Molly Messenger

Molly is a community organizer, educator, and facilitator specializing in rural & youth organizing, participatory leadership development, and building intergenerational networks for social change. She is co-founder of the Youth Organizing Community of Practice in New Hampshire, which convenes the staff of youth organizing groups in NH to build relationships, mutual support, and solidarity, in order to strengthen the organizing power of each group and the field of youth organizing in NH as a whole. She is also co-founder of the Rural Youth Organizing Project of New Hampshire, which has a vision of young people across NH's rural places joining at the forefront of movements for justice. They are building equitable and accessible movement infrastructure to build power with high school-aged youth from historically marginalized backgrounds. They do this by connecting rural youth across identity and geography in a supportive community to develop organizing skills, run youth-led issue-based local campaigns, and bring their voice to state-wide issues and policies that impact them.

For 8 years, Molly Directed Pittsfield Listens, which encouraged the power of historically marginalized youth, parents, families, and community voices on issues and policies that directly affect their education and their lives. Molly has served on the boards of Global Awareness Local Action/MakersMill, Ossipee Listens, Waysmeet/United Campus Ministry, and American Friends Service Committee-NH. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a B.A. in Anthropology & International Affairs and is also certified in Permaculture design and teaching. She has worked across various projects as a New Hampshire Listens Fellow since 2011.

Molly lives in the unceded Abenaki & Wabanaki territory known as Ossipee with her husband and two children, where they are beginner farmers and also are restoring the former Ossipee Mountain Grange Hall so that it may be a responsive resource to support the community’s social, and economic and creative aspirations.