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,
After a productive and creative summer at Be the Change, we couldn't be more excited for the new school year!
Over the summer, we worked with six Program Assistant to update and augment our Student Leadership for Change library of learning resources.
Teachers, here’s just a taste of the improvements within SLC: to better navigate the SLC library, check out our new walk-through video! To guide students in meaning learning on the UN SDGs, explore our SDG Unit, with updated powerpoints, lesson plans, and a student action tracker. And your students will love our re-branded Community Building Action Pack – perfect for students after several years of pandemic isolation.
We’re also excited to launch the new school year by offering two workshops for students ages 10-18 – facilitated in-person in Metro Vancouver or virtually across BC.
Climate Ambassador workshops: Student facilitators from the UBC Climate Hub, only a few years older than their high school peers, facilitate these climate storytelling workshops, creating a powerful space for peer-to-peer sharing and growth. Our partnership with the Climate Hub is now in its fourth year!
Water is Life workshops: Water is life is 2-part workshop designed to deepen students’ understanding of the climate crisis and threats to freshwater, and engage them in taking meaningful action. The workshops integrate the UN SDGs and weave in Indigenous perspectives.
Finally, we’re thrilled to launch Youth for Climate Justice, a new climate justice program aimed at empowering youth teams to launch climate justice projects in their communities. BTCEA will provide diverse teams of youth with mentorship, training and funding to create projects that advance equity and address major sources of GHG emissions. Stay tuned for more updates as this innovative program gets going this fall!
Our work at Be the Change is made possible by generous donations from our community. Please make a tax-deductible donation today!
Sincerely,
George Radner (he/him)
Executive Director
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.
