Friends of the Earth Ireland - Blog

We're hiring! Education & Outreach Officer needed (Youth & Community)

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 09:43:00 GMT

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We’re looking for a development education officer with ample experience in community engagement to join our team!

This person would have experience in development education, working with youth, working with groups disproportionately impacted by unjust policies, would be an excellent project manager with a keen ability to prioritise in a pressuring environment, and would have an understanding of the sensitivities that come with building connections with groups typically under-represented in the environmental movement.

We need someone who is enthusiastic about education and about developing leadership, who can coordinate national projects and support the voices of youth and affected communities to reach policy-makers.

Read the job description and get full details on how to apply here! Deadline for applications is midnight Irish time, October 5th.

Online Training: Movement Strategy and Movement Structure

Thu, 14 May 2020 13:25:00 GMT

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We're so excited to be able to host the Ayni Institute to facilitate a two-part training to activists in Ireland. During this course the Ayni Institute will be teaching how to understand the deeper strategic needs within movements and issue areas.

The Ayni Institute is a small training institute that coaches, incubates, and supports social movements and community organisations. They also develop research and content on movements and movement dynamics. The Institute was founded by Carlos Saavedra, a community organiser with the DREAM movement in the US, and Paul Engler, author of This is an Uprising. They work closely with Momentum US and the Sunrise Movement among others.

The two sessions will take place on Wednesday 27th May and Wednesday 3rd June from 5pm - 7pm. The sessions will be designed for activists already involved in groups, to learn how to power up their decentralised organising to be more resilient and agile. The training is free of charge but places are limited - apply for a place here!

Training Description from the Ayni Institute

To change the issues we face we often turn to social movements that have led the way in challenging dominant institutions, raising awareness in the public, and supporting those who are most affected by these phenomena. We recognise their potential to change things for the better but have very little understanding of what a social movement actually is. In the path to becoming leaders we admit that we need organisations but rarely do we go further to admit that we need social movements that can hold the capacity of many organisations in a concerted effort.

At times, we compete with one another across different theories of change and find ourselves mired in the wrong conflicts. We struggle to achieve and maintain the scale that is necessary to make our movements effective and significant. Our organizations succumb to fights over funding and a lack of strategic capacity. Our people burn themselves out in trying to work endlessly for this vision. We know that the challenges we face call for something more.

During the first session of our training we offer Movement Strategy as a way to recommit ourselves to the deep study of our craft, to organise our efforts around the idea of strategic capacity, to learn how to do the right thing at the right time. We hope this online training will offer some wisdom that you can take home with you.

For the second session of the training we offer Movement Structure where we’ll discuss the fundamentals of decentralised organization, the particulars of social change across different scales, and models and principles that we can integrate to our understanding of movements.

Please note that this session will be interactive - there will be opportunities within breakout groups to apply the learning to the activist groups you’re involved in.

Apply for a place!

Join us for a webinar on the future of food!

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 15:13:00 GMT

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Globally, and within Ireland, there are many injustices built into our food system.Join us for a webinar to discuss these dynamics - and solutions- on Wednesday May 6th at 2pm EST / 7pm GMT / 8pm CET.

We’ll be joined by speakers from Irish Seed Savers, Foodture, and Talamh Beo. This will be an engaging session to relate the practical work that organisations are doingaround food in Ireland with global justice issues.

Corporate Capture of Common Goods

Corporate control of seeds is an issue that has affected many farmers across the world and has resulted in devastating impacts in the Global South. Varieties of vegetables, fruits, medicinal and other useful plants have been bred by growers for centuries to suit local growing conditions and people’s needs. When transnational corporations like Monsanto and Bayer then patent those varieties, it is tantamount to theft of common public goods. Growers then have little choice but to purchase seeds from these corporations, often requiring added chemical inputs - putting growers’ health at risk and indebting them, and creating a dynamic where agriculture becomes industrialised and crops are grown in monocultures. This injustice is only further amplified by the trading of essential foodstuffs on commodity futures markets.

Food Waste

Globally, a third of food is wasted. In the Global North, a large part of this is thrown out by consumers. In the Global South, it’s largely because of a lack of infrastructure to transport food from farms to market efficiently. And in 2020, we still have hunger in the world. This already dire situation is aggravated by COVID-19 quarantines, as people who survive in the informal economy can no longer work and are facing hunger and economic recession. The World Food Programme predicts that the number of people facing hunger in 2020 will double.

Industrial Agriculture

Industrial agriculture is a huge driver of climate change because of the need for fossil fuel inputs in the form of nitrogen fertiliser, & fuel for machinery and the release of methane from large-scale cattle farming. Deforestation driven by industrial agriculture was one of the principal reasons for the Amazon fires last year.

Since the “Green Revolution” of the 50s and 60s, agriculture has increased in scale and become more industrial in the Global North. Along with this, agricultural workers are increasingly from migrant communities - with little work options and difficult circumstances in their own countries, people migrate to work on farms in Western Europe and the United States, where they face exploitative and often unhealthy conditions. This unjust dynamic became more visible in Ireland recently under the Covid-19 shutdown.

Given these injustices - and others - in the dominant global food production and consumption structure, it is imperative that we organise at a grassroots level to produce food locally and connect food growers to consumers. The three organisations invited to this webinar work at different points along the chain of grassroots food production:

bio-diverse and heritage seeds,
farming and growing in a model that is integrated with land, nature, and people’s needs,
and connecting consumers with local, fair food producers.

The webinar format will be a panel discussion with a short Q & A. Register to join us!

Event: "Is it all about the money?" Tackling climate change in a financialised planet

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 11:09:00 GMT

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We live in a financial system that does not compensate for the environmental and social damage it causes.Impoverished countries continue to face the worst of the impacts of climate chaos, and have the least resources to deal with it. Attempts by the UN’s climate conferences (COPs) to address this incredibly unjust power imbalance - such as compensation for “loss and damage” - continue to disappoint. Next Tuesday March 3rd, Friends of the Earth will host a discussion with Financial Justice Ireland this topic, in the Teacher’s Club, Parnell Square, Dublin.

Financial Justice Ireland's work examines how the financial system - global borrowing, lending, investment and speculation - impact on lives in the Global South and here in Ireland. As with every area of life, climate change is both driven by and itself altering the financial system. This seminar will examine how the various options proposed to tackle climate change impact on financial justice.

How does lending to poor countries to tackle climate change impact on their debt burdens?
Is it right to require disaster-prone nations to buy into private insurance schemes to insure against disaster-related damages?
What are the implications of privately financing the climate transition, for workers' rights, public services and sustainability?

We will also be joined by Clodagh Daly, who will speak about fossil fuel producer subsidies in Ireland, focusing on those allocated to natural gas. Natural gas is lauded by the fossil fuel industry and policymakers as a 'transition fuel’, yet it is a highly dangerous fossil fuel, consisting predominantly of methane, which traps heat between 86-100 time more than carbon dioxide. Producer subsidies that work to cut the costs and risks associated with bringing new natural gas reserves into production threaten to derail the holistic social and ecological transformation that is needed. Clodagh’s presentation will examine how the provision of public loans, tax breaks, infrastructure, and publicly funded research generate staggering corporate benefits at enormous public expense. What would an alternative financial system that is in line with ecological limits and social justice look like? Join us on March 3rd at 7pm in the Teacher’s Club to flesh out this question and determine how we as those concerned about environmental injustice can ensure our work and our activism contributes towards financial justice as well as environmental justice.

One Future for Fairer Faster Climate Action

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 14:05:00 GMT

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We are so excited to tell you about One Future - Faster and Fairer Climate Action!

One Future a people led campaign aiming to communicate real and solid climate action to all political parties and candidates before the election on February 8th.

And it just launched yesterday (see the launch photos below) - we need your help to get it off the ground and reach as many people across the country. Actions below!

Friends of the Earth are just one of many organisations involved. So far lots of groups have signed up to be a part of it, including the National Women's Council of Ireland, Dochas, Friday's for Future and Latin America Solidarity Centre - just to name a few. You can sign your organisation up here on the One Future website.

Over the coming three weeks, together with other One Future supporting organisaions, we will be sharing various actions that you can take to support this initiative, helping spread the word and get as many people talking to their election candidates about climate action as possible.

Take action in your local area!

Want campaign materials to help spread the word? We can send you flyers, stickers and badges - send your requests here at the link. You can also download materials from the One Future website to print at home.

Sign up to lead or join a local #Canvass4Climate team - distributing materials and going door to door talking about climate action. Sign up for a local canvas here at the link.

Time is not on our side - these three weeks will fly by. But with your help and actions, we can get lots of people talking about climate action, making it a top priority for election candidates.

You can follow One Future on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

And you can read the Press Release from yesterday's launch here at the link.

Patagonia Match Giving

Sat, 14 Dec 2019 10:31:00 GMT

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Every €1 you donate will turn into €4 when it comes to us through Patagonia's Match Giving until December 31st!

We want to turn your quadrupled euros into clean, renewable energy, generated right from the roof of schools all over Ireland.

Our Solar Schools project is putting solar panels on schools, to show that energy can and should be community powered. This is an exciting project, but it's only allowing us to do so much. Your donations matched by Patagonia mean we can go bigger and better to unlock renewables in Ireland.

This is an opportunity too good to miss. We can run Ireland on renewables, but we need this boost.

Solar panels on schools should be easy. But in Ireland it's not. There are silly rules that make it really really hard, and we want to change that. We want every school and every community across the country to be able to generate their own clean, green renewable energy.

Our plan for 2020 is to showcase the energy future we want by putting solar panels on schools. To really make a noise about this, we need more Solar Schools.

A philanthropic trust we are working with will match any money we can find to reach this goal. Can you help? A donation through Patagonia will double your money - and then it will be doubled again!

We'll be putting €4 for every €1 you give directly into schools to help young climate activists BE THE CHANGE they want to see in the world.

Our campaigning to make solar easier in Ireland is finally starting to get heard. We have commitments from the Ministers of Planning and of Climate Action, that they will get rid of some of the silly rules. But we need to keep the pressure on to make sure they do!

If you donate €50 or more you can claim a Friends of the Earth Christmas Gift Pack which includes a Friends of the Earth reusable cup, a copy of Greta Thunberg's book ‘No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference’ and an Irish handmade beeswax candle.

Just send your confirmation email to info@foe.ie after you donate and we'll post it out to you.

Thank you!

Winter Solstice Sunrise Sea Swim

Fri, 29 Nov 2019 17:37:00 GMT

Solstice Sunrise Swim

Don't you just love a challenge!

Join our next Sunrise Sea Swim on the Winter Solstice, connect with nature and our growing community.

This event is free, register at the link to connect with other sunrise sea swimmers!

Seapoint Beach, Dublin at 8:00am sharp!

This is our third seasonal dip into the Irish Sea, we started on the Summer Solstice - the longest brightest day of the year and we're soon approaching the shortest day.

Each time we've noticed how the sun shifts across the horizon, reminding us that these subtle changes of the seasons that we see through the year are part of a bigger shift of the earth rotating and making its way around the sun.

The earth and sun are simply doing what they've done for billions of years. That's not something we notice very often, so let's take this moment to celebrate the magic that nature brings.

Each swim comes with its own challenge. And we're inviting you to join us, to face these small challenges together as a way to build resilience and form community to help us continue this important work of protecting what we love and live for on this planet earth.

This Sunrise Swim will most likely be our coldest both in and out of the water - so make sure to wrap up warm. Wetsuits are welcome, we don't judge!

There will be shore support, but please note everyone swims and dips at their own risk. Top priority - stay safe!

We'll have coffee, so bring your reusable cups and some snacks to share around.

If you can't make it to our gathering in Dublin, we invite you to gather your community wherever you are and do something special in nature to mark the Winter Solstice!

Friends of the Earth Facilitators and Trainers Network!

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 21:28:00 GMT

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Do you want to inspire, empower and egage people nationwide to join the climate justice movement?

Join our new Facilitators and Trainers Network!

Friends of the Earth have connections around the country, ample experience in campaigning, education & organising, and the resources to support people like you in developing the skills needed to train other activists around the country.

We want to use what we have to enable youto do the impactful work of facilitating others to increases their understanding of the interconnectedness of the issues we collectively face, and upskill in the capacities needed to fight these injustices.

Friends of the Earth will support you with:

Training in facilitating and organising skills
Access to workshop delivery opportunities
Promotion of your self-organised events
Connection to a peer support network
Quarterly campaign-specific training

We feel a scalable network of committed facilitators is one of the elements that is needed right now in order to capitalise on the energy activated in recent months around the climate crisis. As a network of educators, trainers and movement-builders, we can scale fast and reach places we could never reach alone.

Sign up here to be part of the network!

The first induction session is November 23rd, more details when you sign up