Welcome to The Gathering Place and Navajo Co-op Store
The Gathering Place and Navajo Co-op Store provides opportunities for local people

About Us

1999 picture of The Gathering Place staff

The Gathering Place is a community based, non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing the work of local artists. Since 1987 they have been providing literacy and health programs in the eastern Navajo Nation.

Members of local communities offer various programs, who are peers of the clients and who share their language, culture and reality, thereby bringing compassion and insight into the learning experience.


The Gathering Place Goals

Economic Development
By establishing the Navajo Coop Store, we hope to increase job and income creation for the local people, since many of the artists depend on their art for their livelihood.
Personal Empowerment
The literacy and health programs are aimed at encouraging parents to perceive themselves as their children's first teacher. As such, we are attempting to offer information and intervention that will help them make their role more positive for them and their children. This is in keeping with the holistic Navajo way of teaching culture.
Community Empowerment
The Gathering Place is a community based organization which will eventually be owned and operated by the local Navajo people and will hopefully be seen as a demo project for similar rural areas.

Our Programs

Shima Yazhi
Our Lay Health program, offers information and advice to women who are coping with first-time motherhood. The program offers resources and support for new baby care, parenting and health concerns, all in locations convenient to the client. The lessons give information that is aimed at the problems, questions and experiences these women encounter daily. The information is given to women in written, video and audio formats by trained Navajo women in order to foster peer support.
Family Learning Center
Our family literacy program is offered in Thoreau primarily to families with young children. The intent of the program is to put an end to the intergenerational cycle of under-education and poverty prevalent in our service area. To achieve this objective the program works to:
  • increase the reading skills and education of participating parents,
  • improve parenting skills of adults in support of their children's learning,
  • advance developmental skills and school readiness levels of their young children,
  • increase the quality of parent-child interactions and
  • increase the amount of time spent reading together.
Keepers of the Beauty Way
A program offered to Navajo elders. It helps them learn enough English to function in today's society. The name of the program recognizes that it is elders who keep the wonder and beauty of the Navajo culture alive and are living examples for the future generations.
The Navajo Co-op Store
The store is located within The Gathering Place building and carries a variety of items by local artisans, including pottery, hand-crafted dolls, rugs, clothes, sandpaintings, and southwestern jewelry. The main goal of the Co-op is to help local Navajo crafts people find broader markets for their work and develop business skills while being paid a fair price for their products.

Thank you and may you always Walk in Beauty

Navajo health and literacy programs

The Gathering Place
P.O. Box 838 - 23 First Street
Thoreau, New Mexico 87323
(505) 862-8075 or (800) 862-5763
Fax: (505) 862-8809
dineh838@yahoo.com



© 1996-2006 by The Gathering Place, Thoreau NM. All rights reserved.
Designed by Holden Consulting.