Our brave climate volunteers in Africa, Latin America, Asia
Folks supporting local hospitals, assisting in blood drives, or serving as emergency medical responders; folks tutoring school children, teaching adult literacy, or mentoring at-risk youth; folks serving food at homeless shelters, running food pantries, or organizing clothing drives. All these volunteers deserve appreciation.
Next come the climate volunteers. It is not easy to step up at age 16 or 35 or 70 to stop the current CO2 emission madness–killing off forests and cities and our posterity. Climate volunteers often face a severe choice: do I go where I have never tread before, meet strangers, dedicate my time, go to many meetings, or interact with people I might at times gladly avoid, all for a cause that is barely recognized as the problem it truly is? Recall, if you will, Greta Thunberg, defying school authorities and parents to step up and speak the brazen truth about climate change. Such activists shed their self-concern, and step up without expecting reward. They offer hours of their time, sometimes 4 hours, sometimes 60 hours a week, doing the very best they can. Many hang on for years doing this, while other volunteers suffer their own profound concern, commitment, and worry –which can lead to burnout.
We need to support these climate volunteers, encouraging them, and urging them to not overextend themselves, but to still continue their commitment. We should thank them profusely and emulate that commitment.
There are volunteers who work heroically, beyond the call of duty on the frontlines in the global south. One such climate volunteer writes:
“As you know, I’m living as a displaced person because there’s still a war back home in the east.
I manage to pay for:
- a small room to sleep in for 70 USD a month,
- a monthly internet connection for 30 USD,
- water, sanitation and electricity: 42 USD a month
- and for food, I get by on 5 dollars a day. I eat once a day and have a bread roll in the morning. To put it simply, 150 USD a month
Not to mention the cost of short journeys and a few other expenses when I want to meet people.
If there were an increase in this funding, it would enable me to not only improve my social wellbeing and the way I work, but also to eat at least twice a day.”
This volunteer stands out heroically for his commitment to work from the grassroots–he goes out to gather signatures on petitions to stop the climate breakdown and may risk his life under extreme conditions. Dirt poor, he is foregoing normal meals and sleeping conditions. As he works patiently to engage others to organize, his commitment is so deep that his sacrifice is not seen as sacrifice.
What can we all do?
We can volunteer to share the burden of physical action, driven by our own climate commitment. Collective commitment requires people’s individual commitments to evolve from loosely volunteering now and then, to organized volunteering. The communities of the globe cannot and should not wait for profiteering pro-fossil fuel interests to change, but need local volunteers to push for new energy. People coming together are powerful and make a difference working in a climate team. Monumental tasks are made lighter when more volunteers share the load. Climate teams can pass out flyers, talk to people, promote public lectures, plan demonstrations, gather petition signatures, master the mechanics of social media, creating a force for change that is increasingly organized. Remember, team means together everyone achieves more.
We can volunteer to help underserved or disadvantaged climate volunteers in need of organizing tools. For example, we in the global north could gather used and discarded cell phones and send them routinely to needy volunteers in the global south. The local helper receiving, checking, and mailing those cell phones would require an hour or less per week by merely.
A volunteer can “adopt” a climate activist in the global south by sending $100 monthly with a mutual agreement between the two for strict performance requirements that do not affect the activist’s policy or advocacy content. To make the global change we need, to save life as it is, we must show solidarity and that includes financial help.
For further information on helping, write to: slowclimate@gmail.com, donate at https://www.nazcca.org/donate with earmark Africa, or sign up for the Fridays for Future Newsletter.
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