Winter Solstice 2023 Update
Published on December 21, 2023 by Lodi
What have we learned? What have we done?
Winter Solstice 2023 finds the Hive having grown, developed and deepened so much in our second year!
By finding out who is doing what and where in Boulder County, the Hive identifies potential supports, resources and partners for climate justice efforts, and works to increase coordination and encourage collaboration across the movement.
The highs have been high, and the lows have been low. And through it all there has been a strong commitment to relationship, communication, and community. Co-leads of the Hive, we couldn’t be more proud of what we have navigated this year and the way in which we have done so.
We partnered with the Climate Justice Collaborative of Boulder County (CJC), with support from Boulder County’s OSCAR (Office of Sustainability Climate Action and Resilience), and four stellar graduate students from the University of Colorado’s Masters of the Environment program to map, enroll and align institutional support for climate justice efforts.
We mapped over 350 unique organizations, including:
- >15 organizations already affiliated with the Climate Justice Collaborative;
- >60 CJC-identified allies;
- >170 faith-based congregations;
- >75 organizations, producers, and service providers in the food and farming arena
We developed a database to collect, organize and synthesize all this information so it can be used to advance climate justice on a systemic level to unite and meet ambitious climate justice goals, center frontline community priorities, and encourage collaboration.
Furthermore, we kicked off the development of an innovative tech tool to be able to display this information and the relevant connections in ways that make it accessible and usable. We worked with a phenomenal group of professionals to help us learn the agile scrum model of tech development and produced an early prototype to begin to display and share the information we’ve been collecting.
We deepened relationship with many community collaborations in addition to the Climate Justice Collaborative, like GreenFaith Boulder County and the Food Security Network, as well as individual organizations too many to mention.
Throughout, we were part of supporting Naropa University’s involvement in the broader community through internships, facilitating a showing of the film Fracking the System: Colorado’s Oil and Gas Wars, and seeding more connection between local climate justice actors and the Joanna Macy Center’s Nuclear Guardianship efforts. The Hive was the connective tissue for Naropa to host climate justice cafecito gatherings, including a recent information session with frontline community members about the proposed Valmont Power Station cleanup.
We shifted from a mostly volunteer effort on a budget of $20K, to a team of paid independent contractors with a budget of over $125K through our fiscal sponsor Open Collective Foundation. We grew from a support network of four donors to a community of over 65 contributors! We can’t begin to thank you enough for believing in us.
We maintain a robust and vibrant climate justice events calendar and tend multiple relationships with climate justice organizations, frontline community groups, government officials, philanthropists, the Community Foundation of Boulder County, academic institutions and faith-based organizers. We have a slide deck, funding kit, intro video, budgets of various sizes depending on the degree of support we get in 2024, and financial visuals. For a young organization, all these pieces are huge milestones!
And most importantly, we came together in solidarity and support during periods of loss, disruption and war during the past year. Showing up for each other honestly and authentically is incredibly precious.
We are poised to enter 2024 deepening into strategy, project development, and continuing our mission to coordinate and encourage collaboration for climate justice!
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support and encouragement!
Lodi and Micha
Co-Leadership