Peace Rising is a Boston-based nonprofit dedicated to predicting and preventing environmental conflict through a data-based approach to climate activism internationally. Founded in 2017, Peace Rising works internationally to ensure that human security, population well-being, and climate change mitigation are tackled together. Peace Rising employs teams in Bangladesh, Brazil, and the United States. This year, following the pandemic, and particularly its impact on the most marginalized communities, Peace Rising has focused most concretely on supporting residents in its immediate vicinity near Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As a fundraising and development intern at Peace Rising, I spearheaded summer-long fundraising and public awareness campaigns and strategized long-term fundraising strategies for the organization. I employed awareness campaigns across social media platforms to increase publicity and facilitate outreach across organizations. I relied on my graphic design skills to create publicity materials for the organization. As the summer progressed, I implemented an amended funding strategy, drawing the team’s attention to microgrants as an effective method to sustain Peace Rising’s immediate financial needs as a growing organization. In contribution to the organization’s larger mission as a collective of individuals dedicated to targeted environmental peacebuilding, my work contributed to the fundraising activities that sustain the Peace Rising’s internal operations. Further, I created and reinforced bonds with adjacent organizations in the United States and internationally and further developed Peace Rising’s fundraising and development initiatives for the future. Throughout the summer, my research and writing skillset proved critical to my work with Peace Rising. The ability to source relevant and ethical grant funding resources relied upon the results-driven analytical skills I have honed both through my undergraduate studies and through the corresponding internship positions I have held. Most importantly, my skills as an SESF fellow facilitated my ability to offer strategic insights to the fundraising and development team, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Specifically, in brainstorming fundraising strategy for Peace Rising this summer, I offered entrepreneurial responses to the obstacles presented by the pandemic. As a French literature and translation major at Barnard College, Columbia University, I employed cross-cultural expertise and the ability to build strong and lasting client relationships to establish international, domestic, and local partnerships with other establishments involved in the intersections of social justice, environmental awareness, and advocacy. My role at Peace Rising culminated in the Peace Rising International Conference for Peacebuilding 2020. In launching this initiative, which prioritized both Peace Rising’s fundraising efforts and its commitment to supporting debate, dialogue, and research in the scope of its goals, website development proved fundamental to the financial and discursive success of our endeavors. Thus, my web development skills proved useful in our collective work to launch the conference.

Many of the challenges I faced this summer were directly or indirectly associated with the impact of COVID-19. Perhaps the most influential obstacle I overcame this summer was the slowdown in economic activity that followed the onset of COVID-19 in the United States and internationally. To cite statistics from early 2020 consumer spending in the United States, the country experienced the starkest quarterly contraction on record in Q2 of this year. Specifically, the Department of Commerce reported a 10.1 percent drop in real personal consumption expenditure (PCE) in Q2 2020 compared to Q1 2020. Consumer spending maps directly on our work in the social entrepreneurship arena in that it adds increased pressure to retain donors, increased difficulty to attain donors, and general contraction in spending among our funding audiences. In responding to these challenges, I found it vital to generate innovative, resourceful initiatives and develop imaginative approaches to problem solving. As much of the world transferred to virtual work, learning, and social environments, so too did Peace Rising. Our weekly group sessions took place over Zoom, I remained active on our organization-wide Slack, and I organized opportunities to meet with team members, co-workers, and supervisors in virtual meeting rooms to emulate as much as possible the collaborative, team-working environment of a tight knit, office-based organization.

In coming out of my internship experience, I have been touched by the ways that Peace Rising continues its pledge to identify vulnerable communities and engage those communities through cost-effective, empowering, and ethical interventions. In considering those moral and ethical implications that underpin Peace Rising’s work, I was also surprised by the degree of flexibility our organization employed during this summer, especially in relation to the most detrimental and damaging events that defined 2020. In particular, I have been excited to collaborate with Peace Rising’s leadership team and coworkers on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in both an internal and external capacity. Following the murder of Geoge Floyd and the ensuing political and social unrest in the United States and internationally, my research and analysis of the intersections of racial and environmental justice played a crucial role in our outreach and development strategy, as well as the structure of the organization as a whole.