From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, we are highlighting each of the organizations featured in the Jersey Give-Back Guide, an online giving gadget that takes the guesswork out of year-end giving.
Clean Water Fund
Connect:
Website: www.cleanwateraction.org/nj
Twitter: @cleanwaternj
Facebook: Facebook.com/CleanWaterActionNJ
Instagram: @cleanh2oaction
What they do:
For over 40 years, Clean Water Fund has worked side by side with Clean Water Action to form one of the largest, most effective grassroots organizations active on water, toxics and environmental health protection issues in the nation. Clean Water Fund’s programs reach millions of households each year through outreach, education, organizing, advocacy and policy action.
Clean Water Fund works in New Jersey on policies that put Drinking Water First, from watershed to water tap; environmental health solutions that prevent waste and pollution at the source; and clean energy and climate solutions that create jobs and protect water.
Communities served:
All communities served in New Jersey with a special environmental justice focus in Newark.
What makes them great:
Pollution is increasingly linked to cancers, learning and developmental disabilities, neurological damage, asthma and other chronic illnesses. Clean Water Fund’s initiatives work to protect the most vulnerable from exposure – infants, small children, adolescents, pregnant women, lower income residents and communities of color – who also bear the greatest body burden and cumulative impact throughout their lifetime. .
Clean Water Fund is a leader in the movement to re-orient environmental health protections toward preventing harm, not just cleaning up pollution once it has already happened.
Key 2016 program initiatives include:
- Drinking Water: Advancing “upstream” solutions that protect people from toxic harm by reducing and preventing pollution at its source. Currently working to protect NJ’s water from toxic fracking waste and prevent development and sewer lines near environmentally sensitive waterways.
- Green Infrastructure: Using innovative approaches to reduce stormwater and sewage overflows, protect NJ’s water resources and drinking water, create green jobs, and reduce climate change impacts including flooding and salt water intrusion. Our latest project includes a build-your-own rain barrel training in Long Branch and installation of rain barrel systems in community gardens in Newark.
- Environmental Justice: Designed and now implementing Newark Climate Resiliency Action Plan to address flooding, heat island effect, air pollution, health harms, and create sustainable, green jobs. Leading Coalition for Healthy Ports, diesel reduction and other campaigns to achieve economic, environmental, health and social justice in NYNJ port communities. Conducting youth and community-based leadership and green job trainings in Newark.
- Green Energy: Leading a 50+ coalition of grassroots activists and groups to stop harmful fossil fuel projects and advance a pro-active state-wide strategy to achieve 30 percent energy efficiency by 2030 and go “carbon and nuclear free” by 2050. Recent successes include stopping stop a harmful oil gas pipeline from being built in the Pinelands.
- Pollution Reduction: Reducing the amount of single-use disposables (SUD-plastics, Styrofoam, cups, bags, containers, etc.) that end up in a landfill, an incinerator, or litters our communities and waterways through ReThink DisposableTM and other Zero Waste initiatives, including greening the Dodge Poetry Festival at Newark’s NJ Performing Arts Center.
How your donation will help make an impact:
Your donation will help us to continue our work to ensure clean, safe, and affordable drinking water; green energy choices that ensure clean air and address the climate crisis; and reduce toxic pollution that can harm our families and environment.
How you can get even more involved:
One of the most important ways to protect clean water is you! Your donation will support our efforts to protect New Jersey’s most vulnerable communities – the children, elderly, and communities disproportionately impacted by pollution – from further harm.
– Jenny Vickers, Communications Manager
>>>Get Generous for Clean Water Fund
Learn more about the Jersey Give Back Guide and all featured organizations at jerseygivebackguide.org.