Environmental Equity, Community Opportunity
ECO Initiative LAUNCHED
Over the past year, a Tides Foundation staff team, headed by Cathy Lerza and Sara Gruen, and aided by consultants Angela Park and Henry Holmes, has been building the mission, vision and values of a new sustainability initiative, now called Environmental Equity, Community Opportunity/ECO. Through a comprehensive scoping/field conversation process that engaged more than four dozen leaders and activists from around the country, ECO now has a mission and goals statement, and is putting the finishing touches on its program, which will include convenings, training, technical assistance, and grantmaking.
On October 17-18, Tides hosted a powerful convening of 20 ECO leaders from across the environmental, economic justice, and social justice fields to advise funding and program strategy; participants included:
- Bob Bingaman (national field director of the Sierra Club);
- Gihan Perera (director Miami Workers Center);
- Maya Wiley (director of the Center for Social Inclusion; and Tides Network board member)
- Dan Chu (vice president for state affiliates of the National Wildlife Federation;
- Deepak Bhargava (executive director of the Center for Community Change);
- Judy Hatcher (director of the Environmental Support Center);
- Eveline Chen (director of Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice);
- Lucy Blake (CEO of the Apollo Alliance);
- Pat Sweeny (director of the Western Organization of Resource Councils);
- Felicia Marcus (vice president of the Trust for Public Land);
- Richard Moore (director of the Southwest Network for Economic and Social Justice);
- and Luther Propst (founder and director the Sonoran Institute).
Participants universally termed it one of the most powerful meetings they had ever attended, expressing a desire “to continue to meet together to help shape a powerful new movement rooted equally in values of environmental protection, social and economic justice and democracy “. The vision of this meeting poured over into the Bioneers Conference .
Not surprisingly, climate and energy were recurring themes throughout the ECO gathering As part of the ECO initiative, we are exploring the ways in which Tides can manifest leadership on climate and energy. Senior philanthropic advisor Cathy Lerza, assisted by consultant Henry Holmes and with great support from Center program director Farnaz Golshani, have begun to explore a Network wide climate and energy gathering to bring together Center projects and Foundation grantees addressing climate and energy along with representatives from Shared Spaces and CCI to identify what we as a Network are already doing and how we could amplify the impact of that work. Preliminary research indicates that over 50 Center projects and 200 Foundation grantees are taking on climate and energy. Still in the scoping phase, a Network climate and energy event might take place in mid 2008, perhaps in conjunction with Momentum. Great work, Cathy, and stay tuned, all!
BTW, I’ll be on the road all next week (in DC, NY), spreading the Tides gospel and exploring new business.