Earth Island Institute

December 2009

Dear Friend of Earth Island Institute,

We are happy to report that 2009 has been the most successful in Earth Island Institute’s 27-year history of growing environmental leadership.  We ask you to celebrate with us, and we ask for your support of our efforts growing environmental leadership.

Despite being amid one of the most challenging periods in world economic history, our achievements in 2009 speak volumes about the value of our work supporting and promoting dynamic leaders with solutions for a sustainable future. Earth Island’s leaders show us every day where innovative grassroots leadership can take us.

Hope for a sustainable world is where we all start, but our activists show us that success comes only with translating bold ideas into inspiring real-world action, and our effective, efficient organization helps them to succeed in a challenging climate. As partners in Earth Island’s work of growing environmental leadership, you, our members and friends, have made this remarkable success possible, and are now more important than ever.

A Change of Address and Moving Forward!

Just after Earth Day 2009, Earth Island Institute moved its main offices to the David Brower Center. The new LEED-Platinum building in Berkeley was built and operated by our sister nonprofit of the same name. We are the Brower Center’s largest tenant.

After nine years of planning, and with Earth Island’s help, this green center has become the community resource it was envisioned to be – a vibrant hub of activity for the environmental community.  Please come and visit us when you are next in Berkeley. We’ll let you know about exciting events and public education programming in the coming months.

In our new offices we are continuing to provide a home for solutions-focused leaders. We are both efficient in delivering support for our leaders’ 50 projects and effective in leveraging your gifts to yield timely results.  As our reputation has grown, we are receiving more and more proposals for Earth Island project sponsorship – from dozens of creative, dynamic ”social entrepreneurs” eager to build a sustainable future.

By bringing new projects under sponsorship and guiding project directors Earth Island Institute is responding directly to new and evolving environmental challenges. We are growing strong environmental leaders for today’s world.

Earth Island’s Four Core Programs

1. Project Sponsorship

With the addition of five new projects in 2009, projects under our fiscal sponsorship now number 50 … the most we’ve ever supported! This year we welcomed:

• CarbonfreeDC, a block-by-block program that empowers Washington, DC, metro area residents to save energy and reduce their carbon footprint through free workshops and technical support;
• Fired Up Media, a group that equips young climate activists with new media tools and strategies and is bringing teams of international youth media to the Copenhagen climate conference;
• Mongol Ecology Center, an effort that provides a bridge for emerging environmental and social justice activists in Mongolia, bringing networking and other resources;
• Ultimate Civics, a campaign to reinstate the primacy of human rights and community-based values over corporate values in the US; and
• Urban Biofilter, an inner-city forestry project that helps to purify air, water, and soil by growing air- and water-filtering plants on urban “brownfields.”

Your contributions and those of our other Earth Island members give us the institutional leverage that helps our 50 projects to succeed. Our solutions-focused projects foster awareness and engagement to address the most pressing social and environmental issues, and to move us toward a sustainable future. Please review our 2009 Project Highlights.

2. New Leaders Initiative

In October 2009, our New Leaders Initiative celebrated a milestone 10th Annual Brower Youth Awards (BYA). We honored six exceptional young environmental leaders at a lively awards ceremony at San Francisco’s historic Herbst Theatre. This year’s winners – Robin Bryan, Sierra Crane-Murdoch, Alec Loorz, Diana Lopez, Adarsha Shivakumar, and Hai Vo – were awarded $3,000 each, and participated in a week of activities and training sessions around the Bay Area. In the last decade, the Brower Youth Awards has recognized 61 young leaders aged 13-22, awarded more than $165,000 in prizes, and granted nearly $70,000 to an additional 120 youth to support new initiatives.

Our New Leaders Initiative provides ongoing mentoring and promotional opportunities for these young environmental heroes, through our newly arranged “Forces of Nature” speaker’s bureau and by sharing video profiles of the BYA honorees online, at environmental film festivals, and in 2009 on Sundance TV and the PBS series “Natural Heroes.” This media coverage resulted in more than 20 million people viewing these compelling and inspiring stories of youth activism.

3. Public Education

Our award-winning Earth Island Journal continued to publish our unique brand of advocacy journalism with four great issues featuring hard-hitting investigative reports on the most urgent issues of our time. From exposing the impacts of overfishing and plastic pollution to wrestling with the critical, yet often-ignored issue of overpopulation, we publish the kind of in-depth reporting on the environment not found in other magazines.

Also in 2009 we launched ‘The EnvironmentaList,’ a blog covering the latest news from the green scene. Your membership and direct support of our Green Journalism Fund ensures that we will continue to raise awareness of vital environmental issues. Our program and project staff also continued to speak at public events and conferences around the world, and we will continue to convene programs at the Brower Center and other venues around the country as part of our public education efforts.

4. Restoration Initiatives Fund

Our Restoration Initiatives Fund is led by former BYA winner Ariana Katovich. In 2009 we provided strategic investments totaling $217,675, as well as professional guidance, to local watershed and stream projects in eleven communities throughout southern California. With our support, local grassroots groups involve their communities to clean up rivers, “daylight” creeks, and restore wetlands and wildlife habitat. With our support and guidance these organizations develop local educational programs about the importance of protecting watersheds and coasts.

Working closely with the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project (SCWRP) and the California Coastal Conservancy, our Restoration Initiatives Fund is highly valued by the community. Our funding and expertise has successfully benefited more than 60 restoration efforts. Closer to home, Ariana launched the Streets Alive program to “green” downtown Berkeley with landscapes of drought-tolerant native-plants and to beautify our new neighborhood with artful murals.

Your Gifts Make All the Difference.

This is our only direct appeal to many of you this year. We understand the depth of the economic downturn and the impact it’s had for many of us. However, we now ask for your support as so many new opportunities for making progress arise, especially with bright young leaders asking for our assistance.

Please make as generous a gift as you are able to help us continue to build the best support system in public interest activism. For your gift of $100 or more, we will send you a paperback edition of our founder David Brower’s memoir, Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run, as a token of our appreciation.

We are efficient, we are effective, we create community – all multiplying the remarkable power of insistent and visionary leaders to change the world for the better. We are grateful for your partnership in making all of this possible, and we wish you the very best in the coming new year. Thank you!

Sincerely,

John A. Knox
Executive Director

P.S. In addition to your year-end support, we encourage you to help us to expand our efforts by giving a gift subscription to Earth Island Journal for a special rate of $9.95 to your friends, family, school, local library, doctor’s office, and work colleagues.