Dear EGAers,
The past year of compound crises has shaken our ways of working, living and being. We’ve navigated the intense pain and emotion of the heights of the pandemic, and we continue to process our collective trauma as we look ahead to the future. At EGA, we are committed to continuing to build momentum together. We invite you to save the date for our annual Fall Retreat this October 5-7, 2021. The Fall Retreat is our next opportunity to reconnect and consider the future of environmental philanthropy, and recommit to supporting an equitable, sustainable, and thriving planet. The Retreat is also our moment to gather and collect our best ideas and experiments. We are committed to ensuring a safe experience for our membership, invited guests, vendors, and extended community. The pandemic has illuminated the harm of deep inequities in our systems, especially the unequal impact on the pandemic on racialized communities in the United States and around the world.
With duty of care and compassion for those most vulnerable, we look forward to presenting the 2021 Retreat as a hybrid event experience. We will create a welcoming opportunity to participate in a completely virtual event, with opportunities to gather regionally. The agenda will include topics and themes connected to the history of our evolution towards liberation. Juneteenth’s celebration as a national holiday has demonstrated the work of care and repair is only just beginning, and we are planning to journey in our conversation, exploration, and activity into the work of racial equity, and what it demands in restorative measures. The virtual event will offer place-based interactivity and the chance to meet with new and familiar colleagues in creative ways. We will follow the path of the great migration as we deepen our learning on the racial history of our nation and build strategies for generative action, at the intersection of the environmental movement and the movement for justice.
As the vaccine rollout makes it safer, we are also excited to explore opportunities to provide spaces for community members to gather for dispersed, in-person pods in key geographies across the United States to view and participate in portions of the Retreat together and deepen learning in community. We look forward to partnering with our members to host watch parties and gatherings connected to the Retreat, in proximity to members’ offices, and in accordance with CDC guidelines. If you are interested in hosting EGA members for a viewing pod in your city with your organization this October, contact Malavika Sahai (msahai@ega.org), and stay tuned to share more information on your interest in participating in an in-person viewing pod during Retreat registration, opening in just a few weeks.
We look forward to connecting the themes of the Fall Retreat to our national conversation on race, the environment, and fights for representation. And, we look forward to convening the full EGA membership in Montgomery, Alabama for the 2023 Fall Retreat, mark your calendars to join us 10/1/2023 - 10/4/2023 at the Renaissance Montgomery hotel.
Click here to learn more about the 2021 Retreat Program Committee, with Co-Chairs Helen Chin (Amalgamated Bank & Race Forward) and Dwayne Patterson (Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation), and EGA Board liaison trellis stepter (Mertz Gilmore Foundation.) And, keep an eye out for registration launching in just a few weeks!
Until then, in collaboration,
The EGA Team
