Claire Ruddy, executive director of the Association of Whistler Area Residents for the Environment (AWARE), would be the first to tell you the community’s largest environmental advocacy group typically does a good job explaining the nature of the work they do, but when it comes to the reasons behind it, there is some room for improvement.
“This is definitely a journey and we’re trying to really get better at reframing from what to why; from what are we doing in terms of a list of projects or actions to actually really, clearly communicating better why are we doing what we do and the outcome that we want to see,” said Ruddy at AWARE’s AGM held last Wednesday, May 19 over Zoom.
It represents a subtle but significant shift for a non-profit that, like so many other organizations around the world, has used the downtime afforded by COVID-19 to assess its operations, programming and mandate in a meaningful way. Some of that was already underway as part of AWARE’s new three-year strategic plan developed last year, but there’s no doubt the pandemic, and the renewed focus on sustainability it brought with it, drove home how important that work was.
“The organization was really ready for this level of review,” said AWARE board director and secretary Diana Boone. “It was pretty insightful. It was actually a really good exercise to help us prioritize where we invest time and energy in delivering these really important programs in the community.”
Advocacy became a larger part of AWARE’s work in 2020, even as some of its in-person programming, like the Whistler Nature Camp for kids, and its Zero Waste Heroes event waste-management program, was put on hold. AWARE’s Climate Action Ambassadors group, formed prior to COVID-19, continued last year, an effort to “mobilize people who are interested in working in the area of climate action within the community to try to strategize how we increase the scale and pace of climate action,” Ruddy explained.
The organization also sits on the municipality’s COVID Recovery Working Group, which early in the pandemic was focused on “crisis management,” Ruddy said, before taking a longer view on the future of the resort. Within that group is a tourism sustainability subcommittee that AWARE sits on.
“That’s where we’re really trying to reinforce and continually message this idea that, as we are looking at developing anything tourism-related, we need to be embedding very deeply this stewardship piece, and also looking at questions about where we should or shouldn’t develop tourism infrastructure and opportunities if we want to hold on to other values in terms of wildlife and habitat,” she said. (See related story on page 28.)
Some examples of AWARE’s advocacy in the past year included “giving feedback on campgrounds proposed for Whistler Olympic Park and pushing back on natural gas being put into the infrastructure down in Cheakamus [Crossing],” Ruddy noted.
On the financial side, AWARE was not immune to the impacts of COVID-19, although it did manage to stay in the black for 2020.
Revenue totalled just over $219,000, down roughly $40,000 from 2019, with 40 per cent of its revenue coming from grants. Expenses were also lower, in part due to lower payroll costs, down $40,000 from 2019, with several temporary layoffs and Ruddy’s sabbatical early in the year.
While it lost about $15,000 in revenue from the Zero Waste Heroes program being put on hold, AWARE brought in about $25,000 in contract work, primarily from municipal projects and workshops delivered for the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District. Donations were consistent with 2019, but Boone said both years were “significantly higher than we normally see.” AWARE currently holds about $18,000 in savings.
Last week’s AGM also saw AWARE members vote to fill four seats on the board. Elected was incumbent Jeremy Valeriote, along with new directors Alison Jenkins, Emily Kane and Rhonda Millikin.
For more information, visit awarewhistler.org.
