Love Based Home

“It is a basic human right for families to receive help to provide a love-based home, not a fear-based home, for children.”

__Heidi Hardin, Founder and Director, Think Round, Inc.

Heidi Hardin, visionary founder, and director of Think Round, a URI Cooperation Circle, knows in her body, mind, heart, and soul that it is a human right for families to receive help to provide a love-based home, not a fear-based home, for children. Heidi has an unquenchable dream to bring the human family together to explore and address family, social and environmental needs.

Think Round, Inc. was founded in 2004 to provide a haven where the potential of artistic expression and awareness of environmental crises intersect with the needs of families, homes, and neighborhoods. Think Round’s twin visions are to create and sustain a physical and virtual “Center for the Human Family;” and, to develop “The Paradise Project,” a multifaced space that draws upon the distilled wisdom of the world’s faith traditions and becomes a place for people to experience planet Earth as their beloved and shared “backyard.”

In October 2023, more than 70 young adults from various countries collaborated to launch a “Virtual Center for the Human Family.”  Heidi mobilizes young volunteers in partnership with VolunteerMatch, a global volunteer network. They meet online every Thursday to dream together and tackle what needs to be done. Heidi credits the generosity and creative genius of the young adults to make the aspirations of The Virtual Center for the Human Family a reality.  She says, “the young people resonate with the need and the vision of the project and are willing to give their time and talent so freely, with receiving so little material reward in return. They tell me that they want to keep on working because this project is so important to them.”

A central focus of Think Round is addressing and transforming traumatic, systemic adverse childhood experiences within families. It is guided by the scientific work of Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, first Surgeon General of California, 2019-2022, who recognized Kaiser and CDC studies linking adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress with harmful effects to health later in life. Heidi encourages people everywhere to join the movement to prevent and heal Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES).   Positive change is possible as medical professionals and public schools increasingly recognize the impact of trauma and toxic stress in the home and intervene. Heidi is passionate, “If everyone joins the ACES movement, we can end this public health threat in this generation!”

Persistently collaborating with city and federal agencies, public schools, community groups and artists, Think Round creates ongoing art installations and educational programs that give voice and participatory roles to the residents in Bayview Hunters Point, a neighborhood in Southeast San Francisco.  With plans for an aquaponics garden and fish farm, a multi-cultural culinary school, therapeutic trauma session rooms to address adverse childhood experiences, and more. Think Round also THINKS BIG!

Recently, Think Round hosted Marianne Williamson, well known author and 2024 Democratic candidate for President of the U.S. As a longtime proponent of a U.S. Department for Peace and known for speaking truth to power, Marianne and Think Round are of same mind and heart - driven by love of people, not money-driven interests. Heidi reflected about Marianne, “it is good for me to see that a woman who carries a universal but cloistered message needs to be so strong.”

For more information:

Think Round, Inc.:  https://www.thinkround.org

Burke Foundation:  https://burkefoundation.org/what-drives-us/adverse-childhood-experiences-aces/

Paradise Project, Human Family Tree Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZighURSmrWY

Think Round’s Twin Visions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjzD4BqZoiI&pp=ygUadGhpbmsgcm91bmQncyB0d2luIHZpc2lvbnM%3D