Alverna Heights Franciscan Nature Center

 

The Alverna Heigths Franciscan Nature Center is a ministry of the Sisters of St. Francis in Syracuse, New York. In 2004, the Franciscan Ecology Center began working collaboratively with the Sisters to develop a strategic plan for the development of Alverna Heights. Alverna Heights is located in Manlius, New York on Green Lakes Road, just east of the City of Syracuse. It is a nearly 200 acre property surrounded on three sides by Green Lakes State Park, and on the south by the Old Erie Canal and Old Erie Canal State Park. A former farm that was purchased in the 1960's, Alverna Heights has served as a residence and hermitage for the Sisters, and as a retreat center open to the community. Alverna Heights includes fallow farm fields, a section of hardwood forest with nature trails and prayer huts, a pond (vernal pool), original historic farm buildings, a swiming pool, and newer buildings used as a residence and retreat lodging. Programs offered at Alverna Heights in the past have included Camp Alverna, a summer youth camp program; boy scout and girl scout activities; art classes; a therapeutic equestrian program; health and wellness workshops; small scale lease-farming; gardening; and retreats for all ages.

The vision for Alverna Heights is the creation of a Franciscan nature center that offers retreats, programs, and services, and that serves as a model for a healthy human relationship with Creation. It will be a place where the Sisters, the Catholic community, and the general public come to participate in planned activities rooted in the life and spirit of St. Clare and St. Francis and spontaneous experiences of nature that help them create a “right relationship” between people and the earth as a sacramental way of encountering God. Alverna Heights will provide enhanced opportunities for environmental education, organic farming and gardening, Franciscan spirituality, lay and religious Franciscan formation, general healthy living and wellness, environmental justice, and work with youth and marginalized populations. Potential projects may include raising sheep, agroforestry, ecological restoration and wildlife habitat preservation.

An Alverna Heights Advisory Board has been assembled and the executive committee has drafted a framework for the Alverna Heights Plan. The Advisory Board has created several committees which have begun work developing elements of the draft plan. The Franciscan Earth Corps and Franciscan Earth Club have already completed small-scale reforestation and habitat restoration projects at Alverna Heights, and are planning additional projects in the future.

Click here for pictures of ecological restoration projects and Francscan ecospirituality retreats at Alverna Heights.

 

 

This page was last updated on 09/25/04

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