Friends of the Living Earth,

For twenty years, the Earth Conference has been a gathering place — a time each year when this community came together to learn, connect, and imagine a healthier future for each other and for the land we share. Two decades of shared meals, hard conversations, new friendships, and small seeds that grew into real change. We are so grateful for every one of you who showed up, year after year, to make it what it was — and especially grateful to the School Sisters of Notre Dame, who began this tradition so many years ago.

We're writing to share that this year, Living Earth Center and the Conference Planning Committee have made the difficult decision not to continue the Earth Conference within Living Earth Center's programming. While the conference is ending under Living Earth Center's leadership, the legacy the Sisters began — bringing people together to champion care for the Earth and for each other — will carry on through a community-led, community-designed process.

Changing times call for changing approaches. Over the past decade, LEC has evolved a great deal to keep serving the changing needs of the community, and we've come to believe the Earth Conference needed to evolve too if it was going to have the kind of impact this moment calls for. So last year, we tried something different: instead of our usual format, we opened space for a new conversation about what a coalition — one centered on care for each other and for the environment — might look like as it took root here.

Out of that gathering, a group of community members stepped forward to carry the idea further, and the Coalition of Care began to take shape. As it has grown, we've made an intentional choice: Living Earth Center is not part of the coalition-building team. We've stepped back on purpose because we believe this work will reach further if it grows from the community itself, rather than from any one organization. What emerges next is not ours to shape. It belongs to the collective.

We don't know where this will lead. However, after twenty years, the Earth Conference gave this community a strong foundation. It's time to let something new unfold naturally, guided by the people building it. There may be a future for conferences again down the road, but if that day comes, it will look different from what you remember. For now, we're making room for the coalition to find its own shape. Below is the information they have provided for their next gathering:

The Coalition of Care invites the community to join their upcoming conference, Co-designing a Coalition of Care: A Gathering for Collaborative Action in Greater Mankato!

October 24, 2026 from 10:00 am - 3:30 pm (lunch provided)
Minnesota State University, Mankato

Registration and event information: sites.google.com/view/coalitionofcare
Send questions about the Gathering or the Coalition of Care to mankatocarecoalition@gmail.com.

Participants will learn about the Coalition of Care Charter, an evolving document that emerged from participants' wisdom, questions, and creativity during the 2025 Earth Conference.

Thank you for twenty remarkable years. The Earth Conference may be ending, but because of you, what it started is only beginning.

With gratitude,
Laura Marsala Peterson