By Sarah Meyers
Last week was the third annual Climate Beacon 2025 conference. This convening was an interesting contrast to other climate-oriented conferences that I’ve attended. The focus was not on global, highly scalable solutions. There were no pleas for nations to work together on behalf of future generations or endangered species. The ambiance was neither passionately hopeful nor disastrously pessimistic about the state of the world.
The focus was on how organizations and communities 2as near as Boston and as far as Western MA, CT, and other locations in New England have addressed their local, concrete, and particular problems. There were dozens of examples of how to get things done at this place in this time with these constraints and with these resources.
The spirit was collaborative. Maybe you have a similar situation to mine, and are willing to share what you learned when you went through the process of coalition building, or permitting, or raising funds? Maybe what you are doing is complementary to what I’m doing, and would you like to meet after this conference to discuss partnering? And in the case of Eastie Farm, while we toured ~25 attendees at our Chelsea St site, what I heard was, what you are doing is incredible in meeting the needs of East Bostonians, and the needs where I live are not the same as the needs in East Boston, but I am inspired by your work, and I’m wondering if what you do here can be replicated in some way shape or form near me, too.
This is what Eastie Farm is all about. We primarily serve the East Boston community, but climate change and environmentalism is a global issue. While we pursue climate justice, food security, and community resilience here, we hope to inspire and are inspired by action everywhere.
