In addition to each country’s “party delegates,” non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Rotary International (RI), which are accredited with the UN, send “observer delegates.” At this first COP since RI added the Environment to its causes, RI will have a five-person delegation of observers in support of its commitment to:

• Address the cause of climate change by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases,
• Strengthen ecosystems and communities affected by climate change, and 
• Address environmental justice issues and public health concerns.

In 2018, I attended COP24 in Katowice, Poland as Rotary’s first observer delegate to a UN climate conference. (Read about my experience in eight blog posts). The last day of COP 24, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on civil society to engage, noting that the science is moving faster than world leaders. I believe he was speaking to Rotary, as a premier example of civil society. 

One way to engage is for Rotary to work within the UN-provided framework, Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE), six areas in which Rotarians excel: education, training, public awareness, public participation, public access to information (transparency), and international cooperation.

Follow the activities of Rotary’s COP26 delegation on ESRAG’s COP 26 page and talk about our work in your club and community.  We must connect ourselves and our clubs within our communities to ensure that the promises and ambition of COP26 become the reality of meaningful decarbonization, adaptation and resilience at home. 

I aim to return from COP26 with specifics to share and renewed commitment to make a difference in our long, shared journey to climate solutions. Together: we can, we will, we must make a difference and serve to save lives by acting on climate solutions.

His response?  To equip people with knowledge and hope to repair the damage. To do that, he created Champions of the Planet, an inviting and user-friendly website linking readers to videos and articles demonstrating the  Seven Actions to mitigate climate change, outlined in Sir Richard Attenborough’s 2020 documentary “A Life on Our Planet.” The website offers a rich library of free, downloadable resources for teachers, too, including videos, curricula, and articles.

George Basch joined the Taos Milagro Rotary Club in 2007, and launched the Himalayan Stove Project in 2010 as a memorial to his son. This initiative was backed by the Taos club, other clubs in District 5520, the Madison Rotary Foundation and a broad range of donors outside of Rotary. Before the pandemic wrecked supply chains, the project provided portable, clean, fuel-efficient cookstoves benefitting 50,000 people in Nepal.

George is also working to strengthen environmental nonprofits. He teamed up with Canadian Rhonda Bannard, founder of  Earth Gives, to use the proven platform of a giving day to broaden support for this crucial issue. On Oct. 7, they launched the first-ever nationwide giving day dedicated to climate change.  George sees the web platform as a valuable year-round catalyst for awareness and donations. Each nonprofit sets up a profile page describing its mission. Board members and other supporters can add their own fundraising pages to promote its cause, using the site's social media links to help the invitation to donate go viral.

On his travels this summer, George met ESRAG Chair Rick Randolph and his wife Jo, and ESRAG board members Larry Hands and Karen Kendrick-Hands. He invited Larry to set up an ESRAG page on Earth Gives. Then he created his own campaign for ESRAG, and included an ESRAG video in a link about Rotary on the Earth Gives website.  Impressed that ESRAG is providing technical assistance worldwide, leveraging a “very slim budget,” George says “ESRAG needs operating money, and Earth Gives is really a good fit.” 

The result for ESRAG?  Stellar!  Readers, your donations boosted ESRAG to the top of the leaderboard to win $3,100 in prizes provided by Earth Gives Day sponsors. See details, this issue!

Earth Gives Day has been launched to serve as “a one-stop showcase for investment in, partnership with, and knowledge-sharing from the hundreds of environmental and climate-focused nonprofits doing the critical work.”  Donors can support ESRAG on Earth Gives year-round. It's easy to share the link on your social media pages.

For Earth Gives Day 2021, ESRAG won a grand prize of $1,100 for raising the most of all participating nonprofits.  We also won both $1,000  awards for small-budget non-profits:  most individual donors and most donated. In total, the campaign has raised $12,130 to power ESRAG’s programs, including seminars, conferences, websites, social media, and newsletters. 

Heartfelt thanks and cheers to George Basch, a co-founder of Earth Gives, for informing ESRAG board members about the platform, and to Larry and Fred for joining him in setting up campaigns and spreading the word. And thank you to all of you who contributed! This is an auspicious start for ESRAG’s quest to build support.  In the next newsletter, we’ll report how to tell your networks about ESRAG’s participation in the global Giving Tuesday campaign November 30.

New Membership Platform Coming

Starting soon, ESRAG’s communications -- including this newsletter -- will be coming from a new email sender and platform.  As part of our constant quest to improve services to you, we are reviewing ways to facilitate communication among members, from Regional Chapters to people working on specific projects. 

After examining ESRAG’s needs, the IT Needs Assessment Taskforce chose a new membership management system using the technology of iMembers and DACdb.  iMembers is used by many other Rotary groups, and its interface and tools will look familiar to you if you’ve used DACdb. For several months we have been in transition from Zoho to iMembersDB. This transition has been a highly collaborative and thoughtful process, with an amazing team of dedicated people from both the ESRAG team and the full iMembers staff.