Saturday, March 28, 2026: 8:30 am — 10:00 am
On Zoom
Topic: Story Exchange Workshop
Offered by: Eco-chaplains Shoshana Perry and Summer Payne
The Goal: To experience the power of connection and Narrative 4’s core story exchange methodology.
To prepare: Bring a story from your life you are willing to share. Below are prompts focused on earth and community from which to choose. The story should be no longer than 5 minutes. The story you bring to the workshop will be shared by a fellow Earth Care participant, who will then share it with the larger community.
Prompts:
- The Ground Beneath Me
Share a story about a specific place on earth that influenced you—a backyard, a farm, a city block, a shoreline, or a mountain trail. What happened there that changed how you see yourself and others?
- A Lesson From the Natural World
Share a moment when something in nature—like the weather, an animal, a plant, or a season—taught you about community, resilience, or belonging.
- Planting Something That Wasn’t a Seed
Share a story about when you planted an idea, a relationship, or an act of care that grew into something bigger than you expected.
- Weathering It Together
Share a time when you and others faced a storm—literal or metaphorical—and endured it.
Narrative 4 is a global nonprofit that harnesses the power of story exchange to empower and inspire people to improve their lives, communities, and the world. N4 is a leader in empathy and education, using our signature story exchange to navigate and heal our divided world. Supported by a wide network of artists, educators, and students committed to fostering “radical empathy,” N4’s work addresses the broad yet interconnected themes of faith, identity, immigration, violence, and the environment.
For those interested in more details about N4, here are some videos we share to explain our work related to empathy and storytelling. You can also visit our website at www.narrative4.com.
Videos
If you have any questions, please contact the Earth Care group at EarthCare.Dharma@gmail.com
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89034438884?pwd=yMSPIojkQlhFFgzBbtt6BI29dFdWSi.1
Meeting ID: 890 3443 8884
Passcode: EarthCare
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Shoshana Perry is a Lead Trainer and facilitator at Narrative 4, and a member of the Artist Network. Shoshana co-architected the Climate of Emotions 2025, partnering with 6 Seconds social emotional learning organization, for the United Nations Climate Week. Having graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in fiction writing, for many years Shoshana worked in journalism, fiction, and documentary film, both as a director and a producer. Shoshana’s film “Down To Earth” won Best Documentary at EcoCinema International Film Festival. Currently a mindfulness educator, Shoshana trained in trauma sensitive work, with the Lineage Project. Through such organizations as Kula for Karma, and Access Mindfulness, Shoshana has been offering meditation and qi gong to staff, and to homeless men just out of incarceration at the Doe Fund, with psychiatric patients and therapists at Bellevue Hospital, as well as to middle and high school students throughout New York City’s five boroughs. Shoshana is also offering meditation and mindfulness to incarcerated men and women in the Washington DC Jail, byway of the Georgetown Prison Initiative. In 2025 Shoshana gratefully graduated from the Sati Center’s Buddhist Eco-Chaplaincy training, and has been leading “Mindfulness and Compassion in the Natural World” workshops through the New York City Park Service. Shoshana is sustained by Heart Root, a Brooklyn based Sangha that she co-founded 8 years ago. Care and wonder for the natural world, animal welfare, Justice and love in action, poetry/dance/expression, qi gong, meditation, her two young adult children, Jack and Lia, and meaningful connections are foremost on Shoshana’s heart and mind these days.
Shoshana’s daily mantra is “May I meet this moment fully, may I meet it as a friend.
Summer Payne operates from the unwavering belief that environmental stewardship and social justice are inseparable. As an eco-chaplain and healing-centered practitioner, she facilitates experiences that prioritize a return to the natural world as the essential foundation for human equity and collective healing. Summer’s approach “changes the way change is done” by centering presence and contemplative wisdom as the primary drivers for profound social and personal shifts.
In her role as Director of Learning, Development, and Inclusion at Consumer Reports, Summer translates these principles into organizational practice, advancing inclusive cultures through intentional learning and behavior change. Her approach is informed by contemplative care and wisdom traditions, shaped through partnerships with the Acosta Institute, the SATI Center for Buddhist Studies, and the New York Zen Center.
Whether training facilitators for Narrative 4 or building inclusive outdoor communities as a founding leader for Black Girls Do Bike, Summer’s work is a call to return to the wild, and to ourselves, as the bedrock of a just and sustainable society. From the bike path to the story circle, she remains a relentless advocate for a liberation that is rooted deeply in the natural world.