As I reflect on this traumatic year, I am more grateful than ever that Bioneers is here and ready to meet this moment in such profound, deep and far-reaching ways. We’re here thanks to people like you whose financial support and engagement have supported Bioneers’ work, and strengthened this movement of movements to ensure a healthy, peaceful and equitably future. I thank you, with humility and deep gratitude.
I write to invite you to
contribute to Bioneers now. Your year-end gift will double in value to our unique work as a cultural enzyme
because of a $100,000 matching grant from some generous donors. As always, we will use it resourcefully and strategically to leverage the transformative change that’s imperative to realizing a regenerative and just future for all beings.
After 30 years of featuring an array of nature-based and intersectional solutionaries, while cultivating generations of innovative leaders, Bioneers remains nearly unique (unfortunately) in applying a solve-the-whole-system approach. Few others bring together so many diverse disciplines, cultures and walks of life to reveal their (and our) interdependence. At the same time, we’re radically amplifying the many Voices of the Bioneers to transform culture through our rapidly growing and multi-platform media reach to reach new hearts, hands and minds.
This year, as I tended to my
mother’s end of life (which I spoke about at the opening of our annual conference, relating it to our universal ecological and human challenges), I was acutely aware of the traumatic and turbulent state of our democracy, and also of our social and ecological movements. At a time when so many worthy needs for financial support are growing more urgent each day, I urge you to consider investing in Bioneers as a “mother ship” that directly supports so many crucial groups, leaders and bodies of work across a spectrum of climate, gender and racial justice.
Your support helps to
‘solve for pattern,’ resulting in what Wendell Berry calls “cascading benefits.” We’re cultivating successful model solutions and diverse leaders across the most strategic arenas of action. We’re educating ever larger numbers of people while increasing citizen engagement and inspiring them to act. We’re weaving the web of relationships among diverse communities to build the power it’s going to take to actually change the system.
Throughout
this year’s 2019 conference keynotes, I felt the tone conveyed a gravitas, a heightened awareness of the “fierce urgency of now,” and an unwavering determination to really grapple practically with the ecological and social challenges we face.
As Chief Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Iroquois Six Nations (Haudenosaunee) has long suggested, we need to “Raise up your leaders.” From the vantage point of thirty years of experience – I feel a heightened understanding of the long-term priority of cultivating leaders who are diverse in every way, and who are capable of addressing the wide array of challenges we face. I’m so grateful for all these years that together, we’ve focused on strengthening the leadership of women, Indigenous peoples, all people of color, and young people, especially.
In truth, at this time, we’re ALL called to be leaders, and it was deeply moving to me on Bioneers’ 30th birthday to hear so many stories from so many, like you, whose work and lives have been profoundly influenced and strengthened by Bioneers.
With your support, in the past year, we’ve radically increased our outreach, engaging many more people with the inspiring stories and strategies of Bioneers. We’ve upgraded our
media-rich website, making the wealth of our evergreen content free and searchable. We’ve already increased our visits by over 50% each month. Our international
award-winning radio series reaches millions, and it’s now widely available as a podcast on most major platforms. The potent kaleidoscope of
29 short videos (under 4 minutes each) we produced have been viewed more than 3.5 million times, and grown the Bioneers social media audience by 200,000 to date. And we’re just getting going.
Our
Indigeneity program is bringing dynamic media and curricula to schools and libraries across Indian Country and to the public. It’s on track with a groundbreaking
Rights of Nature Governance in U.S. Indian Country initiative to flip the legal paradigm and help elevate the leadership of First Peoples. And our materials on
the Green New Deal have become a valued resource for policy makers, schools, journalists and activists.
Bioneers partnered with the Biomimicry Institute and Ten Strands to produce a full day
professional development training supporting middle and high-school teachers to integrate Biomimicry into their already existing curriculum. As California becomes the first state in the nation to mandate k-12 Environmental Literacy, there is a unique and potent opportunity to position Biomimicry Education as a transformative tool for integrating respect and appreciation for the natural world into STEAM education, statewide.
We all know that the world has entered a state of permanent emergency, and the work of Bioneers is more important and timely than ever. We need the cultural enzyme and whole-systems approach that Bioneers offers, spread as far and wide and quickly as possible, to ignite the citizen engagement and leadership that’s so urgently needed. I hope you’ll consider stretching to give as generously as you possibly can – if you give now, your gift will be doubled!
On behalf of our Bioneers team, please know how profoundly thankful we are for your support and for your partnership. To make a contribution at this pivotal time,
please visit us here.
I wish you and all your relations a loving, restorative and regenerative winter solstice and the return of the light. Together, we will keep bringing the pulse of light that is Bioneers into full flourishing to revitalize the world.
Gratefully yours, in kinship for the Earth, equity and healing,
Nina Simons
Bioneers Co-Founder
