Enviro Fair

Visit our Enviro Fair at the Activist Center in City Hall. The organizations will be local, regional and national organizations that better our world. Inspired by the films and want to take part? Visit the Enviro Fair for more information about these organizations and get involved. Also, look for organizations tabling in venues following film sessions about specific issues highlighted in our 2013 official selections.

 

350.org

350.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries.

350 means climate safety. To preserve our planet, scientists tell us we must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million to below 350 ppm. But 350 is more than a number—it’s a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.

350.org works hard to organize in a new way—everywhere at once, using online tools to facilitate strategic offline action. We want to be a laboratory for the best ways to strengthen the climate movement and catalyze transformation around the world.

 

American Rivers

American Rivers is the leading organization working to protect and restore the nation’s rivers and streams.  Rivers connect us to each other, nature, and future generations.  Since 1973, American Rivers has fought to preserve these connections, helping protect and restore more than 150,000 miles of rivers through advocacy efforts, on-the-ground projects, and the annual release of America’s Most Endangered Rivers®.

Headquartered in Washington, DC, American Rivers has offices across the country and more than 100,000 supporters, members, and volunteers nationwide.

Through our work in five key program areas – Rivers and Global Warming, River Restoration, River Protection, Clean Water and Water Supply – American Rivers is working to protect our remaining natural heritage, undo the damage of the past and create a healthy future for our rivers and future generations.

Animal Place

Founded in 1989, Animal Place fills a much-needed niche of farm animal rescue, sanctuary and adoption with its two facilities. The mission of Animal Place is to extend compassion to all life with a special emphasis on farmed animals. This is executed by providing permanent sanctuary, education, legislation and appropriate placement of needy animals.

Animal Place Sanctuary, Grass Valley, California
Oak knolls, gently sloping hills, beautiful meadows and irrigated pastures make Animal Place’s 600-acre sanctuary in the Sierra foothills a true safe haven. All the animals at Animal Place sanctuary are permanent residents, getting an opportunity to grow old.

Animals arrive from myriad sources – factory farms, slaughterhouses, research facilities, and neglect or cruelty cases. All animals find a haven where all their needs are met and their individual quirks respected

In addition to providing sanctuary farmed animals, Animal Place serves as an education and advocacy center. We offer tours, cooking classes and workshops at the sanctuary as well as volunteer and internship opportunities. Because factory farming takes the lives of 10 billion land animals each year in the United States, we promote a vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle. If you are ever in the area, we hope you can sign up for one of our tours and meet the wonderful residents at Animal Place!

Bear Yuba Land Trust

Nevada County is endowed with a rich mosaic of beautiful landscapes, healthy forests, historical treasures, and small towns. The land sustains life and replenishes the spirit. Our towns comfort us with timeless charm. Our farms and ranches feed our communities. The quality of life here is tightly connected to these precious resources.

Sierra Foothill communities are changing as open landscapes fill with housing and businesses from urban refugees.  Our vision is to retain the distinct identity of Nevada County’s communities for future generations.  It is the Bear Yuba Land Trust commitment to preserve our local history, to sustain our natural resource-based economy, to care for our open land making it accessible for all, and to retain the rural character that has been the source of our prosperity.

Bear Yuba Land Trust exists to create a balance between nature and the needs of the people who make a life and a livelihood here. This is our home.  Our mission is to enrich the deep community connection with our land − today, tomorrow, and forever.

Bear Yuba Land Trust is a private, non-profit, membership-supported group promoting voluntary conservation of our natural, historical and agricultural resources through protection and enhancement of natural areas, farms and ranches, trails and parks to provide a lasting community heritage.

BriarPatch Co-op Community Market

BriarPatch Co-op Vision Statement: BriarPatch Co-op is the leading natural food store in Nevada County.

We are a vibrant, important community hub for gathering and for dialogue and learning about healthful food. We seek to be a leader in social, environmental, as well as fiscal business responsibility, among both local businesses and food co-ops nationally. We model community-mindedness and cooperative principles, and hope to inspire others to do the same, and in so doing, contribute to peace and prosperity for all within our reach.

Founded in 1976, today BriarPatch Co-op’s store is Nevada County’s first LEED™-certified commercial green building. A cooperative business, BriarPatch has 5,000 owners. 290 Sierra College Drive in Grass Valley, California, 530-272-5333, www.briarpatch.coop.

 

Earth Justice Ministries

Earth Justice Ministries is an interfaith non-profit corporation whose purpose is to bring the resources of faith to bear in the struggle to build a peaceful, just, and sustainable world. We are committed to joining with all people of faith and conscience to build a broad coalition that has the power and moral authority to address the grave concerns facing our world today. We recognize that humankind faces a global crisis that is multifaceted and includes ecological destruction, growing inequity, poverty, injustice, violence, terror, and war. We believe that these problems and their underlying causes are related. Our mission is to inspire, support and connect faith to actions that bring hope for the earth, the human family, and the whole community of life.

Finding the Good

Finding the Good is a multi-faceted 16-week traveling semester program dedicated to the research, study, documentation, and sharing of working models of sustainability. Our program is open to high school juniors and seniors looking to take a semester of study away from their traditional schools, as well as to students taking a gap year after high school graduation.

We are based in the Sierra foothills approximately 20 miles from Nevada City, California. At Finding the Good, we live closely with the land and learn daily by working hands-on in and with our surroundings. Here, you will not only learn the concepts behind a more simple, sustainable existence; you will grow to understand how those concepts work by cultivating and preparing food for our community, by researching and installing alternative energy sources, by designing green buildings to house yourself and your belongings, and by building and maintaining all of the interpersonal relationships that make our community function. Living and learning become one and the same.

Food and Water Watch

Food & Water Watch is a non-profit organization that advocates for common sense policies that will result in healthy, safe food and access to safe and affordable drinking water. Everyone is dependent on shared resources like clean water, safe food and healthy oceans. It’s essential that these shared resources be regulated in the public interest rather than for private gain. Our staff, located in 15 offices in the United States, works with a range of constituencies to inform and hold policymakers accountable. Our international staff in Latin America and the European Union (where we are known as Food & Water Europe) work with coalition partners to track the global impact of U.S. corporations on public policy. We envision a world where all people have access to enough affordable, healthy, and wholesome food and clean water to meet their basic needs — a world in which governments are accountable to their citizens and manage essential resources sustainably.

Friends of the River

Friends of the River is California’s only statewide river conservation organization. FOR is nationally recognized as an authority on the adverse impacts of dams on rivers and ecosystems. Friends of the River protects and restores California Rivers by influencing public policy and inspiring citizen action. Today, Friends of the River is nationally recognized as an authority on the adverse impacts of dams on rivers and ecosystems and is the most effective grassroots organization working on behalf of rivers. Friends of the River led successful campaigns for the permanent protection of many outstanding California rivers and streams – including the Kings, Kern, Merced, Tuolumne, upper Klamath, West Walker, East Carson, Sisquoc, and Big Sur Rivers; as well as Sespe Creek and Cache Creek.

Mono Lake Committee

Since 1978, the Mono Lake Committee has fought to protect Mono Lake from excessive water diversions to Los Angeles. Through litigation, legislation, cooperation, and most importantly, public support, our efforts have been successful so far.

However, the fight to protect and restore Mono Lake is far from over. Much work remains to restore desiccated waterfowl habitat and riparian vegetation, educate the public, promote water conservation, and maintain Mono Lake’s protected status in state and federal political arenas.

Nevada County Grown

Nevada County Grown is a non-profit, tax-exempt marketing organization created to strengthen the connection between local farmers and ranchers and the larger community. It is the result of collaborative efforts of key members of the Local Food Coalition, including the Agricultural Advisory Commission (AAC), the Agricultural Commissioner, the UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor, several members of the Nevada County Farm Bureau board, and a core group of dedicated community-at-large volunteers.

The mission of Nevada County Grown is to foster a sustainable local agricultural economy by making the community aware of locally grown agricultural products and assisting qualified agricultural producers to promote their products. This is done by proudly displaying the Nevada County Grown logo, publishing the Farm Guide, maintaining the Nevada County Grown web site, and promoting local agriculture at community events.

As a membership organization, Nevada County Grown has a Board of Directors comprised of agricultural producers and community-at-large members. Annual membership dues fund marketing programs, materials and educational resources.

Supporting local farmers and ranchers keeps money circulating in the local community, and helps preserve the land and rural values we all enjoy.

Peace Center of Nevada County

We envision a world of justice, peace, equality and freedom. This vision includes community where differences are respected, conflicts are addressed peacefully, supportive structures are developed, and people are empowered and live in harmony with the earth, nurtured by diverse traditions that foster compassion, solidarity and reconciliation.

We are dedicated to principles of non-violent resolution of conflict. Members may not represent PCNC by spoken or written word that advocates any violent action.

We are not affiliated with any political party or religion. While PCNC is a diverse community of many spiritual, religious, and political beliefs, individuals may not represent PCNC as being a political or religious entity.

Peaceful Uprising

WE are committed to defending a livable future through empowering nonviolent action.
WE seek to change the institutional and social status quo at the root of the climate crisis, and move toward a just and healthy world.
By pushing the reality of the climate crisis to the forefront of the public forum, WE will secure the attention and inspire the revolution the climate crisis requires.

PEACEFUL UPRISING CORE PRINCIPLES:
We refuse to be obedient to injustice.
Our human stories are extremely powerful, and genuine sacrifice has the ability to awaken and inspire others.
We are connected to something much greater than ourselves, which has an incredible power to change the world.
We are steadfast in our commitment to the truth.
Our allies and strategies align with and create the healthy and just world we want to see.
A powerful movement originates with personal transformation and a commitment to being an agent of change.
Creating a better world is not only necessary, but makes us authentically happy people.
We are committed to building a supportive community that empowers our members to realize their potential.
The best response to intimidation is joy and resolve.
We recognize a nonviolent movement as the most effective means of creating a just and healthy world.
We respect the inherent worth and dignity of every person*.
Protecting Peaceful Uprising as an institution will never take precedent over our commitment to the fight for a healthy and just world.

* Corporations are not people.

Project Baseline

Project Baseline empowers passionate citizens to observe and record change within the world’s aquatic environments in a way that fosters public awareness and supports political action. Our goals:

• Document the health and vitality of the world’s underwater environments
• Increase public awareness of the health of and threats to the world’s underwater environments
• Facilitate  political action that will improve and protect the health of the world’s underwater environments

Our dedicated and skillful global cast of volunteers record and catalog observations of underwater environments into a widely accessible database. It is our vision that through extensive, long term documentation of these areas, the scientific and non scientific community will listen to the story of water being told by generation after generation. We believe a long-term record of environmental change is essential in developing public awareness and organizing political action.

 

Rios Libres

Chilean Patagonia is a remote region of the world where nature, long left to its own devices grows wild, beautiful and largely untouched by man.  As South America’s last frontier, the region boasts incredible biodiversity, breathtaking landscapes, essential ecological values, and a remote solitude that is increasingly rare in our burgeoning world.  Dappled with pristine lakes, jagged peaks, ancient glaciers, rushing rivers, coastal rainforests and dry grasslands, the area’s diversity is striking and its magnificence unmatched.

Patagonia’s rivers are under attack!  A consortium of European and Chilean mega-companies seeks to place a total of five dams blocking the rivers that are the lifeblood in the heart of this diversely rich region.  Two of the dams are slated for the Baker, Chile’s longest and highest flowing river. The other three would be built along the Pascua, Chile’s third highest flowing river. Both rivers serve critical ecological functions that would be lost forever as a result of damming.

We would like to join the fight for these wild lands and the people who depend on them. As such, we propose to bring a team of talented individuals, including a photographer, an author, cinematographers, local river guides, Chilean journalists and conservationists on a trip down the Baker. This power-packed team of experts will work together to give this threatened area a voice by documenting this incredible natural resource in its pristine state and by highlighting what the area means to the people, plants, and wildlife that make up its ecosystem. We will also use this opportunity to illustrate how this mega-hydroelectric scheme would forever change the face and character of the area and therefore, why it needs to be prevented. The team will create compelling photos, written articles and a documentary film that will convey the beauty, unique quality and ecological importance of the rivers and the surrounding lands. These pieces will delve into the current conflict and the immediate threats facing the people and lands of the Aysén Region.

The intent of this project is to raise global awareness that will garner further support for the existing campaign and will incite people to action at a local, national and international level, thereby increasing the pressure on the hydroelectric companies and the government to protect these important areas.

The Rose Foundation

The Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment is a grantmaking public charity. Unlike a private foundation, we were not launched with a big endowment. So each year we have to raise the money that we give away as grants to community-based organizations or invest in our youth leadership and environmental justice programs. Our funding comes from donations, grants from other foundations, or legal restitution payments and cy pres funds.The Rose Foundation was founded by Jill Ratner and Tim Little in 1992. The Foundation is dedicated to the memory of Rose Ratner, whose wit, wisdom and commitment were forged in the neighborhoods of Chicago over the course of 50 years of community activism.

Inspired by Rose, we believe that environmental stewardship, community regeneration, consumer protection, robust civic participation and a healthy economy are all inextricably linked. As a society, we cannot expect to achieve lasting economic progress at the expense of the environment, worker, or community rights. Similarly, lasting environmental, consumer, and community protections must also be grounded in economic reality. Civic participation, especially by traditionally disempowered communities, often serves as the necessary catalyst. Alliances between traditionally diverse interests provides a fundamental and lasting glue that binds long-term sustainable solutions.

Sierra Club Motherlode Chapter

Ours is geographically the largest Sierra Club chapter in California – with eleven local Sierra Club groups in twenty-four counties. With our unique grassroots presence we can influence the policies at the city and county level. Our groups foster the protection and enjoyment of natural environment in and around their communities. And we have diverse habitat to protect – from the vernal pool grasslands of the Central Valley to the oak woodlands of the foothills to the conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada.

Our chapter is governed by an Executive Committee of twenty members, nine who are elected at-large and eleven who represent each of our groups. Our Conservation Committee is composed of members who wish to participate on a regular basis. Both committees meet in January, March, May, August and November, usually in Sacramento. Each of our local groups have their own elected Executive Committees to guide their activities.

Sierra Fund

The Sierra Fund was established in 2001 as the only community foundation dedicated exclusively to saving the Sierra Nevada.

Our mission is to protect and preserve the Sierra for all who love it and who depend on its abundant resources.  We do this by partnering with private donors and public agencies to increase and organize conservation investments in the land, air, water and human resources of the Sierra Nevada.

The Sierra Fund pursues its mission in three ways, all of which are directed by our Integrated Sierra Investment Strategy (ISIS):

Philanthropy – As the region’s community foundation for the environment, The Sierra Fund works with private donors to direct their investments and contributions toward those conservation efforts offering the most strategic impact.  Our various funds have granted nearly $1.5 million in the past eight years.

Advocacy – We showcase private investment and demonstrate regional need to leverage public recognition of and investment in the region, at both the state and federal level.  Our efforts have directed more than $105 million to the region and spearheaded establishment of critical new programs such as the Sierra Nevada Conservancy.

Strategic Campaigns – Our unique strategic outlook directs both our Philanthropy and Advocacy, and allows us to identify and foster new campaigns to protect and restore the Sierra’s natural resources.

 

Sierra Streams Institute

Sierra Streams Institute is a watershed monitoring, research, and restoration group based in Nevada City, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Our mission is to promote community stewardship and scientific knowledge of watersheds through monitoring, research, restoration, and education. Founded in 1995 as Friends of Deer Creek, SSI has grown to become an important voice in the regional scientific community—but we are still proud to call Deer Creek our home watershed.

Sierra Streams Institute is a regional watershed science organization based in Nevada City, California, dedicated to increasing watershed stewardship capacity throughout the Sierra Nevada region and beyond. Although much of our work takes place in the watershed of Deer Creek—a major tributary of the Yuba River, which drains to the Feather River, the Sacramento River, and ultimately the San Francisco Bay—SSI is proud to be a vitally important voice in the regional scientific community. We work with local, state, and federal agencies as well as universities and community groups to find solutions to the problems that afflict Deer Creek and other watersheds throughout the region that share the challenges resulting from a century and a half of gold mining, development, and agriculture. SSI’s emphasis on rigorous science and consistent data collection provides the basis for restoration decisions that are made on behalf of Deer Creek and other Sierra streams, and makes us an especially valuable partner of local and state government agencies who lack the funding and capacity to gather their own data.

From experience we have learned that in addition to conducting research, it is imperative to impart an understanding of the issues we are studying to the public and to work closely with local government entities to solve local problems. This is essential in order to enable the public to contribute an educated guiding voice to the governing process. As an organization we have chosen to accomplish this task through education and involvement rather than political means.

Sierra Watch

In December of 2000, a small group of Sierra residents and local homeowners learned about impending plans to develop Tahoe’s Martis Valley, and they decided to do something about it. They quickly discovered similar threats throughout the Sierra. What they could not find, however, was an organization with the capacity and expertise to stand up to irresponsible development and effectively advocate for lasting conservation. So they formed Sierra Watch – and launched the ambitious Martis Valley Campaign.

Sierra Watch mobilized hundreds of volunteers to participate in the public planning process, commissioned biologists and planners to create an alternative blueprint for responsible development, and even filed public interest lawsuits to uphold state law. Most important, Sierra Watch sat down with our conservation allies, Martis Valley landowners, and local political leaders to collaborate on creative resolutions to pressing planning issues.

The results are unprecedented: permanent protection for thousands of acres of priority conservation land, caps on future development, and $100 million in private funding to help protect more of the Martis Valley landscape.

In recognition of the Sierra Watch role, The Truckee Donner Land Trust and the Trust for Public Land thank us for our “leadership and vision in protecting the natural beauty and resources of the Martis Valley.”

Our work, of course, is not done. Sierra Watch is actively following through with conservation goals for Martis Valley and Donner Summit. In Lassen County, we are providing strategic resources to defend Dyer Mountain – consistently providing an effective and inspiring example of how we can work together to protect the places we love.

Viva La Milpa

Chula (Linda) Gemignani received a Bachelors of Arts degree in Metalsmithing and Fine Art from San Fransisco State University in 1991. In her early career as a metal artist, her work was exhibited throughout California. Upon a visit to Oaxaca, Mexico Chula tapped back into her well of creativity and artistic skills that, to her surprise, are very much still alive. It is there that she created the piece “Viva La Milpa”. She used this image to decorate educational information on GMO contamination and she experienced first hand the power of activism through the medium of art. This one piece of art brought new awareness to hundreds of people! Chula is now an art activist, committed preserving and protecting the heirloom corn varieties of Mexico and inspiring artist to direct art pieces towards positive change.

Woolman Semester School

Woolman (at the Sierra Friends Center) is a nonprofit educational community dedicated to the principles of peace, justice and sustainability. Originally founded in 1963 as a Quaker high school, today Woolman offers a 16-week high school semester program for teens, retreats for adults, and summer camps for children and families. The name was inspired by John Woolman, an 18th century Quaker human rights activist, who aspired to live his life in complete integrity with his principles.

Located on 230 acres in the Sierra Nevada Foothills within walking distance of the Yuba river, the Woolman campus is an experiment in sustainable community living. Most of our produce is grown here in our organic garden, much of our energy is from solar, wood, and other renewable resources, and the ideas of Permaculture and conservation are infused in the community culture. As a Quaker community we welcome people of all backgrounds, and do not require any religious beliefs. While many of our staff and participants are not Quaker, the Quaker ideals of inquiry-based education, consensus decision making, peace, equality and integrity are fundamental to our shared endeavor.