There is a need for clean water education and advocacy that is not only innovative and scientifically sound, but also hopeful and morally articulate. Earth Ministry/Washington Interfaith Power & Light (WAIPL) brings a unique voice that adds depth to Northwest coalition efforts to protect the Puget Sound. With the support of the Rose Foundation, we will use a values-based framework to educate, train, and mobilize people of faith to take action for the health of the Tacoma Tideflats on Commencement Bay in a way that centers justice, stewardship, and reconciliation.
Earth Ministry/WAIPL’s Education and Advocacy for Living Waters project builds on years of successfully organizing faith communities in Pierce County to halt new fossil fuel infrastructure. In this next phase, we seek to expand upon our Tacoma Tideflats educational efforts to help people of faith more fully understand and act in solidarity with the historic and ongoing environmental justice issues in this industrial sacrifice zone. The three focus areas of this project are to 1) incorporate the Tideflats into Earth Ministry/WAIPL’s new statewide environmental justice curriculum, 2) mobilize community members to pass a strong Tideflats subarea plan that ensure better future stewardship of the watershed, and 3) prevent any proposed expansion of polluting fossil fuels from increasing threats to Commencement Bay. All work will follow the leadership of the Puyallup Tribe and other impacted communities.
Through strategic outreach, relational education, and coalition-based organizing, this grant will water the roots that we have growing in Tacoma faith communities and also provide Earth Ministry/WAIPL staff with the resources to sow new seeds of connection. Funding will be used to fulfill programmatic needs for content creation, material development, presentations, and travel that invests in the faith community to ensure awareness and advocacy for the health and viability of the living waters of the Puget Sound.
