The Path Forward with Trees, Water & People
If you missed the live discussion with our team, click here to watch the recording.
We appreciate all of our supporters who joined us on April 3rd for the first of our quarterly webinars, The Path Forward – we’re always so inspired by the incredible group of people behind us.
Amidst the uncertainty of our times, TWP is holding steady.
Sebastian: “Trees, Water, and People is in the eye of the hurricane. We’re stable, we’re in a good place. We just closed our fiscal year on March 31, and we’ve had 8 consecutive years of growth. We’ve done that through good hiring, good planning, a lot of investment internally, a lot of long-term focused work with our partners and trust-based funding relationships with our funding and foundation partners. But around us everything is going haywire right?”
USAID-closures, federal funding freezes, migration shifts, and so many other ripple effects are rapidly changing the environment in which we work. The challenges communities face are more pressing than ever, and though TWP remains resilient, we’ll need a great deal of support from our network to counteract growing instability, funding gaps, and climate vulnerability.
Sebastian: “Climate risk and climate reality won’t stop for any political cycles. This is just a call for the work to continue, and why our focus is really thinking long term, into 2030 and beyond.”
In Colorado and New Mexico, our ILP team is pushing forward with ambitious forest restoration and fire mitigation initiatives, working to secure the long-term rootedness of Tribal communities. We see a huge opportunity for private philanthropy to step in and provide resources to counter the precarity of federal funding sources.
In Mesoamerica, we’re also staying focused on the long-term stability of our partners. Our investments in locally rooted economies and robust organizations are becoming even more essential as the region grapples with significant destabilization and funding losses.
Sebastian: “There’s an opportunity here for the rise of the decentralized development economy…to support local organizations, to support local networks and create capacity that's going to stay in the country and won't be as dependent on external aid moving forward….TWP is really well positioned to play a role in this new reality.”
We’re facing turbulent waters, and we know there are hard days ahead for our partners and the communities we serve. But we’re forging ahead, and we know we’re not alone.
Sebastian: “We're not slowing down. On the contrary, we're moving forward and really thinking years out about what we can do together. We hope that you all are there with us for the journey.”
“I’d like to take the risk of speaking for the TWP Board of Directors. We, like the staff, are deeply committed to our long term programs and relationships. We've tried to make it clear for many years that we are in it for the long haul - financially, personally, and perennially. I’ll take this opportunity to say THANK YOU to our individual donors who are on this call. We’ve known for decades that you are the heart and soul of our efforts, we rely on your ongoing support as flakey donors like our federal government shift in and our of relevance every election cycle. ONWARD!”
– Jon Becker, TWP Board Member, quote taken from The Path Forward chat
