Practicing Regenerative Finance: How Community Loan Funds, Shared Governance and Reinvestment Support Local Solutions to the Climate Crisis
Presented in collaboration with the Climate Justice Alliance
Community loan funds are creating new possibilities for funding local solutions to the climate crisis, while also addressing a long history of institutional disinvestment in traditionally disenfranchised communities. Four grassroots organizers on the frontlines will speak to the ways that reinvestment campaigns are calling on philanthropy to invest in these local funds, redefine traditional conceptions of risk and return, and center stewarding wealth in ways that generate healing rather than harm. With: Gopal Dayaneni, co-founder, Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project; Loren White Jr., Community Development Coordinator at the Indigenous Environmental Network; Lupe Romero Elicea, Co-Director for the Climate Justice Our Power Loan Fund; Briana Sidney, Cooperation Richmond.
Golden Bear Room, Hotel Shattuck Plaza
April 7th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm
Panelists
Gopal Dayaneni
Co-Founder
Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project
Gopal Dayaneni, who has been organizing and campaigning for social, economic, environmental and racial justice since the late 1980s, is a co-founder of Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project, dedicated to the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture and to a Just Transition away from profit and pollution and towards healthy, resilient, life-affirming local economies. Movement Generation (MG) is a founding member of the Climate Justice Alliance. Gopal, currently a member of MG's Planning Committee and board, continues to work closely with the organization on diverse projects and also supports movement-building through his work with several other organizations, including The Climate Justice Alliance, ETCgroup, NDN Collective, the Center for Story-based Strategy and People’s Solar Energy Fund.
Loren White, Jr.
Community Development Coordinator
Indigenous Environmental Network
Loren White, Jr., who has been working on environmental and economic justice for nearly 20 years, recently joined the Indigenous Environmental Network as its Community Development Coordinator. Since 2018 he has been working with Indigenous frontline communities to help design and develop, manage and maintain the collaborative Regenerative Community Loan Fund, as well as assisting in bringing to fruition a number of other projects rooted in principles of sustainability, equity, and “Just Transition.”
Lupe Romero Elicea
Co-Director
Climate Justice Alliance’s Just Transition Revolving Loan Fund & Incubator
Guadalupe “Lupe” Romero Elicea, Co-Director of the Climate Justice Alliance’s Reinvest in Our Power initiative, migrated from Mexico to the Bay Area at 17 and became involved with the Immigrant and Chicanx student movements. Guadalupe later became a worker-owner of Spectrum Apparel printing and co-founded its political arm, Printers United, with the goal of creating screen printing for art, revolutionary propaganda and social movement support.
Briana Sidney
Cooperation Richmond
Briana Sidney jumped into the world of cooperatives at 19. She became a worker-owner at Mandela Grocery Cooperative for 5 years. In her time there she fell in love with cooperatives. She joined the Cooperation Richmond team to help the Richmond community establish ownership over their local businesses.
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