January Newsletter: Sharing Gratitude & Excitement for 2024!
Happy New Year! We hope you had a memorable holiday season and a positive start to 2024. At Be the Change, we are energized and excited for the year ahead!
Hello,
Spring is a time when living systems begin their cyclical transition from wintering rest, back into a state of new growth. Together, the members of ecosystemic communities co-participate in bloom, regeneration, renewal and synergistic relationships. These relationships allow collective emergence and wellbeing.
What seeks to grow and emerge through you right now? Are there new shoots, or renewed essences present? As agents of change and finders of a new way, those passionate about creating positive impact are like adaptive cells who sense what is needed to thrive and seek to move the collective toward a greater life-affirming state.
As holders of a new way, students can feel like an outsider and alone, yet their difference is needed for the greater good. By empowering and affirming their inner awareness and intuition that things must change, we can nurture their creative essence, ideas and innovations that could change the world.
Our Earth Week Impact
Earth week is a great time to foster values, worldviews, being, feeling and action that support regenerating people, communities, ecosystems and climate.
Once again this year, Be the Change Earth Alliance partnered with the BCTF Committee for Action on Social Justice to offer a Pro-Development session for teachers and two Water is Life workshops for students across B.C., that engaged their classes to learn about climate justice and take personal impactful action.
19 Teachers signed up to learn about bringing transformative pedagogy into the classroom!
13 Teachers signed up their class to attend our Water is Life Part 1 stream!
Together, we reached nearly 1000 students and empowered them to learn and take action on climate in their lives. As more and more educators grow their capacity to engage students, that number grows year after year, with every class they engage!
Upcoming Project to Address Climate Distress in Wildfire-Affected Communities!
Are you located in or know educators in School Districts Kamloops/Thompson (73), Goldtrail (74) or North Okanagan Shushwap (83)?
Be the Change would love to be connected with you!
This project will support youth in communities affected by the 2017 wildfires around Kamloops, B.C. to take climate action and navigate climate grief by fostering personal and community, resilience, agency and regeneration.
We will be offering student workshops and pro-development for educators.
Project objectives
a) Agency: Build practical skills and tools for youth through action-oriented education strategies to empower climate action and wellbeing in their lives and communities.
b) Regeneration: Help youth to contribute and lead in their community through climate storytelling, collaboration and collective action.
c) Resilience: Support youth to recognize and navigate climate grief and anxiety by exploring individual, community and systems level solution-based thinking and pathways to action.
For more information, contact [email protected]
A Special August Offering for Educators: Climate Educators Resilience and Regeneration Retreat!
For 10 successful applicants, we will be hosting a 2 night and 3 day retreat at the beautiful Epona Rise Retreat Center in Kamloops BC!
If you would like to be updated when applications are open, please email [email protected]
The retreat will be an opportunity for like-hearted educators to get together and retreat away from other responsibilities so we can collectively:
- Rest, connect, and regenerate in lead-up to a new school year.
- Explore how the current climate reality is impacting our students, ourselves and how education can foster future-fit communities.
- Slow down into presence, fun, joy and passion.
- Explore regenerative and transformative education pedagogy, approach and beingness.
- Build personal capacities for resilience and meaningfully connect to the natural world, and our role as educators at this time on Earth.
- Dance with collaborative, co-creative peer mentorship and be supported to bring climate education into the classroom this next school year.
Please consider a one-time or monthly donation to Be the Change Earth Alliance. Your tax-deductible support allows us to provide an extensive collection of resources and learning experiences to students and teachers at no cost.
With openness to receive the gifts of spring,
Jake Hubley
Communications/Program Coordinator
Latest posts
December 2023 Newsletter - ⛄‘Tis the season to celebrate at Be The Change!⛄
As 2023 comes to a close and school winds down for winter break, we’re taking a moment to reflect back over the past year. 2023 was a very regenerative time for BTCEA! We developed and delivered our Climate Action, Resilience, and Emotions (CARE) program in communities on the frontlines of wildfires in our province. And as an organization, we prioritized creating space to discuss what decolonization could look like both internally, and in our programming. Here are the highlights:
Oct 2023 Newsletter - Check out our mid-October climate-justice resources!
Hello,
An introduction from Communications Coordinator, Lucy Wicken
Dear Be The Change community,
As we approach mid-October, I’m reflecting on the changing seasons, from the warm and active days of summer to the cooler and quieter days of autumn. Personally, I’ve noticed a desire to slow down, take on fewer responsibilities, and stay inside where it’s cozy. Have you felt this way too?
As 21st century humans living in a world that operates under capitalism, white supremacy, and other oppressive systems, we can be made to feel guilt or shame about listening & responding to our needs. We are expected to maintain the same energy and productivity levels throughout the year, no matter how cold or dark the days are, how heavy world events feel, or how much we’re struggling in our personal lives.
This is where the concept of regenerative education comes in. Introduced to the BTCEA team by former staff member Jake, regenerative education calls on us to slow down and turn inward to consider our connection with the natural world. It asks us to examine the living systems that are breaking down due to violent human activity (such as fossil fuel extraction, destruction of Indigenous lands, and human-caused flooding and wildfires) and connect this breakdown with our own high levels of stress.
