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 friends,
Well, this is a new experience for me, sharing a blog with my extended community. Thanks for tuning in!
As you probably know I’m totally devoted to my work as the Creative Director of Be The Change Earth Alliance (BTCEA). This small but dedicated non-profit has accomplished so much over the years, thanks to all the support of dedicated staff, volunteers, teachers, students, parents… all the widening circles of people who care about shifting our unsustainable world view, and know how powerful it is to work with our youth in this endeavour. I’m hoping you may be interested in supporting our mission and passing this message on to others that may be interested in supporting our good work.
What BTCEA does… Our grassroots work for global sustainability focuses on education that empowers youth to make sustainable choices and become informed critical thinking citizens. We do this by creating curriculum that teachers can use in the classroom to inform on the global challenges, connect students to how they are a part of these issues and empower them with ways to take actions that support local solutions. I love the way our student Action Packs has the youth engage their families to create more sustainable practices in their homes. This is truly education in action…global mind shift one family at a time.
The good news is, it’s working! Today’s youth want to know what they can do to make a difference, and they love our hand’s-on approach. Teacher surveys give the Student Leadership in Sustainability curriculum an A+. We’re currently in 34 schools in B.C. and reach over 4000 students annually. But tight education budgets make it hard for the schools to pay for supplementary materials. Getting environmental curriculum into the classrooms requires lots of professional development workshops and one-on-one work with teachers.
We need your support! I am reaching out to you right now because, although BTCEA has been supported by hard-won grants for years, we’re currently in a funding gap. Foundations want to kick start new projects rather than support ongoing programs, a funding situation that has kneecapped many great environmental charities in the past. BTCEA must move to a more self-sufficient model supported by the community it serves. So we are working on both short and long-term ways to meet our operational funding. The first step to continue getting this vital curriculum into schools is our own crowd-sourced funding campaign.
Thank you for participating in our COMMUNITY OF CHANGE campaign. Our goal to raise $25,000 by December 4th. We’ll have some cool rewards to offer donors, and tax receipts for any donations over $10.
I hope that you will enjoy and take heart with the inspiring stories of change from our teachers and students in the forthcoming blogs. I hope you may choose to support this initiative and spread the word to those of your friends and networks who may also want to support education infused with values for global sustainability (by forwarding on our emails, tweets, or facebook posts).
And, thanks for YOUR good work in this world! Together we all are creating a brighter future.
With love and gratitude,
Maureen
PS- here’s a short video with some of our bright young students speaking to our values based program.
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.
