Every day is Earth Month!

Climate disasters related to and resulting from the commercial expansion of megacorporations in the petroleum, fashion, technology, construction, transportation, and agriculture industries continue to extract, degrade, and destroy the earth. The consequences continue to have a disproportionate impact on Afrikans living in the United States and all over the Global South. The effects are everywhere: in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, and in the food we eat. 

At Black Sustainability, Inc. we recognize the imminent and compounding danger of extreme floods, heat waves, health challenges, soil degradation, water contamination, deforestation, and toxified air as a call to return to an Afroecology—for the survival of our earth and our people. 

Our staff, directors, and partners feel the urgency of the moment, and we have a clear-eyed view of what is to come: we envision a world that honors Afrikan ancestral wisdom and ingenuity to restore the well-being of our planet and generations to come.

We’re not just pointing at the problems of our time. We’re building sustainable solutions for a Black & Green future. That means we need you!

This Earth Month, we invite you to join us on our mission to mobilize sustainability practitioners of Afrikan descent to (re)build sustainable communities and economies that will restore balance to our planet. For some, that means making small changes that lead to a big impact. For others, that may look like joining in collective efforts to reverse the immediate and lingering effects of ecological injustice and inequities. For all of us, it is a return to the knowledge and practices of our ancestors, to live in harmony with our earth and each other.

I recently spoke with Black Sustainability, Inc.'s Co-Founder and Ecosystem Director Raina Turner-Greenlea about the importance of collective responsibility and action for a Black and Green future. She shares her insights below:

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Every day is Earth Month! As an organization, Black Sustainability, Inc. stands in the gap on the ‘climate issue’ and, though our community didn't largely contribute to it, we need to check the narrative that the issue has to be solved by those outside of our community. There is no one coming to save us, and our spending habits, actions, and consumption all play a role in what finds itself at our doorsteps and in our soil.

We did not create the issues we face, yet we are disproportionately impacted. Our organization exists to identify those of us who are already working to solve these issues so that our collective impact is multiplied. 

The climate issue is actually a cultural issue and we believe that by reclaiming an indigenous worldview and rooting our solutions in our time-tested, cultural practices as indigenous, Afrikan people, that we really have an opportunity to restore our planet and all of the guiding ethical principles that we retained and implemented prior to colonization and enslavement. Until we do that, we're going to be consistently working through this Eurocentric worldview which is antithetical to an Afrikan-centered and indigenous worldview.  Until we fix that, and reclaim our ancestral wisdom, we're going to keep replicating broken models. 

So for Earth Month, the ways in which we seek to heal and Sankofa is by re-introducing various practices that used to be embedded into our culture and socialization. We're re-introducing that to our community, and we're doing that in tangible ways that build up skill sets for a truly black and green collar workforce. So, join us this Earth Month and learn something new! 

Check out our GPRO Certification Training on May 8th, to learn more about how our buildings can benefit versus harm our people and planet, even within this industrialized society, in a way that is sustainable for our children's children. 

If you want to learn how to grow your own food, work the land, and return to the ways of our ancestors while leveraging tools and techniques that make it easier, we have AfroEcology programming's upcoming Indigenous Rice Planting Workshop that's happening on May 9th.

Last but not least, we also have a pathway for those looking to enter the solar industry with our Grid Alternatives partnership for those who are looking to deepen their skill set on photovoltaics and Agrivoltaics. Students can learn how to install and maintain solar panels as a career pathway with the upcoming May and July cohorts for our solar Installation Basics Training course.This is all brought to you through members in our network that we are partnered with to model collaboration for compounded impact. 

If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far, go together.

Happy Earth Month!

— Raina Turner-Greenlea, BSI co-founder and ecosystem director

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