Faith Commuter Challenge
Faith Commuter Challenge 2017 
This Spring hundreds of faith communities will join together in a nationwide Commuter Challenge. Between June 2-11, people of all faiths across the country will be reducing the ecological footprint of their commute to worship.
We invite you (and your faith community) to join in by travelling to your place of worship on foot, by bike, or by public transit and carpooling.
More Info:
The 2017 Faith Commuter Challenge is:
- A week-long event that coincides with the National Environment & Commuter Challenge weeks (June 2-11)
- A friendly competition between Canadian places of faith
- A celebration of active and sustainable transportation
- An fun and easy way to try different modes of how to get to worship
- Nationally hosted by Faith & the Common Good, through local partners
How it works:
- Register your faith community and yourself to participate in the challenge week. Encourage others to join. Click here for detailed registration instructions.
- Between June 2-11, choose a day to leave your car behind when you travel to worship. Rideshare, take public transit, carpool, bike, or walk. Do whatever moves you!
- On that day, log in to track your trip to worship via the Commuter Challenge website. See your GHG emission reduction, calorie consumption, distance, and fuel cost savings.
- Check out which faith communities and cities have the highest percentage of healthy travelers.
- Join with faith communities across the country to acknowledge and celebrate with certificates, prizes, and fun events!
Suggestions for Getting Started:
- Talk to your faith community about joining the challenge (June 2-11, 2017) to demonstrate your care for creation.
- Choose a Champion or Team who will plan and coordinate your event(s). These events may include:
- Carpooling, launching a ride-share program in your faith community, or riding the bus together
- Hosting a bicycle tune-up station, distributing bike maps
- A special blessing ceremony, prayers, or acknowledgement of all the ways people are working to reduce their carbon footprint
- A neighbourhood bike ride before or after a worship service
- Bicycle decorating for the young and young-at-heart
- Go to faith.commuterchallenge.ca to register your faith community to take part.
- Once your faith community is registered, register yourself so that you can track your participation and assist others.
- Promote the event in your community — newsletter, website, service bulletins.
If you also want to track your workplace trips during the week of June 4-10, visit commuterchallenge.ca.
Benefits of active and sustainable transportation:
- Reduce the threat of climate change — Did you know that it takes 130 trees to produce the amount of oxygen needed to combat the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from one car each year?
- Connect with others — Active transport and ride sharing fosters new friendships, helps others, and increases networking.
- Reduce traffic congestion — Reducing the number of individual car trips means we will have less traffic congestion and less demand for roads. This will improve travel times and reduce fuel consumption.
- Enjoy better health — Introduce calorie-burning exercise time by biking or walking to a public transportation or carpool stop.
- Reduce air pollution — Pollutants from many transportation sources aggravate respiratory disease and contribute to property damage and acid rain.
Divesting Your Congregation – Resource
Thanks to our friends at Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church for putting together and sharing this great resource about their Fossil Fuel Divestment experience:
Welcome to the story of Trinity St. Paul’s United Church’s journey of divestment of our congregational funds from fossil fuels. We hope you’ll learn from our reflections on our story and our activities!
To put this resource together, we reflected on the challenges we faced, as well as the questions we asked ourselves and those we heard from others, as we moved towards divestment. Are any of these questions also YOUR questions? We’ve described the actions we took and the lessons we learned, with the hope that you can adapt our learnings to your own context.
Just click on your areas of interest to get started!
| We’re a small congregation. Can we do this? Learn how TSP’s Climate Justice Group spread tasks among ourselves to ease the load. |
We’re committed to helping our congregation take a stand, but we’re not experts in divestment. How do we build the knowledge we need? We share how we drew on numerous external resources to build our knowledge. |
How can we help our congregation understand the faith and justice rationales for divestment? Explore TSP’s engagement of our broader congregational community to address climate justice. |
| What is a realistic timeline for the divestment process? What do our Board and financial officers need to know? Learn more about the key stages in TSP’s divestment and reinvestment process. |
The church across town has asked us for advice. How should we respond?What is our role in the global climate movement? | What are some other climate actions we can take as individuals? As a congregation? Learn about other green initiatives at TSP. |
See the original resource on the TSP website by clicking below.
Anglican General Synod faces Divestment Vote
“You Are My Witnesses” (Isaiah 43:10)
At the 41st General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada from July 7-12, 2016 the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa will bring forward an invitation to all General Synod Delegates to be witnesses through direct and immediate action by supporting resolution C001-Fossil Fuel Divestment.
The time is now.
Climate change is destroying the integrity of God’s creation. It is negatively impacting people, families, youth, industry, agriculture, employment and community throughout Canada and the world.
The situation is urgent.
To maintain a liveable planet 80% of all known fossil fuel deposits must be left in the ground, undeveloped, never burned.
Our church, at this integral point in history, has an opportunity to contribute to the fulfillment of our baptismal promise to safeguard the integrity of God’s creation by divesting in the fossil fuel industry and beginning to actively invest in renewable energy. Such publicized divestment not only witnesses to people of faith but also aims to press governments to implement strong policies to shift our economy off fossil fuels and in to industry and workforces that are founded on environmental sustainability.
The time is now.
#GS2016 #divestnow
Read Resolution Number C001 – Ottawa Diocese Motion to General Synod on Fossil Fuel Divestment
Read the Backgrounder on why Fossil Fuel Divestment matters right now
VIDEO: It’s time to Break Free
It was such a great honour to host this training with Salal and Cedar Watershed Discipleship Community, at Canadian Memorial United Church and Centre For Peace.
Find out more at: http://fossilfreefaith.ca/spiritually-rooted-direct-action…/
Join us to Break Free from Fossil Fuels: http://canada.breakfree2016.org/
Spiritually Rooted Direct Action Training
The training is being hosted by Salal and Cedar and Fossil Free Faith, at Canadian Memorial United Church and Centre for Peace. With training being provided by 350.org and Greenpeace.
Anglican Diocese of Quebec Divests
DIOCESE OF QUÉBEC: DIVESTMENT REPORT: 23 November 2015
Background:
Some aspects of the Governance of the Diocese of Québec differ from that of most or all other dioceses because of its time and place in pre-Confederation history. Within this Diocese, responsibility for investments rests within the mandate of an entity called Church Society of the Diocese of Québec. Church Society exercises this part of its role through an Investment Committee of professionals who volunteer their time and expertise.
Process:
Following the direction of motions passed at the annual general meeting of Church Society, the Investment Committee began four years ago to divest from its mining holdings, given the serious ethical concerns raised around environmental and human rights issues.
In 2014 a motion passed at the Church Society called on the Investment Committee to review its fossil fuel holdings and present back to Church Society. (This motion was forwarded to the CMWG earlier this year.)
During that year, extensive documentation on the impacts of fossil fuel exploration, extraction, transformation and transportation were forwarded to the chair of the Investment Committee, Central Board (which governs Church Society) and the Diocesan Executive Council. Documents collected came from such diverse sources as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, Governor of the Bank of England, World Council of Churches, The Anglican Consultative Communion and the writings of Pope Francis. (This is but a small sampling of the total research made available from international and national environmental, financial and church bodies.)
At Church Society’s annual general meeting of 2015 Diocesan Bishop Dennis Drainville, President of Church Society, issued a letter in follow up to the various motions, review of holdings and research. (This letter was forwarded to the CMWG earlier this year.)
On 23 September 2015, the Investment Committee of the Diocese of Québec was pleased to report that divestment from fossil fuels and mineral extraction was almost complete.
On 23 November 2015, the Investment Committee was able to provide the details of the divestment process.
Details:
Over the past 4 years, $525,000 dollars in gold and copper mining operations have been divested.
Over the past 2 years, $1.4 million dollars in oil and gas have been divested.
$320,000 remain in fossil fuels as that financial instrument has not reached maturity. By year end, the committee expects to be 100% divested.
On 26 November 2015 Bishop Drainville shared this good news within his charge to Synod.
The Diocese will continue work on this critical issue as part of its commitment to the Fifth Mark of Mission.