Action Is Our Hope (Oct. 2023 update)

SUPPORTER UPDATE | 10/25/2023

To our supporters, followers, members, and community: Thank you for all that you do to make Montana a better place, and for your generous engagement this year with our growing community. We are humbled and grateful for all of you speaking up for a thriving future!

Families for a Livable Climate creates community for climate action in Montana. We engage families of all kinds in community-oriented climate events, educational opportunities, advocacy, and leadership.

With your support, this year, we traveled around the state from Helena to Hamilton, and Butte to Billings, supporting community climate engagement, and connecting with amazing Montanans who care about our shared future. Here are some of the highlights:

Climate Advocacy Day

We started the year in Helena by gathering with 17 other organizations and over 300 Montanans for the first-ever Climate Advocacy Day at the state capitol. It was an incredible day filled with song, speakers, and advocacy opportunities. We heard from youth, parents, tribal leaders, legislative experts, and more, demanding freedom from fossil fuels, and a thriving future for all families. It was an incredible collective experience, and we can't wait for 2025!

Montana Climate Stories: Live storytelling events

With your support, our Montana Climate Stories project came to life this year, with hundreds of people gathering together for live climate-storytelling events in Missoula and Hamilton, and at Salish Kootenai College in Pablo, and the Montana Folk Festival in Butte.

We are incredibly grateful to all of our climate story partners: All Nations Health Center, Bitterroot Climate Action Group, Climate Smart Missoula, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Missoula County, the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT), Resilient Butte, and Stories for Action. We are also grateful for the generous Media Arts Grant offered to area nonprofits by Missoula Community Access Television (MCAT) which made the Missoula event recording possible.

After a statewide call for submissions, our team expanded our digital library at MTClimateStories.org to include nearly 125 contributors sharing stories from across the state.

View this interactive map and all the stories online at MTClimateStories.org.

Decarbonize Your Money

Led by Keith Fichtner of Edward Jones in Missoula, our Decarbonize Your Money workshop brought households together across the state to talk about how to divest successfully from fossil fuels.

Participating Montana families have divested $7.1 Million from fossil fuels since 2021!

Volunteer Working Groups

Our family-led working groups are a key way volunteers can engage as leaders in our organization. This year, they spearheaded statewide educational events on Federal Dollars for Montana Schools, joined legislative actions to tackle plastics pollution, and volunteered many hours to help plan and run the first-ever Climate Advocacy Day at the Montana State Legislature. They helped advance local climate action through our partnership with Common Good Missoula, and our magazine team published two stunning issues of The Changing Times. Our working groups and core team help us do so much more with less, and the camaraderie and leadership opportunities are inspiring to us all! Learn more.

Billings Climate Week

This summer, we traveled the state to support climate engagement and community events including the first-ever Billings Climate Week, and continued to strengthen networks and relationships through organizing visits to Helena, Dillon, and Butte.

Held v. State of Montana

In June, in one of the highlights of our summer, our team showed up for the nation’s first youth-led climate trial, Held v. State of Montana, to support its plaintiffs (and the stellar team at Our Children’s Trust) in Helena as they headed to court to protect their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment! This was an incredible experience, and the proceedings were captivating. When the victory for our Montana youth was handed down in July, we were thrilled with the precedent-setting outcome.

The Changing Times: Youth Voices

In the lead up to Held v. State of Montana, we were motivated to create space for youth voices, emotions, and visions in our bi-annual magazine, The Changing Times. We launched our first ever youth writing contest this past winter, inviting Montana youth to envision what our communities will look like and how they've responded to climate change in the year 2070. The winning submissions were published in our Spring/Summer 2023 issue.

We were truly blown away by the responses and wanted to share all of them with our community. View the full collection of submissions online.

Climate Ride and the Third Annual Climate Protector Ride

As part of Climate Solutions Week in Missoula in September, we led discussions and workshops to engage families in climate action, and then kicked off October with our Third Annual Climate Protector Ride! This year, we teamed up with Climate Ride to offer the option for families to fundraise together for climate action, and broaden its impact. It was an amazing day, with more than 100 riders! We had several kids complete their first group ride!

Thank you

We are so very grateful to all of the foundations, businesses, and individual contributors who support our work financially. We simply could not do it without you. You have helped us build our team, travel statewide, and engage more Montana families in climate action. Thank you so much for believing in us and our efforts. We are humbled by the incredible support we have received.

We are incredibly grateful for the support of the High Stakes Foundation, Llewellyn Foundation, our Mosaic Movement Infrastructure grant through the Pisces Foundation, the Tides Foundation (Martha Newell and Mike Kadas), and Clearwater Credit Union, along with our major donors and other individual supporters.

We are also grateful to our 2023 business supporters: Bateman Building Company, Broken Ground, Edward Jones, Good Food Store, Heritage Timber, Kantor Law PLLC, Mountain Sage Acupuncture, Onsite Energy, Inc., and Portico Real Estate.

From championing climate conversations and clean energy, to supporting healthy schools and the end of plastic pollution in Montana, we anticipate that 2024 will be another big year in climate action. We know there is more work to do and we will be there to inspire, train, advocate for, and engage Montana families.

Onward!
Winona, Caitlyn, and Sarah