Eco-Stewards

Eco-Stewards Updates

• 2011 Eco-Stewards Training Program: This year's twelve Eco-Stewards are from nine states: Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Montana. Leaders are from Kentucky, West Virginia, California, Massachusetts and Montana. The group includes religious and environmental educators in addition to graduate and undergraduate students studying everything from sustainable agriculture to public health to philosophy. Their Christian backgrounds are also diverse: Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Baptist, Roman Catholic and Pentecostal. The group will gather the first week in June, 2011 for the annual Eco-Stewards Program week-long training event in eastern Montana. Find out more at http://ecostewardsprogram.org/
• Read about the 2011 eco-steward summer internship placements here.
  
• Want to help sponsor an eco-steward to get to the PEC Faith and Environment 2011 conference? Click here to donate.
  

1. Eco-consciousness - Seeking ecological awareness and a continuously renewed consciousness. Pursuing a knowledge the environmental issues that are affecting the different areas of the world today. Evaluating one's own contributing to those issues and finding ways to live more sustainably.
2. Being in solidarity with the poor - Focusing on environmental injustices; low-income communities in America and third world countries all over the world suffer from discrimination as hazardous factories, waste dumps, and toxic industries locate themselves in poor areas that cannot fight to keep the destruction out.
3. Living as ecological and socially responsible consumers - Being willing to examine one's shopping, food, and waste habits with an eye on sustainability. Working towards buying habits that reflect environmental and social justice values. Recognizing that food issues are at the heart of the environmental crisis and striving to eat locally and organically when possible.
4. Personal spiritual journeys - nurtured and supported by the Way of Community, honoring every individual's personal journey to a faithful response to the environmental crisis. Continuously looking inward to keep moving faithfully forward. Yet, also looking outward to a community of Eco-Stewards who support, guide, and strengthen each other along the way, growing in Christ's love.
5. Rooted in Presbyterian Reformed tradition - Sharing the many components of worship in new settings. Renewing traditions in new ways. Paying homage to a history of progressive and faithful service within the church.
6. Providing education and training that compels action - Following a curriculum with a core of eco-theology, church structure, systemic change, modes of behavior, watershed, spirituality, lifestyle simplification, self-reflection, community building, and ecological awareness. Teaching skills that can be extended into individual home communities, spreading nationwide awareness.