I hope the start of your new year has been going well! In this newsletter, I’d like to zoom in on one of our most exciting projects -- one that I actually helped co-found back in 2018 while I was an undergrad at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
First off: Be the Change wishes you and everyone in our wonderful community Happy Holidays and a great New Year! May you find ease and peace during these challenging times.
A Thank You Note to All Our Donors!
Thank you to all our new and ongoing donors for donating to Be the Change’s fundraising campaign. We raised $12,995 and had almost 40 donors contribute! This support will enable is to continue empowering youth to become environmental and social justice changemakers, including our Climate Ambassador Workshops, the spotlight of our #GivingTuesday campaign.
Congratulations to the City of Vancouver for upholding their commitment to tackling climate change!
On January 16, 2019, the City of Vancouver became the first Canadian city to declare a Climate Emergency. Since then, the City has followed through with their commitments on tackling climate change and has developed and officially passed on November 17, 2020 a participatory and collaborative Climate Emergency Action Plan. Backed by climate science and taking guidance from the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement, the Climate Emergency Action Plan aims to scale-up efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C. The Action Plan consists of 32 policies and strategies that tackle climate change and reduce local carbon emissions, such as adopting a sustainable transportation target of at least 80% of trips made by walking, cycling, or public transit by 2030.
As part of their commitment to the Climate Emergency, the City of Vancouver also became the first city in the world to sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which intends to have a just and equitable transition to clean energy and low-carbon solutions.
Happy Birthday to Be the Change!
On October 21, 2020, Be the Change Earth Alliance reached a huge milestone. We celebrated our 15th year of providing environmental education and empowerment across Metro Vancouver and BC!
Fall is here! Here are some updates from Be the Change as we enter a new season and school-year!
Environmental Education Panel
“Imagine a future where world leaders have grown up with a deep understanding of the natural environment that sustains us and knowledge that informs responsible decisions that advance our planetary health.”
As the summer draws to an end and students head back to class, both remotely and in-person, Be the Change is committed to supporting teachers and empowering students during these unprecedented times. We are focused on being nimble and adaptive to the ever-evolving circumstances. And we have some exciting updates ahead of the school year!
Be the Change’s New Website
Be the Change’s website makeover is complete! Our new website is more visually appealing and user-friendly for teachers, students and community members. Check out the new website!
I hope you're having a great summer so far. As the economy begins to open, we’re thinking about our role in building back a more sustainable and just world. Check out our updates below!
Build Back Better and a Green Recovery
As the world continues to grapple with Covid-19, one stark observation from the pandemic has been that society can no longer go on following the status-quo and ‘business as usual’ approach for how we manage our world. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed all the systemic shortcomings and vulnerabilities that need to be addressed, if we want to build a more just, equitable, resilient, healthy and sustainable world. We need to ‘Build Back Better’ or ‘reset’ the status-quo to have a long-lasting positive recovery that puts creating a just society
and sustainable environment at its core. As part of ‘Build Back Better’ and a green recovery in a post-Covid-19 world, many countries are now reevaluating and reinventing how they manage their societies. Some examples of ‘Build Back Better’ include: the Europe Union is developing the ‘European Green Deal’ that transitions from a high- to low-carbon economy; China is ramping up and expanding its State Electricity Grid as part of its transition to renewable energy efforts; and, the UK has pledged to invest £2 billion to creating new cycling and walking infrastructure for healthy, sustainable transportation.
Can you believe it’s already mid-June? This school year has flown by. We’re proud of what we were able to accomplish this year, and we’re excited for the year ahead.
A Year in Review
Despite unexpected challenges, this past school year has been truly inspiring. Be the Change’s impactful eco-social educational learning materials reached 415 teachers this school year. We delivered a total of 42 workshops to students, despite the shortened school year, in part through collaborating with the UBC Climate Hub. Just weeks after Covid-19 shut down schools, we launched the Climate & Connection Unit (CCU), a suite of learning resources for teachers specifically designed for remote learning. An amazing 147 teachers registered to use the resources.
This school year, Be the Change supported, motivated, and empowered more than 8,500 students to take action towards a more just and sustainable world! After collecting data and running the numbers, we’ve calculated that students’ actions towards reducing their ecological footprints have diverted over 50,000 Kgs of CO2 equivalent from the atmosphere.
In the 21st century, youth are increasingly anxious, depressed and afraid of what climate change means for their future.The term eco-anxiety has been coined by researchers to document the sense of fear and impending doom brought on by climate change. This eco-anxiety can be paralyzing. But many youth are taking action to overcome it and shape the world they are inheriting.
This morning, thinking about Earth Day left me feeling a deep sense of grief for the state of wildlife and nature globally. This, on top of the gloom of the pandemic. Yet I’m also finding great inspiration in how our communities have demonstrated the will to take swift and bold action to address an emergency. The remarkable stories of solidarity, adaptation and resilience in response to Covid-19 give me hope for our planet’s future. This is Be the Change’s story so far.
In mid-March, I called together our staff team and reached out to our board to discuss the new challenge facing our eco-social educational programming: schools are closed, and kids are homebound. We all agreed on a vision for Be the Change stepping up to support schools, teachers and students. Our goal: to be in genuine service to teachers during this exceptional and difficult time. We envisioned creating a new collection of learning resources and activities to support teachers with online instruction and engage students remotely in authentic eco-social learning. Through a collaborative and iterative process, we developed the Climate & Connection Unit.
