Our Values

Value 1: Care

We care for ourselves, others, and the world around us.

Behaviors:

• Support staff members as individuals and employees.
• Remove barriers to wellness and transform sources of harm to build collective healing.
• Communicate respectfully with our team and the community.
• Understand, engage, and respect the people and communities most impacted by environmental harms, policy decisions, and our work.

Value 2: Relationship Building

Victories are built on strong, lasting, and reciprocal relationships with colleagues, partners, members, and decision-makers.

Behaviors:

• Think about how our actions impact our coworkers and the people around us.
• Confer, and don’t assume where everyone stands, before taking action.
• Trust our partners and coworkers to accomplish our shared goals at their own pace.
• Meet communities where they are, and take time to listen to their needs. Listening includes not censoring others or taking negative feedback personally.
• Invest time and effort in building, strengthening, and growing old and new relationships.
• Broaden our relationships with partners, communities, and decision-makers so that they do not rest with a single staff member.

Value 3: Equity and Inclusion

We respect all people, regardless of color, ethnicity, place of origin, culture, language, age, sexuality, or gender.

Behaviors:

• Work to understand our organization’s role in dismantling systems of oppression.
• Decenter ourselves and our organization, and support the communities, people, and places most impacted by our work.
• Identify power structures, including decision-making power, within our organization and among our partners, and seek out ways to share power.
• Create space to reflect on and challenge our internal organizational systems, leadership, and power structure.
• Welcome new ideas and ways of thinking.
• Value each other's differences and use diversity to make us stronger.

Value 4: Hope

We work and celebrate with creativity and optimism.

Behaviors:

• Appreciate and celebrate each other as humans, teammates, and activists.
• Make room for creative ideas about how to approach old, unresolved problems.
• Approach big issues like climate change with optimism that we can make a positive impact.
• Validate and hold space for frustration, anger, sadness, doubt, pain, and struggle; but approach problems with creativity, flexibility, and hope.
• Recognize that wins aren’t possible if we can’t imagine them.
• Strive to have fun, and look for compassionate humor and joy in our work.

Value 5: Honesty and Integrity

We operate with honesty and integrity, balanced with compassion.

Behaviors:

• Treat others, ourselves, and the world around us with respect and integrity—recognizing that truth, respect, and integrity can look different across cultures.
• Speak to what we know is factual, taking the time to become informed, and acknowledging when we do not have all of the information.
• Respect that not all truth and knowledge can be quantified or scientifically proven.
• Internally, operate with transparency, and share information and access to decision-making processes.
• Be realistic about our expectations and our capacity.
• Accept responsibility when we fall short.