EGA President and CEO
2023 Fall Retreat Action Plan
Follow Up on our Work in Montgomery
Dear EGAers,
At the of this writing, I find myself gripped with deep emotion. The full team is still resonating from our time together at the Fall Retreat and tracing our revelations to the imperative of this global moment. We are emerging with a clear imperative to continue our practice of care strategies.
With that lens, we look to this community to act on behalf of the future with a hard-earned analysis of the past, and clarity about the present. Now is the time to lean deeply into nuance and to avoid repetition of the generational lessons we carry in our minds, organizational bodies and how it shapes grantmaking practices. We have a responsibility to act soberly and to consider our own habits of violent silence, omission, and erasure of our shared humanity. Further, it is our responsibility to connect disruption of those habits to disruption of the status quo.
Our time together in Montgomery reminds us that old lessons will either inform a more humane future or alternatively feed a mutually assured descent into cycles of harm that destroys both people and planet.
Now is the time to refrain from looking away, and to look directly ahead, in service to the highest possible planetary aspiration. We must stay present and assess ourselves, mindfully, because there is no way out, only through, together.
As the glow of our Fall Retreat space is dimmed by the world itself, your EGA team has compiled some resources to support you in holding your own light and that of others. It is our time to take what's broken into our collective ability, to sit with despair and to keep reaching for truth, equity, people and planet.
In care,
Tamara Toles O’Laughlin
CEO and President
Environmental Grantmakers Association
You are invited you to reflect and reconnect to the inspiring voices from our time together in Montgomery, Alabama.
[EGAers, it’s] not about being better grantmakers, but about developing leadership, challenging power within our sector, and implementing change and action. –Farhad A. Ebrahimi, Founder and President of the Chorus Foundation, inaugural Winner of the EGA Risk Taker Award, Individual
Learn more about the leaders, thinkers and doers who are reshaping the practice of equity in the environment
• Ekvn-Yefolecv, is a Maskoke ecovillage serving as an archetype for Indigenous communities to model “a Just Transition to more equitable and linguistically, culturally and ecologically sustainable lifeways.” Learn more and support the ecovillage here.
• The Equal Justice Initiative Legacy Museum (EJI) provided an experiential learning opportunity for our community at the Fall Retreat. Members connected the legacy of slavery to mass incarceration with current movements for racial equity and environmental justice. Learn more and support EJI here.
• Transformative Change (XC) brings the practice of presence to community-based visioning, strategizing and organizing for cohesive and sustainable social transformation. XC’s founder Rev. angel Kyodo williams collaborated with EGA to design the Healing Race Portal and hold mindfulness space for our community. Learn more and support XC's work here.
• Black Belt Women Rising provides education, training, and advocacy on environmental and gender-related issues to address community needs in Alabama’s Black Belt. Learn more and support Black Belt Women Rising by contacting info[at]blackbeltwomenrising.org.
• Environmental Grantmakers Association looks forward to continuing to create spaces for our members to increase knowledge and collaborate for effective philanthropy. Support for EGA allows our community to grow, learn, and sustain strategic efforts for people and planet. Contact EGA Program Director, Michelle Velez, at mvelez[at]ega.org to support EGA's ongoing programs and new initiatives.
Mainstage Readings and Resources
• Portia Shepherd is the Executive Director of Black Belt Women Rising. The nonprofit is addressing environmental injustice in the Black Belt region such as inadequate access to healthy food, inadequate transportation, air and water pollution, and unsafe homes. Learn more:
- [Read] Toxic coal ash has polluted Alabama’s waters for years
- [Watch] Strategic lawsuits targeting public participation and protest: SLAPP Suits on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
• Marcus Briggs-Cloud (Maskoke), reflects on Ekvn-Yefolecv, as a radical re-settlement on lands where their ancestors were forcibly removed from what is colonially known as Alabama and Georgia today.
• Miriam Miranda is the General Coordinator of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras, OFRANEH. OFRANEH is a grassroots organization that works on behalf of the Garífuna people in a permanent struggle for their autonomy, as well as their collective social, economic, cultural, and territorial rights.
• Catherine Coleman Flowers’ Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice builds partnerships in order to identify and implement solutions to the intersecting challenges of water and sanitation infrastructure, public health and economic development.
- [Watch] Learn more about the intersection of rural America, democracy, voting and environmental justice in Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power.
- [Read] The public health impacts of Black Belt’s Wastewater Crisis
• Explore narratives of Black American life by Dr. Imani Perry, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow and National Book Award winner:
- South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
- “A Lot to Remember—And to Correct: Remembering the killings of six Black children in Birmingham, 60 years ago this month”
• Valencia Gunder, is the Executive Director of The Smile Trust, a nonprofit that provides resources, education, jobs, and housing to combat poverty and homelessness. Their recently opened Freedom Lab is a meeting and collaboration space for community organizations and movement organizers. The Trust’s two hubs - the Smile Haven Community Garden and Community Emergency Operations Center - are community-led efforts to address food insecurity and crisis response.
- [Watch] Razing Liberty Square is an award-winning documentary on community efforts led by Valencia and The Smile Trust to protect a historically Black Miami neighborhood from climate gentrification. Visit and learn more about Razing Liberty Square’s impact campaign.
• The Sage Wind Farm Project is an innovative and replicable renewable energy model for public power that prioritizes people, land, and nature over profit. The project is led by and for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and informed with the highest level of cultural and ecological guidance.
• Konda Mason is bringing climate resilient farming and economic equity to Black farmers in the rural South as the President and Co-Founder of Jubilee Justice.
• Ajulo Othow is the founder and CEO of EnerWealth Solutions, a solar and energy storage company developing renewable energy projects in rural America.
- [Watch] EnerWealth Case Study: Roanoke Cooperative Solar + Storage Project
- [Read] Black Owners of Solar Services announces several Charlotte-area companies as part of its first Department of Energy-backed cohort.
- Black Owners of Solar Services is the largest clearinghouse of African American professionals working in the solar photovoltaic space.
Thank you for attending the EGA Fall Retreat! We are grateful for your presence as we processed our complex collective history in Montgomery.
Save the Date!
2024 Winter Briefing: Reconciling State & Federal Strategies for People and Planet
March 13 - March 14, 2024
Baltimore, Maryland.
Fall Retreat
September 22 -25, 2023
Stevenson, Washington
More details on these events and registration coming soon!