The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice

Hive Fund staff always look forward to our Reflective Friday sessions. Today, we were extra-excited to be joined by NC-based poet and writer Alexis Pauline Gumbs, whose new biography of Audre Lorde--Survival is a Promise--just made the Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2024 list! We talked about how relationships are essential infrastructure for survival, about love and resistance, and what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation. Lorde's Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics include a wealth of deep ecological thinking. Thank you Alexis for such an incredible conversation!

Last week, Waverley Street Foundation hosted a really thoughtful and beautiful gathering in Mexico City for its grantees to build relationships and cultivate community. We were so inspired by the incredible leaders we connected with, and we loved the recurring theme of collaboration. We got to co-conspire with allied re-granting intermediaries that center justice and grassroots power-building in their work, including Thousand Currents, Global Greengrants Fund, The Climate & Clean Energy Equity Fund, Equation Campaign, and Youth Climate Justice Fund to figure out how we can collaborate even more to move resources to powerful, yet underfunded groups across the US South and the Global South. Big thank you to Lande Ajose, Alexandria McBride, Joya Banerjee, and Carole Excell at Waverley Street for a fantastic event!

We are thrilled to celebrate Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice's accomplishments alongside Dr. Robert Bullard, Dr. Denae King, and their staff and partners. Their decades of partnering directly with impacted Black and Brown low-income communities in Houston and across the Gulf South to leverage research towards action has positioned the center as a key leader in the distribution of over $200M in federal funds for environmental justice! Through the EPA Thriving Communities Regranter, the Bullard Center will disburse over $40M in grants to community-based organizations leading projects that tackle climate action and pollution reduction and in partnership with the Texas Clean Energy Fund, the Center will develop residential serving community solar projects at minority-serving institutions across the Southeast. Congrats! 🎉 🎉 🎉

Frontline leaders along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana are cultivating a powerful trans-Atlantic collaboration that is using political, social, and economic pressure to fight expansion of US gas exports. Read about it in this story we wrote as part of our 2024 Impact Report: https://lnkd.in/gpsGVf34 Roishetta Sibley Ozane, M.S. Jeffrey Jacoby

Don't miss this important new report on flaring in Texas from our grantee partner Commission Shift, whose reporting and advocacy is bringing new attention to the state's industry-captured oil and gas regulatory agency.

ICYM, Hive Fund Co-Director Melanie Allen sat down with Tavis Smiley last month to talk about the power of Black-led organizations in the climate space, opportunities for community-driven climate solutions, and why centering equity is the most effective way to achieve climate goals. https://lnkd.in/dNVApkZN

A community driven and designed weatherization program implemented in Atlanta by Sustainable Georgia Futures has helped lay the groundwork for Georgia's the new #inflationreductionact funded #solarforall program, which will reduce energy costs and spur economic opportunity in under-resourced communities across the state. Read about it in this story we wrote as part of our 2024 Impact Report. https://lnkd.in/gvfpdWqi

We're putting over $30M in 2024 into climate solutions in the US South that center racial, gender, and economic justice -- community-driven solutions that we know work better, move faster, and will be more durable through shifting political winds. Learn more about this work and how to partner with us in our 2024 impact report. https://lnkd.in/e-WiSYB3

In addition to the list of urgent needs Melanie Allen shares here, the Hive Fund is in conversation with grantee partners, allied funders, and other partners on the ground across the Southeast to identify ways philanthropy can support longer-term recovery efforts that also strengthen resilience, decrease climate-warming pollution, and address deep economic inequities in the region." Stay tuned.

Congratulations to Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud for this well-deserved recognition! Ayanna is an artist, policy advocate, mother, and community steward who stepped into the Executive Director role at Bayou City Waterkeeper and brought a vision and roadmap for racial justice to the water world. She's led the organization through developing its core values and a strategic plan that among many brilliant initiatives incorporates art as a tactic for narrative change. Water landscapes, she reminds us, have always been avenues for Black liberation. Recently, BCWK's Sewage Justice campaign brought real life stories of residents dealing with broken and aged sewage lines in their backyards to the Houston city council. This deep community level partnership will shape local, state, and national water policy agendas.