The Chipkoe Foundation

The Chipkoe Foundation believes in the extraordinary potential of young people. Through intergeneration and cross-cultural communication, The Foundation builds a consortium of socially responsible citizens, community stakeholders, educators, business leaders, politicians, and other influential people committed to empowering youth to be healthy, productive, and engaged citizens. The Foundation facilitates programs that serve as catalysts of change that help young people embrace environmental stewardship, make healthy choices, and improve their communities through service oriented leadership. Our hope is to embrace these emerging leaders, cultivate their efforts and ideas, and strategize through intergeneration and cross-cultural communication.

What's a "Chipkoe"

The “Chipkoe” name is a spin of the actual name and events of the “Chipko” movement in1972 where a group of villagers in the Uttarakhand region of India opposed commercial logging. The movement is best known for its tactic of hugging trees to prevent them being cut down. This gave rise to the term “tree hugger” for environmentalists. Also, it was notable in that the movement was led by women who were influenced by Gandhi; further supporting our foundational commitment to cultural diversity and the natural environment. The name of the movement comes from the Hindi word for 'embrace', as the villagers hugged the trees, and prevented the contractors' from chopping trees down. “…Hug the Trees Movement’, originated from an incident in a remote village high up in the Himalayas in 1972. The bare facts of the incident are that there was a dispute between the local villagers and a logging contractor who had been allowed to fell trees in a forest close to the village.”

Chipkoe Principles

• Create public awareness for the service of the Chipkoe Foundation and its supporters
• Increase the understanding of and interaction amongst the environmental community through intergeneration and cross-cultural communication
• Provide a mechanism whereby diverse groups can express its support for social equity and responsibility pertaining to their communities and or campuses
• Work with schools systems (K-12) and college campuses to promote sustainability and green schools (school buildings or related facilities that create healthy environments that are conducive to learning while saving energy, resources and money)

Our goals are to:

• Advocate for sustainable school systems and healthy, productive learning environments within these systems o Increase knowledge and awareness about the environment and support programs that encourage responsible decisions and actions that impact the natural environment
• Encourage the implementation of “Environmental Education Curriculum” and environmental-based Training Programs
• Make the correlation between Environmental Literacy and potential Financial Savings
• Work with and support campus organizations that encourage environmental, stewardship, action, and sustainability.