Green Success Stories shines the Green Spotlight on Chris West. Chris is the chapter leader of America’s Future Raleigh, and is an ordained minister.
Tell us a bit about the product or solution you offer.
I have the joy of working in various spaces that unite expressions of faith with environmentalism, neighborhood economics, community development, and food justice. Overall, I see myself as a storyteller and a connector. That’s at the heart of all the random projects and various jobs I have found myself in. I’m lucky to be able to serve as an intermediary between amazing stories, fresh ideas, and people who feel called to leave the world a little better than they inherited it!
Share a green success story with us – how have you helped customers or other businesses in the fight against climate change?
I wear a few different hats. In my full-time role as a Food and Faith Coordinator at a major conservation nonprofit, I have the gift of working with faith-communities to address issues of food and environmental justice.
Outside of that position, I’m also the Grants and Donor Engagement Manger with a Christian nonprofit storytelling organization called Parable Media, where I get to help connect people with stories that matter and invite them into the telling of these sacred stories. As the Raleigh Chapter leader with Americas Future, I work to facilitate community conversations in Raleigh and get young people involved in their community. Over the past two years, we hosted more than 30 events; which have included helping launch two chapters of the American Conservation Coalition in North Carolina, hosting a nuclear energy tour and movie screening of the film Atomic Hope, and partnering with The Great Raleigh Cleanup’s adopt the block program to host regular cleanup events!
Last year, some friends and I launched Box the Good, a small business that sells social enterprise products from across the southeast in special cultivated themed boxes. Our business is part of 1% for the Planet and features many eco-friendly products; including an entire box dedicated to saving the bees! I’m on the board of a nonprofit in Raleigh called We Plant it Forward that helps plant trees and provides education about the value of forests, trees, and greenery. I’m an ordained minister and the co-facilitator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Environmental Stewardship Network Steering Committee.
What would you do with $1 billion dollars?
I’d help fund organizations, mostly operations costs, that seek to tell stories that inspire, conserve land for eco-tourism, and build local economies through local food (community farming).
I’d love a $1 billion dollar donation; but it’s more important to me that it came from a billion (or hundred million) people rather than one really generous person. As someone who has an extensive background in faith-based development, I have witnessed various types of gifts. There is something powerful about hundreds or thousands of generous people banding together to solve a problem or remove a barrier. Philanthropy, to me, is about belonging and membership, and ultimately, about the story that the partnerships tell.
What do you envision your industry looking like in ten years?
I’m hopeful that we will continue to see improvements in our food system and more thoughtful engagement with community. Over the last three years, I have just been so inspired by all the work being done in communities- often in small ways you won’t hear about on the national news- to create real transformation, deepen connectedness, conserve space, and address systematic injustice. I’m overjoyed and humbled by the incredible work being done by individuals in businesses, nonprofits, universities, local governments, and faith-based organizations to make their communities better places. People care about their neighbors and, even more so, they care about their kids and grandkids. They want to make the world a better place for them. There’s a lot of problems in the world and trouble on the horizon but as my Grandma Norma use to say, “For every problem in the world, there’s a hope. That hope is good people with courage, willing to help their neighbor when the going gets rough.”
My industry will continue to change- as it already has with AI and COVID and a hundred other small things. Over the next ten years, it will also continue to get better at addressing issues and better at building resilient, thriving communities, thanks to the millions of donors (big and small) and all those willing to do the work!