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Climate change is more than an environmental issue.

For the past two decades we at Familias en Acción, have worked closely with Latino/x/e families and communities across the state providing immediate health support, and ensuring that Latino/x/e health and well-being is front and center. We have led this work with a clear understanding that inequitable public policies, racial discrimination, and systems that marginalize our communities only exacerbate and perpetuate recurrences of chronic illnesses, food insecurity, and mental health decline in our community members. Familias en Acción knows that these health inequalities, symptoms, and occurrences do not happen in a vacuum but in an environment where natural and community resources have been exploited, over extracted, and polluted by capitalist and colonial forces, leading to a cycle of inequitable effects of climate change –more disproportionately affecting those with existing health and social disparities, making social justice a more accurate and very bold goal for the future of our work and the communities in Oregon. 

Our Program

Familias en Acción was awarded funds from the City of Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) to implement a Latino/x/e community plan for climate equity, health equity, and resilience.

Building upon our values for community resilience including physical, spiritual, and mental wellbeing, and understanding resilience as more than bouncing back from adversity, but including mental resources like determination, self-worth and kindness, we build our acción climática with the following pillars:

  • Culture and Identity
  • Family Resilience and Wellbeing
  • Facing Climate and Racial Capitalism
  • Food and Land Sovereignty
  • Advocacy and Community Engagement

Meet Our Team!

Jessica Nischik-Long

Climate Equity Program Manager

Nancy Cornejo Angel

Climate & Health Community Engagement Organizer

Check out our program highlight in The Oregonian here

Get updates about our Climate & Health Equity program & upcoming events by clicking below!

“Kinship with the land is never separated from the significance of a community, lover and a child.  Indeed, tierra completes the circle-for upon death, we are interred and eventually become one with the Earth.” 

Cherrie Moraga in “Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment” by Priscilla Solis Ybarra.