© 2024 WOSU Public Media
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Nonprofit Agraria furloughs staff, suspends operations

Agraria holds educational programs for young people and beginning farmers at their 138-acre property west of Yellow Springs.
Alejandro Figueroa
/
WYSO
Agraria holds educational programs for young people and beginning farmers at their 138-acre property west of Yellow Springs.

The Agraria Center for Regenerative Practice, a Yellow Springs nonprofit, will be going on hiatus, WYSO confirmed Thursday.

That comes after almost all of the nonprofit's 30 staff members were told they’d be furloughed on Wednesday.

The board also placed Executive Director Susan Jennings on administrative leave, according to a statement, but it didn’t explain why.

WYSO reached out to Jennings for comment but she didn't reply by the time this story was published.

“Members of the board became aware earlier this month that the financial condition of the organization required immediate action,” the board statement says. “The board met, reviewed the finances, and made a decision to suspend operations pending an in-depth review of the organization in conjunction with legal and financial counsel.”

The board statement says it won't comment on specifics until after it completes its internal review.

Some staff members began clearing out their offices on the second floor of the Kettering Building on the Antioch College campus, space the nonprofit rents from the college.

Agraria, formerly known as Community Solutions, does educational programs for young people and beginning farmers at its 138-acre property west of Yellow Springs, which it purchased in 2017.

It also holds programming like outdoor living, regenerative farming skills, foraging and wildcrafting, and organizes the BIPOC farming network.

Tags
Alejandro Figueroa covers food insecurity and the business of food for WYSO through Report for America — a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Alejandro particularly covers the lack of access to healthy and affordable food in Southwest Ohio communities, and what local government and nonprofits are doing to address it. He also covers rural and urban farming

Email: afigueroa@wyso.org
Phone: 937-917-5943
Chris Welter is the Managing Editor at The Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO. Chris got his start in radio in 2017 when he completed a six-month training at the Center for Community Voices. Most recently, he worked as a substitute host and the Environment Reporter at WYSO.