What people are saying.

“I was extremely fortunate to work alongside Sparrow in her first community enterprise in 2005, the Green Bean Coffeehouse. The Green Bean is "a non-profit approach to coffee and community" and it worked beautifully. It is still impacting lives 15 years later, with multiple coffee shops in the area and as far as the Midwest that came to be after experiencing Sparrow’s vision and longing for the same thing in their community. Sparrow is not afraid to dream boldly, nor should she be because she has the ability to make the seemingly impossible happen. In my 15 years in the non-profit sector I have met no one with such a high level of commitment, compassion, wisdom and understanding for how to create and nurture flourishing communities, alongside an ability to bring others along and execute a vision so precisely.

Sparrow holds a deep belief in the goodness of people and the power that comes out of communities that care for one another well. Well aware of struggle, her hope is a deeply grounded hope. She will breathe new life into your existing project or provide the wisdom and tools to make your seemingly wild dream a reality.

— Hayden Wartes, Co-founder Green Bean Coffeehouse, Pastor at Awake Church

“Entering a learning environment with Sparrow is profoundly shaping; even transformational for many.  Her deep bodily integration of wisdom keeper and storyteller, coupled with her rare blending of fearless activist, organizational leader, and personal presence enable her to both connect with learners from diverse traditions while wooing them to whole bodied openness to self, other, creation, and the Divine.

 As influential and important as her leadership is, her life of grounded practice, open posture, and faithful presence is what I most commend to you.  I want to be more like Sparrow!  She is worth following, learning from, and listening to.  If you want to discover a more human way function as a leader or as an organization, you won’t find a better guide.  So if you’re willing to risk enlarging your group’s shalomic imagination, or to wrestle with self-care as irreducibility linked to care of others, or to simply explore again how to more fully operationalize Jesus’ invitation to love God by loving you neighbor than find ways to introduce Sparrow to your team. “

— Dr. Dwight Friesen, Seattle School of Theology and Psychology

“I have known Sparrow Etter-Carlson for 5 years. I first met her, when I was very much in my addiction to heroin; I was homeless, a severe drug addict, and a prostitute. I didn’t know or associate with many that were outside of my group of other users. In 2015, I went to The Aurora Commons, in Seattle, WA. I met Sparrow and others who she hired to work there, to be advocates and aid to those of us in addiction and the sex trade. It had been a long time, since I felt important, listened to, and even welcomed being in a positive and healthy space. I felt that, because of Sparrow”

— Jenna Rudd, former unhoused neighbor