We are a community of parents, grandparents and families who have come together to tackle the climate emergency by participating in family-friendly activism activities.
Find out more on our FB page! We'd love to welcome you to our group. You can also follow us on Instagram and on Twitter
If you like what you see, sign-up to our monthly email/newsletter to learn about upcoming actions and volunteer activities. Our most recent newsletter is below, and you can find previous newsletters here.
If you are new to For Our Kids and want to learn a bit more about it, you can join one of the monthly welcome calls (often the last Tuesday of the month, 7 pm ET).
In 2022, we are working on
- Helping parents communicate and normalize climate anxiety that we can experience. Our first event is a discussion about the Netflix movie, Don't Look Up - Join us on Friday Feb 18th at 8 pm
- Helping more parents take on their first climate advocacy role, whether that be writing an email to their city councillor, attending a Fridays for the Future demonstration, or talking about climate change to a neighbour - all of that is important.
- Advocating for Renewable Energy in Ontario. We are working to ensure Ottawa endorses Phasing out Natural Gas Power Plants in Ontario by 2030 and embraces hydro, wind and solar (and the cleaner air and reduced GHGs that come with it.). Read our submission and add your signature in support of this motion.
- Keeping an eye on the Ontario government's ongoing destruction of greenspace and promotion of sprawl (through Ministerial Zoning Orders and fast tracking Highway 413). We formed a collaboration with other groups to Stand for the Land
Here's an example of our newsletter (from September 2021)
We know September is a busy month for many parents so we collected some quick actions with big impact!
- Collecting signatures to support endorsing an Ontario-wide Natural Gas phase out for our Electricity. We were one of the delegates to the city committee considering this motion and it was successfully passed - a huge win! You can watch our presentation to committee here.
- Reminding everyone to vote on September 20th. Learn where the parties stand on climate and the environment. And here is another analysis.
- FOK Parents and Families met up on Friday September 24 to march to show our amazing kids that we stand beside them and want to drive climate action. If you can't attend, put up a sign on your lawn/balcony and share it with us so we can amplify it and show Canada (and our newly elected government) that we will be holding them account to act on climate. More details on the strike can be found here.
- Draw and Chat: Join us for an in-person meet up on Monday Sept 27 at Hampton Park for a family-friendly (Climate) Art in the Park. Get to know other FOK families and if you are feeling creative, make some signs to use at future events. RSVP online or on Facebook.
- Learn: Have you been grappling with how to deal with internalized racism and bias? Parents, grandparents and guardians in the For Our Kids network are invited to take part in a ninety minute digital workshop with celebrated community builder and founder of Moms Against Racism, Kerry Cavers on Friday, October 1st /1 p.m. (EST) on How to Raise an Anti-Racist Child. Register now.
Something to listen to: Learn how we can clean up our electricity grid and its impact on our ability to lower our emissions (while based on US data, many of the big deals apply to Canada).
Good news story: Planting a garden, causes kids to bloom. Thanks to World-Changing Kids for this article.
Get involved: Ready to take the next step and help us run some actions, post on social media or help with petitions? Send us an email!
Invite others to join us. If you like our approach and our projects, please help make our impact stronger by forwarding this message to another parent
And here are some of our past actions:
- Protecting Ontario's Renewable Energy - We made a submission to the IESO (Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator) during their public consultation to make it clear they knew parents want clean energy, and want Ontario to phase out natural gas powered plants by 2030. Read more about IESO here
- Strengthening Canada's Net Zero Climate Accountability Plan (Bill C-12) - We sent a submission to the standing committee signed by more than 90 parents.
- Holding the City of Ottawa Accountable on their declaration of a Climate Emergency 2 years ago. We sent Earth Day cards and made virtual messages to bring attention to decisions our council has made that does not put Climate First
- Protecting Ontario's Renewable Energy. We wrote a submission signed by over 140 Ontario residents to remove Schedule 5 from Bill 276 so that renewable energy in Ontario continues to be prioritized.
- Read up about key women of colour who have been leading climate change across the world as part of our Black History Feature. We will also be working on a submission to ensure Bill 230, Canada's plan for evaluating Environmental Racism becomes law.
- We worked with groups across Canada as part of the January Day of Action to hold our banks accountable and tell them they need to stop investing in new fossil fuel projects. This is an ongoing project, so if you still haven't contacted your bank, do it this week!
We recommend reading The Parents' Guide to Climate Revolution by Mary DeMocker. Please join us!