningful and effective infrastructure for human-scale organising. Bioregions are an age-old organising principle that is being upgraded for the present age by many experiments taking place across the world. Out of that ferment of activity are emerging initiatives for environmental, social and economic regeneration that are place-appropriate.

Registration

The Summit will happen in the Qiqochat platform. After registration you will receive an email with the access.

Register

Agenda

The main agenda is a base to hold multiple conversations and connections. It can change during the event, go here often.

Agenda

Donations

They are seeking an additional $15,000 to fully cover our time and expenses. Consider a donation of $25, $50, and $125.

Donate now

Opportunity explorations

Invite people to engage throughout the Summit on a topic or activity you care about. Frame your exploration with background information, questions and/or activities, and a way to share outcomes. Your invitation will show up on the Summit network map where participants can indicate their interest and self-organize their engagement, with support from the Summit hosts and a team of “weavers.”

Contact the Organizers


About the conveners

The Regenerative Communities Network is a global practitioner collaborative of bioregional networks along with individuals and organizations who share a commitment to place-based initiatives for environmental, social, and economic regeneration. Originally founded by the Capital Institute in 2018, the Network has been independent and managed by its members since the beginning of 2021. After a period of inwardly focused planning and organizing, this Summit represents the beginning of a new phase of outward-facing work in service to the broader movement of which RCN is a part, along with a plan to grow RCN’s membership and surface new possibilities for it to generate value for its network.

Your RCN hosts for this Summit are Melina Angel (Colombia Regenerativa); Isabel Carlisle (Bioregional Learning Centre UK) and Ben Roberts (Connecticut River Valley Bioregional Collaborative).