Hello,
Happy New Year! We hope you’ve had a restful holiday season and a positive start to 2022. At Be the Change, we are energized and excited for the year ahead.
December 2021 Newsletter - Happy Holidays from Be The Change!
Hello,
Congratulations for (nearly) reaching the end of 2021! Thank you all for being such an incredible and supportive community. From all of us here at Be The Change Earth Alliance, we want to wish you a happy holiday break full of warmth and cheer.
With YOUR support, Be The Change engaged over 7,000 students and 3,000 community members in learning and action on climate, environmental and social justice issues this year. Below we highlight some of the NEW initiatives we launched in 2021! A core goal of our team is to foster hope and joy throughout all of our programming, so let's celebrate our achievements together!
But first, some thank-you’s are in order. To TEACHERS, we thank you for learning, collaborating and co-creating with us to bring meaningful climate education to students across BC. To our DONORS, we cannot thank you enough for your generosity in helping us raise over $25,000 so far this year! And to EVERYONE reading this newsletter, we value you and appreciate all the ways you support, participate in, and help grow the Be the Change community.
November 2021 Newsletter - Top 30 Under 30 Award + Completed Rain Garden!
Hello,
BTCEA Executive Director Recognized as Top 30 Sustainability Leader Under 30
We are thrilled to announce our Executive Director, George Radner, was recognized by Corporate Knights magazine as one of Canada’s Top 30 Sustainability Leaders Under 30!
Message from George:
“I am humbled by this recognition, but my work has always been team-based, not individual. This award belongs to the team of dedicated, diverse staff at Be the Change who’ve empowered over 15,000 students and 1,100 teachers in the last two years through action-oriented workshops, learning resources and mentorship programs. ”
October 2021 Newsletter - Clean Shorelines and Provincial Pro-D’s!
Be the Change at Provincial Pro-D Day!
On Friday, October 22nd our team took great pleasure in presenting at three province-wide teacher Professional Development workshops and exhibiting at one other. What a day! As a result, 58 more educators have joined Be the Change and will now be able to access our Student Leadership for Change resources, which could reach hundreds more students year after year.
In our sessions, participants collaborated to draw curriculum connections to climate change. This was a short pilot of a process we are designing into a full Pro-D model that will bring teachers together to explore these connections, workshop challenges, build relationships and contribute to a Climate Curriculum Map.
Expanding the Climate Curriculum Map to empower teachers and students across BC is just one goal of our Be the Change Action Network Initiative. We can hardly contain our excitement about this initiative! By bringing together teachers who share our vision for Climate Education for all students, we believe we are working towards transformative change.
September 2021 Newsletter - Truth and Reconciliation Day of Action + Exciting Workshops & Habitat Clean-ups
Here are some updates from Be the Change as we transition into autumn and the new school year!
August 2021 Newsletter - SDG Resources + Climate Education Reform
Hi,
We hope you are having a restful and re-energizing summer. As we transition back into the school year, we want to highlight some of the new learning and teaching our team has created for teachers and students!
July 2021 Newsletter - Processing Our Climate Anxiety Together
Recent heat waves and raging wildfires across so called “BC” and “Canada” have flooded me with feelings of loss and anguish. For me, these extreme weather events bring the climate crisis painfully close to home, leaving me with an unshakable sense of dread about both our present and future. It’s crucial to recognize that these events, which the climate crisis makes more frequent, have a disproportionate impact on homeless people, Indigenous people, and other marginalized and frontline communities already facing inequities.
June 2021 Newsletter - School Year in Review
As the school year comes to a close, let’s review everything Be the Change Earth Alliance has accomplished since last September.
May 2021 Newsletter - Shining a light on youth voices
Check out our updates from a busy and exciting spring!
Reclaiming the Environmental Narrative
The environmental movement has had a long history of excluding or not representing Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC). Mainstream representations of environmentalists have been overly homogeneous and typically white. Unfortunately, this problem of non-BIPOC representation still continues today. At the same time, despite BIPOC and racialized communities often carrying the burden and consequences of environmental racism and injustices, they are champions of and frequently responsible for longstanding and unrewarded environmental protection work.
April 2021 Newsletter - Climate Education Reform + Forever Chemicals Webinar!
A New “Challenge” for Students and Teachers!
Be the Change is excited to share our latest initiative, a challenge to students and teachers to Build the BC Network of School-Based Changemakers. The challenge launched in late March and it aims to help build the widest school-based climate action communication network, and engage the most student and teacher voices in a climate education survey to shape the future of the BC education system. This initiative is, in part, to help the incredible efforts of Climate Education Reform BC (CERBC), a youth-led organization calling for changes to the BC education system that better prepare students and teachers to tackle the climate crisis.
