Catholic Charities, Diocese of Stockton

The Environmental Justice Project focuses on improving air quality and reducing global warming emissions in California’s Central Valley. In 2014, the project will advocate in favor of strong Sustainable Community Strategies in several Valley counties, work with the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Stockton to engage Latino parishioners in dialogues about climate change, and help defend and implement California’s global warming laws and programs.

The Environmental Justice Project focuses on improving air quality and reducing global warming emissions in California’s Central Valley. It employs three main strategies: training Latino Catholics to take leadership roles on climate and clean air issues in their parishes and communities, engaging parishes and community groups in regional policymaking to reduce transportation-related global warming emissions, and working with environmental justice and health partners to ensure that the state's global warming policies are implemented.

The Environmental Justice Project of Catholic Charities, Stockton Diocese works to educate parishioners in the Central Valley and mobilize Catholic voices to support air quality and global warming policies at the local, regional, and state levels. Sixty percent of the 250,000 Catholics in the Diocese are Latino. The Justice Project would establish a bilingual outreach coordinator position and begin to implement recommendations for a sustainable fundraising program that came out of a Hewlett organizational effectiveness grant in 2009.