Giving InSight
A Blog for and about Funders Focused on Health and the Environment
We're pleased to share a review of HEFN’s work in 2016. It was a year of milestones and movements, of political tensions and strengthening alliances.
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November 8, 2016 by Ruth Hennig
Question: When is achieving 97 percent of a goal not good enough? Answer: When the unfinished 3 percent represents over half a million lead poisoned children. Just as America has set other big goals, we must return to the “forgotten but not gone” tragedy of lead poisoning and declare as a nation that we will end childhood lead poisoning in 5 years. 535,000 children are waiting for us to stand up together and say, Yes we can!
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October 31, 2016 by Ann Cornell
The Cornell Douglas Foundation is very pleased to announce the recipients of the fourth annual Jean and Leslie Douglas Pearl Award of 2016. The award is given to organizations and to individuals who are dedicated to improving the lives of others and to providing a sustainable earth for future generations. Despite challenges, they are committed to act as catalysts for positive change, and determined to promote the rights of individuals to live in a world with clean water, air, and sustainable land. The Cornell Douglas Foundation applauds its recipients’ unique vision, tenacity, and extraordinary accomplishments.
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With the widespread media coverage of Flint, Michigan’s water crisis, cities, advocacy groups, and philanthropy have adjusted their assumption that the country’s laws and infrastructure assure the public safe and healthy drinking water. In response, the Health and Environmental Funders Network (HEFN) surveyed foundations interested or engaged in grant making focused on healthy and affordable drinking water, aiming to better understand what foundations are doing and what more is needed to ensure our nation’s drinking water is healthy and affordable. In this blog post, HEFN Director Karla Fortunato discusses the survey results.
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Over the past two years the streets have swelled with unprecedented levels of protest proclaiming “Black Lives Matter” across the U.S. and around the globe. Today, I raise the question for philanthropy, particularly for white and non-black people of color donors and foundation staff: what more is required of us to advance racial justice? It is a question I have been grappling with as a biracial Sri Lankan/white American working in philanthropy.
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Who We Are
Steering Committee Member
Dr. Ann Blake combines thirty years of experience finding safer chemicals and materials in over a dozen different global sectors of consumer product manufacturing with her passion for economic and environmental justice and systems approaches to the task of...