Byron Fellowship Educational Foundation supports a number of initiatives working in service of a flourishing world.

The annual fellowship program is available by application to a select cohort of social and environmental entrepreneurs, founders, and community leaders each year who are making a profound difference in their own communities and keenly attuned to the challenges we share globally.

Fellows and mentors represent a wide spectrum of disciplines including the arts, natural science, social science, humanities and theology. The Byron Fellowship program is a deeply personal and transformative inquiry. The teaching methods include mindfulness exercises, collaborative dialogue, envisioning practices, deep individual and group reflection.

Building a resilient future together through food and community.

A foragable community is a collective of businesses and community members working together to increase the public’s active participation in local foodways in order to enhance the sustainability and resilience of their region.

The Foragable Community initiative, supported by Byron Fellowship Educational Foundation, provides funding and resources to communities seeking to strengthen their connection to their local, abundant natural foodways.

ALLIED: Bringing the Best of You to the Racial Justice Journey

ALLIED was offered from 2020-2021 to support participants in understanding not only the external actions of racial justice (how to get involved in protests, political campaigns, and other mobilizations) but how to do the inner work of racial justice-making: how to bring one’s best, most resourceful, resilient, and responsive self to this particular journey.

This experience was facilitated by long-time Byron mentor Harry Pickens; Byron Fellowship was a fiscal sponsor of this program.

For faith leaders working on food insecurity, health disparity, or ecological degradation, the level of complexity is immense. We can easily become overwhelmed by the scale and difficulty of the problems our communities face. Which thread do you pull? Where to begin?

In 2012, Wake Forest University School of Divinity identified this need and created the Food, Health, and Ecological Wellbeing Initiative, with the goal of helping faith leaders create more redemptive food systems: local, equitable food economies that create health for both people and planet. The Byron Fellowship Educational Foundation supports the Divinity Schools’ Re-Generate Fellowship, a holistic leadership development program for young North American faith leaders who are exploring vocational issues focused around food, health, and ecological well-being.

SOCAP (Social Capital Markets) is in the vanguard of the emerging global impact economy — convening ideas and capital to catalyze world change. It is a network of investors, entrepreneurs, and social impact leaders addressing the world’s toughest challenges through market-based solutions. SOCAP’s flagship event each fall in San Francisco is the leading gathering for impact investors and social entrepreneurs.

In 2018, Byron Fellowship Educational Foundation sponsored the inaugural six-member Byron Alumni cohort to participate in the annual SOCAP conference’s Social Entrepreneurs Program. Social Entrepreneur Scholarship recipients have the opportunity to pitch and receive feedback on their ventures during the Impact Accelorator event. Recipients build connections and skills that help them succeed, as well as receive mentorship and coaching around their ideas.

Sponsoring Visiting Artists

Byron Fellowship Educational Foundation sponsors a variety of visiting artists at campuses in the Carolinas, including most recently at UNC Chapel Hill and Davidson College.