Adirondack Climate Outreach & Resilience Network

Rural Resilience from the Ground Up

The Adirondack Climate Outreach and Resilience Network (ACORN) is a collaboration of Paul Smith’s College, The Wild Center, and the Adirondack Research Consortium with funding from NYSERDA and the Adirondack Foundation. The ACORN rural resilience network includes local communities, organizations, and engaged individuals across the 14-county region of Northern New York State.

ACORN’s mission is to work together to identify community-driven solutions that ensure our rural region is proactive in responding to the changing climate. We identify shared projects with the goal of bringing state, federal, and foundation funding to the region to make solutions accessible to everyone.

Listening Sessions

ACORN’s goal is to plant the seeds that will get the regional climate conversation going, connect neighbors with neighbors, and foster community-level leadership that builds on the strength of our region from the ground up.

Through a series of Listening Sessions across different regions of the North Country, we will gather insights about both the challenges as well as the existing strengths of our communities as we are faced with warmer, wetter, and weirder weather that affects our roads, homes, businesses, jobs, safety networks, economy, and our regional way of life.

The listening sessions will be interactive, serve as networking opportunities, and will allow for every voice to share their vision for the future of their community.

From the Listening Sessions, we will develop a Rural Resilience Roadmap for the North Country outlining the challenges, strengths, and visions for our region, as well as the needed projects that will make us resilient together. We will share this information with federal, state, and local partners to assist with developing the resources that will help us to fulfill our shared goals.