9/17/07

Cecily Cahill

Awakening the Dreamer & Walking in Beauty
A Conversation with Cecily Cahill

Cecily Cahill was born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and attended a multiracial boarding school in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). She had enormous freedom in her childhood to play and explore in the African bush, and developed an extraordinarily strong connection to the natural world.  She attended college in England where she taught in inner city schools for ten years. A leave of absence brought her to California, where she ultimately decided to move, as it reminded her of the South African Cape. Eventually, she obtained a green card and worked for Forests Forever, field canvassing, training and managing a staff of twelve, and opening a campaign office in Santa Cruz. The focus was saving the Headwaters Forest.

A series of auto accidents caused Cecily to cut back her work schedule, so she began substitute teaching and also became Executive Director of Shared Adventures, helping the special needs population in the Santa Cruz area to experience the outdoors. She expanded it from a single annual event to a year-round program. During that time she met "an amazing group of women," including Lynn Twist, author of The Soul of Money, from whom she learned about the Pachamama Alliance. Cecily became trained as a facilitator of "Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream" symposia, put on by the Alliance to "create an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on this planet." Cecily has become a strong and articulate voice for the Alliance and has made it her life's work.