3/5/2021 Foundry Giving Friday: Climate Generation

• Posted on 28 February 2021
• Posted in Foundry Giving Friday
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Every Friday The Foundry Home Goods donates 5% of our total sales to a different community-nominated small-and-mighty cause. This Friday's Foundry Giving Friday recipient? Climate Generation!

We will not belabor the point. Climate Change is real and it is not "coming", it is here. This in and of itself is such a massive and ineffable mind-boggling reality that it almost most certainly transcends any kind of one-and-done "if-we-just-do-X-it'll-be-ok"-type solutions. We mean, yeah, working to reduce your personal carbon footprint, shopping small, and using, say, bulk cleaning supplies and canvas bags is all very well and good but, just as Climate Change is not the fault of any single person, it is also not within the power of a lone person to turn this thing around. We need to come at this from all sides.

It's a radically complex issue with radically complex requirements for unpicking, unpacking, and, ultimately, finding a path out, through, and forward. You could look to using the power of the law to fight for environmental issues on the judicial/policy level (9/18/2020 Foundry Giving Friday: Natural Resources Defense Council), you could align with indigenous grassroots efforts to stop cataclysmic environmental catastrophes happening in your own backyard (11/13/2020 Foundry Giving Friday: Honor The Earth), and/or you could lean into the multifaceted, multi-tentacled problem with a multifaceted, multi-tentacled response: 3/5/2021 Foundry Giving Friday: Climate Generation. 

Founded by polar explorer (!) Will Steger—who has traveled tens of thousands of miles by kayak and dogsled in the polar regions for over 50 years and who made the last crossing of the last remaining arctic shelf which has since melted and therefore has had a pretttty unique eyewitness proof-of-concept experience with climate change—Climate Generation is a Minneapolis-based non-profit dedicated to empowering individuals and their communities to engage in solutions to climate change and offering them actionable ways to enact change. As they say:

Communities collectively hold the power to innovate and demand climate change solutions. Empowering individuals in their communities to make long-term, lasting change requires building climate literacy, understanding personal connections to climate change, and developing powerful advocates through a model of collaboration and partnership. By engaging educators, youth, and the public, we believe that communities can be better positioned to build a resilient and equitable future.

This is not a one-size-fits-all problem and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, but as the events in Texas last month, the seemingly endless vortex-freeze happening right here in MPLS, and every other significant climate-linked "once in a lifetime" events that just seem to keep coming at us harder and faster go to show...time is most certainly of the essence.

We are pleased and proud to support this existentially crucial work this Foundry Giving Friday! If you don't need anything from us, consider supporting the Climate Generation directly.  If you DO find yourself in need of a cozy blanket or hot toddy supplies, know that your purchase goes to support good change happening on the community level.

Thank you to Denise (out there doing the good work) for the stellar nomination!

If YOU have a worthy cause to nominate for our Foundry Giving Friday initiative, pop on over to our Nomination Page and drop us a line. We're all in this together.