“So many of our students grew up watching their brothers welcomed into workshops while they were told they didn’t belong,” she says. “And then they come here. They pick up a saw for the first time. They cry. They go home and post in their class WhatsApp group, ‘I built this shelf by myself.’ The pride is immense.” One student’s journey captures the school’s ripple effect: she came for a tiny house workshop, fell in love, never left, and is now Wild Abundance’s Director of Programming, orchestrating every class on the roster. “She went from student to leader,” Gaia says. “That’s the power of this place.”
87 “You do something for the first time, and everyone around you celebrates. That feeling can’t really be spoken to. It’s what people carry home.”
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