FLOWS Climate Justice: Solutions Rooted in Culture

FLOWS (Foundations for Leaders Organizing for Water and Sustainability) builds community leadership, beautifies environments, and transforms systems for justice and resilience. We're led by and for People of Color, immigrants, affordable housing residents, LGBT2SQIA+ and Frontline communities. We implement tangible solutions for communities that need it most and shift the narrative about community leadership. FLOWS is a leading grassroots Environmental Justice organization in Boulder County, CO.

Your donations support equitable community leadership to the forefront of environmental work. In 2026, we are focused on: 

1. Community-Led Resilience for Affordable Housing in Boulder County

Resilience is a priority for FLOWS and the communities we serve. From energy cutoffs, to wildfires, drought, flooding, SNAP and other cuts to our safety nets, our communities need to come together to prepare, learn, plan and share. We are launching a hands-on community training for affordable housing residents, immigrants, people of color, multigenerational households, and other Frontline community members to initiate community-led resilience hubs with tools and resources like solar generators, ovens, emergency communications, etc.

Our approach expands beyond preparing for climate disasters by reducing burdens on our local ecosystems and infrastructure, building community leadership, and providing resources for long term solutions such as water harvesting, native plants, edible food gardens, and ecosystem restoration.

2. Community Leadership & Advocacy

We build spaces for community members to build power and share their expertise with policymakers and advocate for their community's needs and health. We created pathways for in-depth input into the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan (BVCP)-our region's 25-year strategic development plan. By bringing in community voices, processes for social justice, and key community concerns like food justice, social equity issues are now included for the first time in the plan's history.

We informed local energy planning, water utilities plans, Colorado Parks and Wildlife processes, and city and county government climate planning, which will continue into the next year. For the 3rd year we'll also meet with our state representatives at Latino Advocacy Day 2026, where we both learn about state policy and share our input with our representatives.

3. "People's Planning"

Amplifying and building upon our advocacy work, we work with Once and Future Green to develop a People's Plan for Climate Justice. This project employs interactive, imaginative, embodied liberation practices for communal education and planning. Governments and large institutions usually have strategic plans but do not always reflect the most impacted communities' priorities. So, we're working to create our own "master plan" within a coalition of grassroots leaders to actualize our dreams for a more beautiful, just, resilient community where everyone's needs are not only met, but we thrive. Your support allows us to make this process more inclusive and collaborative with input from more community members and groups that are usually excluded from local strategic planning processes and shaping local policy.

4. Leadership Development for Environmental and Social Justice with Ecosystem Restoration

We support and grow the leadership of our FLOWS Community council and our communities at large. Inspired by our work and hand-on projects, many of our members have joined government and nonprofit boards, started their own amazing projects and organizations. A few of our recent and ongoing projects for leadership and ecosystem restoration:

• Community Climate Innovator Awards and Spirit of Community Awards- A celebration of the leadership of our Frontline communities and their work connecting with Nature, building social justice, meeting community needs, carrying culture, and showcasing what's possible for Climate Justice locally.  
• San Lazaro- We support the San Lazaro mobile home community in addressing their ongoing water crisis with leadership development and natural solutions. Learn more in this recent article about the project.

   

• Resilience Gathering- With our partners at Harvest of All First Nations and Once and Future Green, we brought the community together in this time of overlapping crises. This gathering provided interactive community mapping, examples of innovations in addressing community safety, building political power, explorations of individual and collective responses to threats like funding cuts, ICE and more.
• Collaborative Response to the SNAP crises- We wrote a collaborative letter with calls for philanthropies to step up to the moment to support grassroots and mutual aid efforts while looking to long term-strategies to build resilience and food justice. Check it out here.

We are grateful for your support! In service to a more equitable, just and beautiful future for all, 

FLOWS

FLOWS is project of Colorado Nonprofit Development Center.