Georgia Strait Alliance featured on Victoria Foundation’s new Community Knowledge Centre

Georgia Strait Alliance was very pleased to be among the 32 not-for-profit organizations featured at the live launch of the Victoria Foundation’s Community Knowledge Centre on February 18th. The online hub showcases the work of local charities to potential donors, other organizations, and the greater community, and links with the Victoria Foundation’s Vital Signs report, which provides an annual snapshot of quality of life in Victoria.

Victoria's Inner Harbour

GSA’s Community Knowledge Centre profile includes an overview of the organization as well as links to videos, blogs and webpages, and illustrates how our work addresses the Environmental Sustainability issues raised in the Vital Signs report. The profile features our Clean Marine BC program, highlighting the work done in the Capital Regional District (CRD) in 2012 with the support of the Victoria Foundation.

Participation in the marina eco-certification program blossomed thanks to the grant, with the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority recently achieving eco-certification, Westport Marina becoming our first facility to renew its eco-certification, and five other marinas in the CRD now participating. This includes the Royal Victoria Yacht Club which is currently undergoing self-assessment.

Orca breaching by Mike Grace

More facilities than ever are promoting environmental best practices to their boating patrons and the community, including using environmentally friendly products and construction, developing recycling strategies, and optimizing energy and water conservation. This translates into a more environmentally conscious boating community, improvements in shoreline health, and a cleaner marine environment.

Visitors to the Community Knowledge Centre can search for projects and organizations by name, by population served, by geographic area, and by Vital Signs issues addressed. The Victoria Foundation hopes that the online platform will inspire people to participate in projects and programs being delivered by local charities and that organizations will find ways of working together to address issues of concern. Congratulations to the Victoria Foundation for the successful launch of your Community Knowledge Centre!

Check out our profile here.

This blog post was submitted by Cheryl Onciul, Georgia Strait Alliance's Grant Coordinator.

Good things come in small packages

Back in the day when I was a school-kid, slogan t-shirts were all the rage – many of them went over my 9 year-old head (and remembering them now, I can’t believe how inappropriate some of those sayings were) but the kernel of truth from my best friend’s  "Good things come in small packages" shirt has stuck with me over the years. I was reminded of my friend and that shirt recently, when a small envelope was received at GSA’s Nanaimo office.

The enclosed note said: I want to help save the world and the oceans and the animals  I hope the five dolers from my pigey bank is good

The sincerity behind that note, carefully printed by a child’s hand, brings me back to what drives us at Georgia Strait Alliance to do what we do every day, and to what motivates each of our members and donors to give what they can, even in these hard times, to help us to continue our work to protect and restore Georgia Strait and its surrounding communities each year.

Photo by Cheryl Onciul

From the $5 from our young donor to the $5000 first-time gift from a new donor, we are grateful for the contributions we received in 2012 from the wide range of individuals who share our belief in a future for our region that includes clean air and water, healthy wild salmon runs, rich marine life and natural areas, and sustainable communities. As we begin 2013, we want to thank our long-time members, new members, and those who have recently renewed their memberships after a period of inactivity. Your monthly gifts, one-time gifts, bequests – small and large, donations through online crowd sourcing platforms, and donations of stocks have helped us to increase our membership by 36% in 2012! 

With more members standing with us, GSA’s voice is louder as we speak out in opposition to increases in infrastructure for fossil fuels, like Kinder Morgan’s new TransMountain pipeline proposal. Your donations help us to publish materials that inform individuals about the ways we can all minimize our unintended negative impacts on the marine environment and allow us to participate in community events on both shores of the Strait to connect with communities around the region.  Together we are helping more marinas than ever before go green, through our Clean Marine BC eco-certification program. And our increased membership gives even more weight to our work to protect Species at Risk, including our southern resident killer whales, whose existing protection is tenuous at best and under threat of being weakened even further through anticipated changes to federal environmental legislation.

So yes, our young environmentalist friend, the $5 from your piggy bank IS good. We need it, just like we need the gifts of our hundreds of members and donors – our diversity and our numbers make us stronger. Thank you! We will do our best to help save the world and the oceans and the animals for you and your friends for generations to come. Good things really do come in small packages!

This blog was submitted by Cheryl Onciul, Georgia Strait Alliance's Grant Coordinator.

The year of the radical

If at the beginning of 2012 you had asked me to list a few words to describe myself, I might have chosen words like “wife”, “aunt”, “godmother”, “environmental advocate”, “news junkie” and “theatre lover”, to name a few.  But I can tell you that nowhere on this list would you ever have seen this one word – “radical”.

But come the end of January that was the word being attached to my work as an environmental advocate, and to all those who work tirelessly to ensure that protection of our air and water isn’t an afterthought, but is a foundation of our social and economic health.  We were also being called “enemies of the state” for our views, another descriptor you would not have found on my list.

As I look back on this year and see the devastation left behind by a federal government that sees the environment – and its protection – as an impediment to an economy they believe should be solely built on resource extraction, I’m left wondering – who exactly are the radicals here?

Canadians have consistently indicated that they place a high priority on the protection of our environment.  From a commitment to parks to tackling climate change, Canadians value a healthy environment and see it as fundamental to our identity.  Most recently, an Ipsos Reid poll found that over 4 in 5 Canadians (85%) say federal laws protecting species at risk are crucial to the diversity and abundance of wildlife.

Yet today, environmental assessment has been weakened and our oceans and rivers – and all the creatures that call them home – have less protection than ever before.  And we all know the carnage isn’t over.  It seems that our government is out of sync with Canadians and it is they who are acting in a radical way.

Now, the de-regulation of environmental protection in Canada is frightening enough, but that those who would disagree with government policy become the target of inflammatory attacks from a democratically elected government should all give us pause.  The government's decision to provide Canada Revenue Agency with additional funding to audit charities at a time when cuts to scientific research and environmental monitoring have been slashed underscores this strange reality we live in.  The current environment is so concerning that Pen Canada, an organization who works with others to defend freedom of expression as a basic human right, at home and abroad, has voiced its concerns.  This is an organization that is often flagging human rights violations in countries with few democratic rights, which says a lot about what they see happening in Canada.

Through all this, what I have found even more mind-boggling is the accusation that environmental groups have a secret agenda.  That sounds scary until you realize that our agenda is quite transparent, it’s just that it is beyond the understanding of our government and its supporters.  What we want is to build a different world than the one the oil and gas industry has decided we should live in.  We care about our communities and strongly believe we can have strong environmental health and a strong economy – we just have to start doing things differently.

This has been a year like no other in my time at Georgia Strait Alliance, but I’m actually feeling quite hopeful because I see a lot of good has come out of this “annus horribilis”.  What heartens me most is that these attacks have resulted in a more galvanized and cohesive social justice community.  Charities of all types have come out in support of environmental groups and voiced loudly their concern about a government that believes disagreement should be quashed.  In effect, the results have been not a quieting of opposition but a more thoughtful and emboldened movement because when you are being attacked for your right to speak out, this is not time to be silent.  And I can assure you as we go into 2013, we will not be.

Thanks to all of you who have supported Georgia Strait Alliance and other environmental groups during this past year.  We are your voice in these terrible times and by making a charitable donation, you allow our voice to be stronger – as we will need to be in the year ahead.