Taking Action
“We may have all come from different ships, but we are in the same boat now.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
As parents, we know that kids learn more from what we do, than what we say. We can’t change the world without taking action. People are suffering, climate change is a real problem. But what can we do that really matters? I’m going to keep this page up to date with the latest research and links to important actions we can take with our families.
UPDATED 4/13/21 - There has been ANOTHER fatal police shooting. Enough is enough. I do not pretend to have the answers for what must be done. It’s a hugely complicated issue. BUT, I’ll echo the voices of social justice leaders and say, there is so much more everyone can do to commit to ending this violence.
1) Follow the lead of activists on the ground in Minnesota and answer their specific calls and needs.
This post had a lot of good ideas:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CNkKvVVFJKf/?igshid=1a89y30kgc7ir
2) Commit to the work of becoming an anti-racist.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CNnNjTVH9TA/?igshid=1e1bb2rpns8wm
2) Show up in your local community - volunteering, resources, funding and more. I’ll post links as I find them.
And in terms of more general social and environmental causes:
This website helps you find and evaluate nonprofit organizations:
https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.categories&categoryid=7
Regarding climate change, I strongly recommend reading the book “Drawdown." It has been hugely influential in climate change mitigation efforts, because it took a comprehensive analytical approach to understanding what actions would have the biggest impact on climate change. This website is their educational portal:
https://drawdown.org/programs/drawdown-learn
Citizen science can be a great way to support research about ecological health. There are so many more great kid-friendly science activities that contribute needed data for ecologists and conservation scientists. Stream monitoring and counting birds are just two examples. See this site for a huge sortable database.
https://scistarter.org/citizen-science
