As part of our partnership with the organization Love is King, some of our team had the opportunity to participate in their new program called Operation Roam.
About Operation Roam
Operation Roam is an advanced environmental and social justice leadership program. The mission of this amazing program is to connect Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) individuals who would normally not have an immediate stake in each other’s interests, culture, and future so they can find common ground and converge their movements for the greater good. The more we connect and collaborate with one another, the more empathetic equity we build. The objective of Operation Roam is to leverage empathic equity to collectively tackle both environmental and social issues and empower a new generation of change-makers who’ll bring their passion, inspiration, and experiences to the place they work, and their community.
Love is King provides conservation organizations like FPC a powerful platform to engage, recruit, sustain, and activate new BIPOC and LGBTQ+ leaders focusing on environmental and transformative social justice. Four of FPC’s staff, Matt, Mariah, Nasir, and Chie, had the opportunity to participate in this new program and joined other team members, Salomon, Avi and Chad Brown, Executive Director of Love is King, for twelve days in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
About ANWR
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), located in northeastern Alaska, is our countries’ largest wildlife refuge, at over nineteen million acres. ANWR is home to some of the most delicate and at-risk ecosystems on the planet and is threatened by both climate change and fossil fuel development happening within the Refuge. Climate change has been happening there twice as fast as the global average. Indigenous people living in the Arctic are experiencing the impacts at a disproportionate rate. Impacts including increased wildfires, drought, flooding, erosion, and decreases in wildlife populations, and changes in migratory routes, all of which pose significant threats to food security and the way of life for these indigenous communities.
Our team had the opportunity to dive deep and experience these impacts for themselves. They met with Indigenous leaders, organizations, and agencies that are on the front lines to slow down the devastating impacts these issues are having on both the ecosystem and local communities.
Forest Park and the Arctic
We are all interconnected! Every decision we make has an impact on the environment. Your choices as an individual and as a member of the community make a difference not just here and in Forest Park, but in other critically important ecosystems like the Arctic. We need global action to fight the devastating effects of climate change. The Arctic ecosystem is vital to our planet’s health and we are training members of the Forest Park community to communicate these impacts by seeing them first-hand.
As part of our team’s participation in this program, we aim to build awareness around the connection between the actions FPC takes as an organization and how these actions can benefit delicate, at-risk ecosystems around our world. How do we advocate and make changes here at home that supports climate change efforts and Indigenous peoples both here in our own community and in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?
As we continue to learn and develop our set of actions, we will bring you along with us. Want to send us your thoughts? Email us!
Check out more photos of our team’s trip here.
