Wawa Gatheru

So one of our biggest programs is called the Hazel and Johnson Fellowship Program.

It was named after the mother of environmental justice from the great city of Chicago.

And it's an organization.

And it's a program that's working to essentially build a pipeline of diverse talent into green internships.

So there's a lot of gaps in regards to who gets to enter the green space.

So we've teamed up with different organizations and companies

to have internships available for our fellows so our fellows do 10 weeks over the summer they get at least 18 an hour we pay them at least five thousand dollars for a living wage stipend we do weekly professional development support and we end the summer with a four day long retreat in nature in washington state so the moment that was really really beautiful for me and my team was getting to meet all our fellows for the first time last summer and then meet our second cohort this year

and have them talk about how they finally feel like there's a home for them in the climate movement.

It's tough.

It's a lot of whiplash.

So we're coming off of a Biden administration that was really committed for putting millions, hundreds of millions of dollars into the hands of grassroots organizations through the Inflation Reduction Act and Justice 40.

And so we saw organizations that were awarded tons of funds, around $29 billion, and those funds have now been frozen or canceled without, yeah.

Without due process.

So I have some friends that found out that their organizations lost funding from newspapers before they even got notified by their emails.

So we have a lot of organizations in the green economy space, organizations and workers who are at the front lines of deploying and scaling climate solutions, really scrambling for funds.

So it's difficult, but at the same time, there has been good movement happening.

There's a coalition called America's All In, which is a coalition of different businesses

academic centers and cities and municipalities and states who are still committed to the Paris Accords and still committed to climate targets that are going to hopefully get us to where we need to go.

But we definitely need philanthropy to stand up, corporate America to stand up, and to really help fill the gaps that the federal government is pulling back on.

Yeah.