We can actually harness a wider, more transformative power through taking action at the family and community levels than on either the individual or legal scale. Family and community action helps us to connect with and empower one another. History has proven that the survivors of adversity, are not necessarily the strongest, nor the cleverest, but the most connected. Strength in numbers can only be found through unity.

“It is impossible to achieve a harmonization of man and nature without creating a human community that lives in a lasting balance with its natural environment.”

Murray Bookchin, Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

Many of us start with Level 1 activities, joining larger movements as we gain skill and confidence. While levels 2 and 3 are arguably the strongest, each level of action is important, building a framework for a sustainable system. Each contributes to the collective action of the community. We can harness the actions that are accessible to us without worry that we are not doing enough, and we can explore these abilities, hone them, and take pride in them. It is also important to meet others where they are at, instead of allowing ourselves to waste energy or kinship on feelings of resentment about "what is not". 

Level 0 : Take care of yourself and each other

Level 1: Individual actions

•  Implement a whole food, plant-based diet

• Drive Less – You can walk to the convenience store, ride your bike to work, use public transportation when you meet up with friends, go car-free altogether, or just simply go places less. Walking especially is a great way to get in touch with nature and with your community, and care for your mental health. 

• Join a local CSA or other groups such compost pickup services, milkman services offering plant-based foods, or start a resilience (victory) garden.

• Learn to fix and mend things instead of tossing them out. This saves money , reduces waste, and is a nice reminder to value the things we have.

• Consider going plastic-free

• Recycle – Remember to wash your recyclables before tossing them in the bin, to increase the chances that they will actually be recycled. Or get creative, and repurpose those items yourself!

• Install Solar Panels

• Turn off lights and unplug devices when not in use, to save electricity. This is kind to the planet AND kind to your wallet!

•  Install motion activated exterior lighting to reduce light pollution, or even reconsider whether that exterior lighting is needed at all! This has security purposes as well as environmental purposes, because contrary to popular belief, artificial light at night is actually correlated with higher levels of crime.

Level 2: Friends & Family

• Share a plant-based meal with loved ones

• Engage with friends and family, explaining issues, solutions, and doing group activities that get them involved. It’s important to note that while facts can help back up your arguments, this should not be a case of overwhelming the opposition with facts and logic. When we speak to loved ones, we speak from the heart. Check out our page regarding interpersonal communication to learn more

• Carpool or find car-free ways to travel like going on a family bike ride or taking the train so you can relax and catch up when you go on holiday with your friends.

• Change your energy provider to a renewable one or install solar panels

Click one of the buttons beneath to learn more:

Level 3: Community & Local Institutions

• Boy/Girl Scout/Guides, and similar programs are excellent for introducing kids to real world skills, problem solving, and opportunities to get involved. Museums, conservation organizations, and other groups often have programs aimed to introduce kids to subjects such as local environmental issues, and hands-on activities that can help shape a lifelong interest in preserving the natural world.

• School programs including recycling, solar installations, vegetable/pollinator/sensory/rain gardens can be a wonderful way to help get kids interested and excited about these subjects.

• Hospitals, homeless shelters, prisons, and special care facilities may be places that could benefit from simple things like composting, home gardens (i.e. victory garden or resilience garden), educational programs, etc. Try contacting your local institutions to learn what might be missing, and what solutions might help.

• Work with a local community garden or start a new one

• Education Adult classes, college classes, after-school clubs or clubs at public places such as libraries or community centers, outreach tables, online videos, pamphlets, zines, etc. can help spread important information, gain support for movements, or simply help people be more self-sufficient in the future.

• Shop organic, fair-trade or other similar labeling to support more environmentally and socially ethical behavior among businesses.

• Shop locally buy, donate, or sell second-hand items instead of new, to reduce resource waste and combat hyper-consumption

• Organize or join a river cleanup or a cleanup day for another biome in your area.

Level 4: Economy & Policy Change

• Local leadership - Contact local politicians, engage in meetings concerning community planning, homeowner meetings, PTO meetings, etc. This can be a great way to get important issues brought to the front of our leaders' minds. State the problem, give reasonable solutions, try to gain support (perhaps through a petition or open letter in the newspaper), and hold leaders accountable if they fail to follow through on their promises!

• Vote for, contact, and support leaders who will protect the rights of sentient beings, the environment, and our future.

• Call for regulatory change on the corporate, national, and international level.

• Call for harsher penalties against those who pollute, poach, commit ecological or humanitarian crimes.

• Encourage companies and nations to better record, measure, and monitor major problems like poaching, slavery, pollution, illegal dumping and sewage discharge, fraud, etc.

• Boycott companies, organizations, and systems that you don't want to support. With the Buycott app you can select boycott campaigns that align with your personal social and environmental priorities. You can even create your own campaigns!

Level 5: Global Community

This is very similar to level 3, but acknowledges that modern technology allows us to connect with individuals from all across the globe. This gives us a unique opportunity to find solidarity in a global movement, as well as to learn from one another and apply what we learn in our own lives and communities.

Studies have found that international cooperation and sharing the burden of climate action increases people's willingness to take on policies and actions that will impact their lives. 

Additional Resources

Will Grant - Four Levels of Action – Video interview with Will Grant, originator of the four levels of action

Drawdown Ecochallenge – A fun and social way to take measurable action on the top solutions to global warming

Grants

International

• Animal Charity Evaluators "ACE Movement Grants (formerly “Effective Animal Advocacy Fund”) is for anyone who is interested in making the animal advocacy movement more effective."

• The Pollination Project (TPP) "is a vegan foundation that offers seed funding to grassroots activists working to build a kinder, more compassionate world for human & non-human animals.
  
  TPP focuses on early stage ideas and funds individuals directly. Over the years, they’ve seen the power of bottom-up, community-led grassroots activism. Through “pollination philanthropy”– a democratic model of peer-to-peer decision-making — TPP works with a global network of grantees, community partners, and volunteer advisors to identify extraordinary project leaders who, due to the grassroots nature of their work, are often not in a position to receive funding from other foundations or institutions.
  
  They make micro grants 365 days a year to grassroots global change agents and have a growing global community of 4,500 grassroots leaders in 150 countries. They support vegan outreach projects around the world, and have a special program for farmed animal activists in Brazil, India and Mexico. Their goal is to offer not just seed funding, but capacity-building support and connectivity with other activists working in the same geographic or issue area. "