Pando at Encino - Pando Populus

The Sisters of Social Service is a Pando partner for community development and support, providing outreach and project-development space at their Encino campus. We collaborate on selected programs.

The Sisters of Social Service (SSS) is a community of women religious legendary for its work among disadvantaged and marginalized populations in the City of Los Angeles and throughout the world. Pando maintains a community development office and project space at the Sisters’ 11-acre campus in LA’s Encino neighborhood.

The campus aims to incarnate principles of a sustainable way of living, encouraged by the vision of Pope Francis for an “integral ecology.” In 2019, the Sisters installed the largest privately-owned residential solar panel installation in the State of California.

The 11-acre Encino includes the Holy Spirit Retreat Center, serving highly diverse and pluralistic communities.

*Nestled amongst a campus with beautiful woods and a lake, the Sisters of Social Service operate the largest private solar panel installation in the State of California.*

Visit us on campus! Here you will see:

Pando’s community partnership office. The office is a hub for fostering community engagement in Countywide sustainability work that develops out of the intersection of educational institutions, public agencies, and businesses/NGOs.

Biophilia Treehouse. Developed through the Pando Days 2019-20 season, the Biophilia Treehouse is a public-arts sculpture and biodiversity initiative installed on a hilltop overlooking the Encino campus’s lake. Designer Rebeca Mendez is creative director of the groundbreaking initiative, with an international team.

The project is a collaboration with Elon University’s Bringing Theory to Practice/PLACE with funding from the Mellon Foundation, UCLA, and others.

A view of Biophilia Treehouse during the construction period. The hilltop location overlooks a private lake on the campus. The structure promises to draw many to the location.

LACI offsite lab. The campus provides occasional offsite project work space to the LA Cleantech Incubator (LACI) to serve as a testsite for medium-scale development of breakthrough sustainable technology.

The first project to utilize the space was a startup called ePave, with paving solutions that address the “heat island effect” of asphalt and concrete surfaces.

ePave team floats a reflective surface onto the asphalt driveway, promising to significantly reduce the heat island effect of the pavement. ePave is an LA Cleantech Incubator (LACI) startup.

Possible future programs for the campus include Pando retreats for intergenerational learning and intellectual reflection, and a relaunch of our residential fellowship program.

Stay tuned for further developments!