Partnerships Founded at EarthWays / Sister Groups

Partnerships Founded at EarthWays / Sister Groups

Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs | WildRescue | Foundation For World Arts  | Amazon Watch | ETINA: Environmentalism Through Inspiration and Non-violent Action

Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs

We hope to make the world a better place: create a more fair society, a healthier planet, and a more meaningful life for each person. Fiscal management is a necessary piece of the puzzle—one that frees the project managers and other personnel to pursue their mission.

The world’s population is moving towards eight billion people; a situation unprecedented in human culture. The difficulties and challenges we are confronting as a species are unparalleled. Any effort to address these issues is of utmost importance. We at SEE are asking more individuals to step forward to help solve these problems—to help the world see the necessity for sustainable economies and a healthy relationship with nature.

In the past twelve months SEE has recorded its greatest growth ever; we now serve more than 90 projects with about $7,000,000 in annual activity. Our inspired program leaders, activists and visionaries continue to build strong projects while successfully pursuing their missions—sustainable solutions to social justice and environmental problems. During 2014 we added 31 new projects to our bulging portfolio of activity; we moved to larger, more efficient offices, and expanded our office staff to four full-time people, who support the hundreds of project people working “in the field”.

SEE is an active member of the National Network of Fiscal Sponsors and participates in the annual conference each year. Learn more:www.saveourplanet.org

WildRescue

OUR MISSION
WildRescue focuses on the pervasive issues faced by wildlife casualties and the caring people who find, them through innovative programs that promote optimum care of sick, injured, and orphaned native wildlife.

THE NEED
While there are wildlife rehabilitation facilities dedicated to providing specialized care necessary for their patients to be returned to the wild, very few provide 24-hour emergency assistance over the phone – even fewer have the resources to send rescuers into the field.

In the absence of someone who can correctly identify a species, evaluate an animal’s condition, administer first aid, and provide transport, countless lives are lost. With her extensive background in wildlife rescue and rehabilitation, Project Director Rebecca Dmytryk organized WildRescue in 2000 to concentrate on the problems associated with the rescue and transport of critically injured native wildlife. She is committed to improving the way debilitated wild animals are treated and setting standards of practice in wildlife emergency response to ensure wild animals receive proficient attention and a second chance.

There’s no reason injured or orphaned wild animals, or the persons who find them, should go unattended or be given inadequate attention. There is no excuse for the senseless killing of viable wildlife, including healthy newborns, which is policy in many municipal animal shelters. Injured wild animals deserve the care offered by wildlife rehabilitators – the opportunity to recover from their injuries, and be returned home.

DIRECTOR’S BACKGROUND
Project director, Rebecca Dmytryk, has been working in the field of wildlife rescue and rehabilitation for over twenty years. Daughter of famous film director Edward Dmytryk and actress Jean Porter, Rebecca moved to the hills above Malibu in 1974 where her fascination with wildlife and reverence for nature flourished. At age 13 she was relocating rattlesnakes from the family’s backyard to the safety of the surrounding mountains. Inspired by the work of Jane Goodall, and E. O. Wilson, Rebecca went on to study animal behavior, and finally, in 1981 she began her career in wildlife rehabilitation.

She gained experience working as an animal control officer for Los Angeles County in the mid 1980’s while continuing to operate her own mobile pet care service. In 1993, she became a member of International Bird Rescue Research Center’s Oiled Wildlife Response Team and has since joined the team on numerous oil spills, including the Galapagos Island tragedy in 2001. In 1996, Rebecca founded The California Wildlife Center, a hospital for sick and inured wild animals, based in Malibu, California. After administrating the wildlife hospital for four years and earning credibility as a leading authority in wildlife emergency response, Rebecca chose to focus her talents on the pervasive issues facing wildlife casualties. During a recent 2-year term with the California Department of Fish & Game Wildlife Rehabilitation Committee she helped establish protocol for the care of native wildlife.

Foundation For World Arts

The Foundation for World Arts (FWA) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating long-lasting relationships between individuals, artists, and organizations across Los Angeles to nurture cultural exchange, tolerance, understanding, and to strengthen a deeper unity within the community through the arts. FWA is committed to peace, cultural understanding, and the need for universal responsibility. Since its creation, FWA has brought together tens of thousands of people of diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, including artists of all types, community and religious leaders, educators, and students. FWA regularly accomplishes its goal through the triennial World Festival of Sacred Music.

Amazon Watch

The goal of Amazon Watch is to catalyze collaborative initiatives among local and international organizations towards the long-term protection of the Amazon Rainforest. Amazon Watch will target potential investors and key commodities markets. The strategy for the campaign is three fold: (1) deter of minimize impacts of ecologically disastrous projects while they are in the early stages of planning before capital has been accumulated and committed: (2) interject environmental and indigenous rights concerns at critical decision points: and (3) assist impacted communities in amassing economic and political clout for protection of their forest and for securing indigenous land titles.

Spanning over seven million square kilometers throughout eight countries, the Amazon Basin, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, is home to nearly half of the earth’s species and holds one fifth of all freshwater. It is estimated that somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the Amazon rainforests have already been destroyed and an additional estimated 74,000 acres of rainforest are lost each year. In recent years, the rate of deforestation has increased by 34 percent in the Brazilian Amazon.

Development in the Amazon is shifting into high gear as a result of trade liberalization policies put into place by Mercosur, South America’s free trade agreement. Throughout the region, the end of hyperinflation has triggered consumer booms, while privatization of state owned enterprises is attracting record high foreign investments. South American countries have begun to physically integrate their economies by constructing interconnected transportation and energy infrastructure networks.

If built, the latest wave of massive infrastructure projects (roads, waterways, pipelines, railroads, and dams) planned to expand trade in the Amazon region, would open up the heart of the world’s largest tropical rainforest to intensive exploitation. These projects, which are being financed with private capital, will bring in their wake a trail of industrial logging, mining, oil extraction, cattle ranching, and large-scale agricultural development. At stake are millions of acres of pristine rainforests and indigenous people’s territories.

Amazon Watch is a new organization established in late 1996 in absence of campaigns by the major international forest protection groups to address the onslaught of new infrastructure schemes. Amazon Watch is investigation and disseminating critical information on the status, the potential environmental and human rights impact, and the players involved in these projects. In spring of 1996, Amazon Watch published an 82 page report entitled “Arteries for Global Trade, consequences for Amazonia,” which would connect Amazoian interiors with global markets via international shipping ports on the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

The Key to protecting the ecology of the rainforest lies with securing rights to land for the region’s indigenous peoples. Indigenous land rights in most Amazon countries are weak or nonexistent. In Brazil, where there are strong land rights laws, the government has been backsliding on its 1998 constitutional mandate to demarcate all indigenous territories. Encroaching industrial development could provide an opportunity to settle long standing land claims or provide environmental protection to impacted communities if such communities can mobilize effectively.

Project Director: 
Atossa Soltani, 20178 Rockport Way, Malibu, CA 90265
Phone: (301) 456-1340 or EarthWays (310) 456-8300

website: www.amazonwatch.com



Amazon Watch is an independent project working in association with EarthWays; For the Earth.

ETINA: Environmentalism Through Inspiration and Non-violent Action

Code Pink; Burma mission; Ballona Wetlands preservation; United For Iran;