Green Umbrella is expanding its services and the number of people and communities it reaches through its efforts to address climate change.
The organization launched a regional climate collaborative last year as a singular program. Now, the group is making it the overall structure.
"We've realized since then — through starting to provide some of the programming and recruiting members — that it had the potential to be much more than just one program of Green Umbrella," says Ryan Mooney-Bullock, executive director. "It made more sense as an overarching structure for the entire organization. Through this shift, we are connecting all of the programs that we have within Green Umbrella, which cover a wide variety of issues, into the regional climate collaborative."
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That means, she explains, members have access to everything Green Umbrella provides such as climate action work, food policy and food equity efforts, buildings and energy resources, public orcharding, green school yards and more.
Green Umbrella says the expansion makes it one of the largest regional climate collaboratives in the country.
The group serves a 10-county area — Butler, Clermont, Hamilton and Warren counties in Ohio; Boone, Campbell, Grant and Kenton counties in Kentucky; and Dearborn and Franklin counties in Indiana — but will also now offer its Sustainability Playbook for Greater Cincinnati to an additional five counties: Brown County in Ohio; Bracken, Gallatin and Pendleton counties in Kentucky; and Ohio County in Indiana.
That playbook has funding from the U.S. EPA which uses the 15-county metropolitan statistical area.
"The EPA region is 15 counties, which covers about 3 million people. Green Umbrella's historic service area is 10 counties within that, which is about 2.2 million people," Mooney-Bullock explains. "So we will provide additional support and capacity building and lots of other things within that 10 county region, but the plan itself covers that larger area."
The Sustainability Playbook is described as "a recommended strategy to mitigate climate impacts, increase resilience, and improve the health and equity of 15 regional counties."
