This article was originally posted at www.thelocalgood.ca.

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So often have many of us worried what will become of our earth as climate change worsens our environment’s capacity to sustain life. Some, like those with local Indigenous and climate-forward organizations the Beaver Hills Warriors and Extinction Rebellion, have been worrying and warning of these disastrous trends long before many of us started paying attention. Now, it is clearer than ever that individual impacts alone are not enough to change the course of our survival: only by coming together and standing up for each other and our planet can we save the communities we call home.

That’s why today we want to emphasize that there’s still a ton that you can do to fight for our planet in cooperation with existing efforts across Edmonton using your time, money, and voice. The climate justice movement is still going strong: online #climatestrikes are taking place globally, and local organizations are taking to social media to remind us that a green future is possible, so long as we work together for change. 

Bust Some Myths and Support Local Climate Education

Today, take some time to step back and think realistically about your community’s capacity to respond to the approaching climate crisis. Are there any groups in your surrounding neighbourhood already committing themselves to sustainability and climate justice in Edmonton? Are there any local environmental groups you would be willing to volunteer with closeby? It’s time to get cracking and see which organizations are channeling their energy toward building a network of environmental resilience. 

For instance, Climate Justice Edmonton (CJE) is a great resource for learning how you can help from the safety of your home, while cooperating with social distancing rules. They run two main working groups that you can get involved with (Green New Deal for Alberta, and Free Transit Edmonton). They’re even hosting a Green New Deal 101 Webinar on May 14, which you can check out here.

Of course, it’s important to not limit yourself to activism, but to keep educating yourself too. Take some time today to answer some of the biggest questions you have about climate change, renewable energy, and other related subjects. Find out how you can “green” your home, or what other projects you can begin using that will help change your carbon outputs. And if you’re bringing your young ones along for the learning ride, the Alberta Council for Environmental Education has this great learning tool for the budding environmentalists among us. For the more mature, this article has a great outlook on our current realities as we sit between both the climate and Covid-19 emergencies.

Put Your Money Where Your Tank Is

We’re all saving a bit on gas, so if you’re lucky enough to have some extra cash for the cause right now, we suggest using your money where it counts! CJE has a gofundme page up, and donations help get the word out about a just energy transition for Alberta. Beaver Hills Warriors are also always accepting donations through PayPal at beaverhillswarriors@gmail.com. You might also consider taking a moment to donate to Edmonton’s Extinction Rebellion chapter, who have their own gofundme here, and who are adapting to the pandemic by providing Edmonton with online talks and discussions on our climate emergency. 

Shout Your Truth

One of the great successes of this generation’s climate movement is its VOICE. Today’s climate activists are loud and unafraid of the unsustainable rules and regulations by which many of us silently abide–the same rules and regulations that keep us marked for climate denigration. So today, use your representation to help elevate those efforts, and add your voice to the throng! Bring up your stance on climate change in conversation with your family, or during your next socially distanced hang sesh, and post anything you may have learned recently to your story with the hashtag #LocalGoodnessYEG. 

This might also be the time that you finally write that letter to your MLA or local representative about what you’d like to see change in terms of environmental governance in Alberta and Edmonton. Get a crew of friends together over FaceTime and host a letter-writing party, or reach out to local climate leaders in Edmonton to ask how you can help directly. We’re sure they’ve been waiting for whatever greatness you’re willing to bring. 

Other ways you can join in on the climate movement in Edmonton: 

• Citizen Science gives you an exciting way to participate in a climate science project taking place across the city. Click here for more info!
• Learn more about your own carbon footprint here, and find some great tips on how to live more eco-friendly in Edmonton!
• Check out this Urban Systems resource page, which details some excellent media related to community engagement and activism across a wide variety of topics. 
• Check out this Financing Solar event happening on May 21 with Solar Alberta!
• Read up on the City of Edmonton’s Long-term Environmental Plan.

Although Edmonton is currently under the constraints of a pandemic, the climate emergency remains urgent, and it is important now, more than ever, to stay diligent as we face the new challenges around every corner. Stay sustainable, Edmonton! We’ll see you on the other side.

This article was originally published at www.thelocalgood.ca.

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Even as many of us question where our money will be coming from as 2020 progresses, local businesses, non-profits, and other organizations like ours have been pushing “support local” as much as we can. And while we’re right to–economic activity is an essential part of community recovery–we wouldn’t be doing those efforts credit if we didn’t also acknowledge a recent survey showing that up to 40% of Edmonton businesses have closed their doors, and almost 50% are expecting to remain closed for good. It’s very likely that you know someone (or several people) whose income streams are in jeopardy of an uncertain future–and that person may even be you. 

So, sure, we want to help, but how can we with holes in our pockets?

The good news is that Edmonton has a particularly great reputation for lending a helping hand without needing a ton of money to do so—in other words, we’re used to making a little go a long way. Our community leagues have become the envy of Alberta, and we were home to Canada’s first Food Bank dating as far back as 1981. We might be a little [collectively] strapped for cash right now, but we also share a community history that has an almost endless capacity to support local. That’s why we at the Local Good wanted to emphasize that it’s still possible (and worthwhile!) to build community resilience on a tight budget, even as we move forward into economic uncertainty.

Here are three solid ways you can support local social, cultural, and economic infrastructure during the pandemic, all without breaking the bank:

1. Pay Attention

One of the easiest ways to support local is to simply pay attention–in fact, that’s the first step to becoming a part of your community. And when you start to look for them, it’s easy to find those socially and culturally-minded collectives, businesses, and organizations who have always found (and who are finding) ways to to provide their support as we bridge expanding gaps in healthcare, wellness, and safety. For instance, did you know that several restaurants around Edmontonhave transformed operations to accommodate food marketplaces and pantries for concerned grocery shoppers? 

Some governance organizations are also ensuring that local councils are taking care of residents through initiatives like the City of Edmonton’s one-on-one support services for Edmonton business owners, or the Alberta Emergency Management Agency’s “Unsolicited Offers Program” that helps individuals and organizations across the province funnel much-needed services where they’re most required.

There are even new websites popping up targeting the support of local businesses and individual merchants at a distance, such as Things That Are Open and Distantly, which each detail local business options where you can shop for your essentials, as opposed to the bigger retail chains like Amazon, Walmart, or even Skip the Dishes—which incidentally take local expenditures to third party institutions outside of Edmonton.

Without even spending a dime, you’ve made yourself aware of the community as it moves around you. With just a few clicks you’ve found out who’s helping who, and that knowledge is power, wherever you go. So, pay attention! Look to your local Community League office and make sure to stay tuned with what’s going on. Listen to local podcasts and seminars on how to aid those in need. Support local journalism and media by following organizations like Taproot Edmonton, or by subscribing to local artist performances online, like Avenue Edmonton’s Jam Out With series, Starlite Room’s Starlite Sessions, or the Citadel Theatre’s Stuck in the House Series. 

And don’t hesitate to simply follow the businesses, organizations, and non-profit collectives that you would otherwise be frequenting through social media, through backinglocals.ca, or just by doing an active click through websites and Facebook to explore how others are committing themselves. That way, when someone asks you for help, you’re a veritable (free!) well of information on how to stay safe, stay connected, and support local whenever you can. You’ll also be in a great position to be an informed consumer once everything blows over–always a positive as we grow toward a more sustainable community future.  

2. Be a Conduit

Now that you’ve been paying close attention to everything that’s happening around you, it’s up to you to take the next step and be a conduit for the information you’ve collected. 

Given the tools, being a conduit is a highly achievable and affordable way to make sure that local businesses and local organizations, or the individuals you care most about, are being taken care of–even when you can’t donate cash directly. It means looking first to those who are making a demonstrable effort to help, and then drawing attention to hard-working neighbours, businesses, or groups with your own voice, connecting them with those in need. 

It can be a great use of time, and more so, it’s something you can do in the safety and comfort of your own home. There are honestly a ton of ways you can elevate these local gems and support the economy at the same time, just by adding your badge of approval. Writing a great review, or posting pictures of something you had delivered—even boosting articles like the one below—can help make sure that information finds the right ears, and that other community members looking to spend, or commit their time responsibly start to listen. Sometimes all we need is a little empowerment (and information) to move us to help:

Cooks from kitchens shuttered by pandemic keep Meals on Wheels rolling in Edmonton

The idea is to keep the conversation going within your network about who’s doing what, not only to give yourself a sense of connectedness, but pride in the great ways our community has found to give back. By sharing what others are doing, and what we ourselves are accomplishing, we have a better chance of keeping everyone afloat. And the more we can share in these efforts, the more likely it is that we will come through this well on the other side. 

3. Reach Out

Remember, you have value. And sometimes the best way to help others comes from what you can do, as opposed to what you can buy. We all have a ton of power to build connections between the businesses and organizations we want to thrive, and volunteering our time, resources, compliments, or craftsmanship can be a game-changer when we’re talking about community resilience. 

Not just paying attention and sharing, but making a concerted effort to draw that attention into action is the final step in supporting local without breaking the bank. 

This might mean reaching out in a personal message to your favourite local businesses and asking them if they need extra help or services, or even just to check in and see how they’re doing. Donate some of your volunteer hours, an art piece to their office, or build a crowd-funding campaign for them or another cause you’re passionate about. You can even make group efforts with your friends to support one specific organization each week! (More on that in a moment).

Truly, nothing is off limits: plant flowers in your window, call your rich uncle, or send nice letters to every member of a local seniors home. Any message that not only acknowledges the hard times, but also offers help is a welcome one–especially looking forward into the unknown. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all this, but one small action can create a massive butterfly effect that involves everyone in the cause. Just reach out. 

Practicing What We Preach

We at TLG are ourselves want to practice what we preach, and we often come up with new initiatives based on emerging community needs and interests. That’s why we’re tackling all three of these objective as we work toward the launch of The Local Goodness Project.

Guided by a well-established history serving the (green!) economic aims of residents across Edmonton, and supported by co-partner organizations in-town, The Local Good is solidifying its role as a community ‘conduit’ by fostering a local awareness campaign that anyone can join! 

We’re breaking it down like this:  

Pay Attention: Through daily acts of shared economic solidarity during the month of May, TLG will be rallying our community to draw attention to (and help out) small, local, and community-minded businesses, as well as the non-profit sector, local advocates, artists, and activists, and individual community ‘helpers’. 

Be a Conduit: #yeglocal folks like yourself will then have the chance to share as much local goodness as possible alongside our great team of volunteers using our #localgoodnessYEG hashtag, and by posting about daily community contributions together with their neighbours. 

Reach Out: Once the word is out, anyone can jump in and contribute their time, opinion, voice, or hands to the community-supporting activities we plan each day. We’re also building in a way for community members like you to “reach out” and help (those interested can sign up here), and to add to the goodness, we’ll be entering participants in to win a gift basket brimming with local goodies at the end of each week! 

In short, The Local Good wants to not only promote a framework for giving, but to make a replicable effort to support our local community, and include everyone in the process–even those most affected by our current health crisis. In doing as much as we can within Edmonton, we can elevate those businesses and individuals who need our help, or who are best equipped to help others. Edmontonians have proven their never-ending generosity in recent days, and we want to be conduits for that positivity. 

So, we’re paying attention, being conduits, and reaching out for you to do the same! Every action matters, even behind closed doors. The best that we can do is to promise to be here for others, and it won’t cost us much—if anything at all.

This article was originally published at www.thelocalgood.ca.

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With something as large as a human-wide health crisis on our doorsteps, it can be difficult to hold on. The things we once thought to be solid have been shaken to the core. Some things have been broken forever. Business is different. Everyone’s at home. The streets are empty and our media feeds are full. But what if, somehow, we’ve become better in our breakdown? What if the wreckage is being salvaged at the same time it’s being destroyed?

Being a community organization during this epidemic, The Local Good has seen both the dark cloud and the silver lining. We’ve interacted with everyone from businesses and individuals, to community members and leaders—from the most vulnerable to the most affluent. We are having our eyes opened alongside our neighbours to what the future of this community (and city) could be, and specifically, what it could look like in Edmonton if the “good” we’re seeing erupt under the pressure of restriction was to stick around for…well, good.

That’s why we at the Local Good want to offer some positive predictions about how this epidemic could affect our potential as a city, a community, and a province.

We’re not saying, “forget your worries!”, but instead set out to balance them by pointing to what has become possible for Edmontonians almost overnight. Things that only a few months ago were among the biggest topics of disagreement on Edmonton’s cultural and infrastructural stage are now points of collaboration and bipartisanship.

Disclaimer: we’re definitely not saying this will be easy. In fact, we would be lying if we said that each of us hasn’t experienced a panicked, “we’re doomed”, or “what’s going to happen next?”. But with all of this (sudden) time on our hands, it is important to spend at least some of it seeing a future beyond all this. Doing so might just help us stay present and together in an atmosphere rampant with anxiety and fear.

So, what are the positives we can point to amid a crisis that’s closing businesses, eating up funding, and putting renters and mortgage payers in a (more than) sticky situation? What’s changed so much in as little as a week that we have enough “good” to go around?

We’ll tell you what’s changed:

Care instead of Competition

Back in 2019, we could already say that Edmontonians cared for each other. It’s something we’ve always done well. Yet there was an underlying feature of that care which many had felt was easy to ignore: that marginalized and minority communities were continually not being prioritized. That they were in a constant competition with development, business, and funding enterprises to simply survive. Continually, those “others” were more affected by city-wide changes to social assistance and demographic shifts than the affluent. In Edmonton, there was a line where care stopped.

And then comes the beginning months of 2020, when our entire population began to feel the very same disruptive effects that frequent the lives of Edmonton’s most vulnerable every day. I’m talking about sudden joblessness, fear of illness, having to move out of public living spaces on short notice, or even the simple task of finding enough food at the grocery store. Very suddenly, in the wake of change, there has been a real effort from companies and individuals from across the board to broaden safety nets for those affected by any of the above; now, or in the near future.

For instance, an Edmonton grocery store spurred a nationwide movement for creating special shopping hours for senior and at-risk populations. Small service businesses like the Grizzlar Café and the Glass Bookshop have found ways to provide contactless ordering and delivery options, developing innovative, community-care tools to bring products to pent up or affected customers. Breweries in town are making hand sanitizer to augment supply, and Skip the Depot has promised 100% refunds on bottle deposits through their home pick-up service. Local business collectives are finding ways to bring their knowledge-building services online (for free!) and even Epcor is offering 90 days of utility respite for its customers, while Telus has cancelled travel and roaming charges until April 30.

For instance, an Edmonton grocery store spurred a nationwide movement for creating special shopping hours for senior and at-risk populations. Small service businesses like the Grizzlar Café and the Glass Bookshop have found ways to provide contactless ordering and delivery options, developing innovative, community-care tools to bring products to pent up or affected customers. Breweries in town are making hand sanitizer to augment supply, and Skip the Depot has promised 100% refunds on bottle deposits through their home pick-up service. Local business collectives are finding ways to bring their knowledge-building services online (for free!) and even Epcor is offering 90 days of utility respite for its customers, while Telus has cancelled travel and roaming charges until April 30.

Want some more? Neighbours are volunteering to grocery shop for neighbours. Businesses are making care packages for employees losing out on work. With the City recently taking immediate feedback from transit patrons, adding extra buses and expanding routes as of March 19, and more recently giving the go-ahead to use Edmonton’s Expo Centre as a point-of-care station for long-time or recently homeless members of our city, it’s becoming clear that we have always been flexible enough to not only withstand sudden and pervasive social change, but to do so together, business beside business. Government beside government. Citizen beside citizen. Small acts of goodness growing into bigger and more comprehensive support for every member of our community.

The lesson here is that when we try to be broad and community-minded about our service offerings, our volunteer capacity, and our willingness to give, the people who most benefit are those in the most compromised of situations. Like a vaccine, increased protection provides immunities for those more susceptible to societal ills. And as far as community is concerned, any wide-spread change that levels the playing field for all members is considered a good—at least, in our books.

In short, as a city we’ve been given a profound opportunity to not only experience a wide-spread socio-cultural change surrounding care vs. competition, but also to redraw the line where care in Edmonton ends.

Putting People Over Profit

In fact, there’s a word for how these types of changes breed a whole new type of social infrastructure: the social enterprise. Social enterprises are community institutions and businesses who place profit goals and social goals side-by-side, ensuring that—for one—they provide income generation opportunities that meet the basic needs of their customers, local populations living in poverty, as well as those they employ.

Contextualizing this again in our present situation, we can point to the countless examples of businesses, schools, and governance bodies responding to this epidemic by becoming digital almost on-the-spot, opting to have their staff work from home. Businesses are beginning to put their attention into local well-being and healthcare, reducing barriers to accessibility as people are laid-off or lose their income. They’re are donating excess food instead of throwing it away, while others have asked employees to donate hours or funds to Edmonton Food Bank and other community-supporting organizations.

Everyone benefits from improved compassion and care. And now more than ever, those who drive our city’s culture and infrastructure are seeing how much they and their cities benefit from accommodating to the lives and social realities of the communities of which they’re a part.

That’s another Good: when all of this passes (and it will, one way or another), we’re not so sure it will be possible to forget the new accessibility measures to which Edmonton businesses and local government—even small businesses and entrepreneurs—have shown us they can adapt. In less than a week, they have learned what it means to become a social enterprise. Those on the fringes of unemployment and beyond are suddenly seeing a whole new scope of possibilities and resources available in support of end-to-end community care, and they’re coming from Edmonton stores and workers and organizations who have renewed their commitment to social resilience and wellbeing.

Keeping it Good

So yes, right now, many of us are just trying to grasp at the threads and orient amid the chaos.

I mean, of course we are: we’re all human (we think), and our first instinct is to try and sort everything out. But when things are changing as fast as they have been, and there’s almost no time to stop and think, it can put a big pause on the panic to sit back, take a breath, and see exactly what we can do in the face of fear and change. The answer? Turns out Edmontonians are smiling and asking everyone they know: “You Good?”

The important thing, then, is to Keep It Good. To remember, and hold onto the standard that our social institutions, government policies, businesses, and employers are keeping to right now. No longer do any of us have the ability to make excuses for “why we can’t” provide comprehensive social supports through employment, assistance and otherwise—since we so obviously can. In fact, as a city, we’ve been shown that we can make quick and necessary change in the face of dire emergency. And in response, we’ve learned to cut a different path to success amid crisis. We’re filling service gaps with everyone willing to help, and it’s working: we’re coming together through this, one massive pivot at a time.

So, hold on tight, closed in between the walls, and know that while you do your part there, many others are doing their part all around the city to make Edmonton’s community a much better, more caring place.