View the 2021 Webpage here.
You are currently viewing the 2020 Climate Preparedness Week webpage. For the 2021 Climate Preparedness Webpage, click here.
2020 Event Recordings
If you missed some of central events you wanted to attend or would like to see the zoom recording of any of the central events, here is the YouTube link below that has the different events recorded:
What is Climate Prep Week?
During September 24–30* each year, we mark Climate Preparedness Week, dedicated to learning, service, and actions that better prepare our communities for extreme weather events. By coming together to host events, we provide the resources and space to think about the ways that climate change disadvantages some communities more than others.
*Sundown Sun 9/27 through sundown Mon 9/28 are Yom Kippur, and we advise hosts to avoid scheduling events during this holy time of year for our friends of the Jewish tradition.
This Year - We’re Virtual!
Last year, we were excited to count over 134+ events as part of Climate Prep Week. Due to the Covid-19 public health crisis, we have decided to transition Climate Prep Week to a virtual setting to ensure the safety of our community members. We realize that many of us are still getting adjusted to this new normal so, in order to ease the workload, CREW will be hosting some centralized virtual events that any organization can co-opt and participate in.
Our Theme this Year is: Social Resilience is Climate Resilience
In light of the recent critical conversations around racial justice in society, we will be focusing several of our central events around the intersections of climate resilience, racial justice and social resilience and encourage Climate Prep Week hosts to consider doing the same.
Our featured events:
See below for the full calendar of events hosted by partners.
Palaces for the People: A Community Discussion with Eric Klinenberg
- A virtual discussion with acclaimed writer Eric Klinenberg with CREW Founder Craig Altemose and librarian Clayton Cheever on the role of social infrastructure in building climate resilience. Eric Klinenberg is an internationally renowned scholar known for his novel Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago and his more recent book Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.
- September 23th at 7pm- Link to watch below:
Resilient Agriculture: Climate Impacts on Our Foods Systems and How We Can Respond: Lessons from the frontlines in Zimbabwe
- A panel discussion led by Enet Mukurazita and hosted by Rachel Sperling, Librarian for Environmental Studies at Yale University's Marx Science and Social Science Library, with women farmers in Zimbabwe on their experiences dealing with climate impacts
- September 24th at 1pm- Link to watch below:
Neighborhood by Neighborhood: Mapping Our Resilience
- Which neighborhoods of Boston are most vulnerable to climate change? How do we leverage social infrastructure in these neighborhoods to enhance their resilience? Join to hear an overview of a mapping project between the Conservation Law Foundation, the city of Boston, and CREW to explore the community assets that exist within the city of Boston and how they can be leveraged to create a more climate-resilient future, with a particular focus on how we can serve communities of color and other marginalized neighborhoods.
- September 25th at 10am- Link to watch below:
The Economics of Climate Change with Madhavi Venkatesan, PhD
- Our economic system has fostered individualism over community and competition over collaboration, because simply, these are the channels that promote economic growth as we measure it in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We sell more when everyone has to have their own. But, individualism and competition results in unequal distribution that mimics the inequitable distribution of access to resources in our country. In many cases, inequity is a moral issue because the basis of it is exploitation of the vulnerable in a myriad of forms across historical time. In our discussion we will focus on the relationship between economics and sustainability: social justice, environmental justice and economic equity and also how our focus on economic growth has facilitated the speed of global Climate Change and exacerbated social justice issues along with the other two components of sustainability.
- September 26th at 7pm- Link to watch is below:
How Repair Events Can Transform Our Throwaway Culture
- A conversation on How Repair Events Can Transform Our Throwaway Culture with Elizabeth Knight and John Wackman, authors of Repair Revolution. This event will look at how repair events in libraries and other spaces are helping bring people together around common goals of sustainability, stewardship, community resilience, as well as social and climate justice. This conversation will be led by Blue Marble Librarian, Gabrielle Griffis.
- September 29 at 6:30pm- Link to watch below:
The Linked Fight for Racial Justice and Climate Justice
- Join us for a conversation with CREW Program Manager Reverend Vernon K. Walker as he speaks to Reverends Karlene Griffiths Sekou and Hajar Logan of Alternatives for Community and Environment about how there is no climate justice without racial justice and how the fight for equality has to be led by those who have been most impacted.
- September 30 at 6:30pm- Link to watch below:
- To see our organizational partners from Climate Prep Week 2020, Click Here
Check out some pictures from Climate Prep Week 2019 below, and a calendar of our full list of events this year!
From left to right: Community Visit from the New England Aquarium at the Lynn Public Library where kids could start to get hands-on experience; "Climate Change: What Is It and What Can You Do About It?" a bilingual talk in Holyoke, MA that explored individual and communal solutions; Emergency Prep Kit Preparedness Workshop in Duxbury, MA that showed people how to best prepare for all types of disasters.