We are pleased to announce the formation of the Rural Beacon Initiative's Inaugural Advisory Board, comprised of renowned scholars Dr. Cornell West, Dr. Yolanda Banks Anderson, and Dr. David Orr.
Rural Beacon Initiative (RBI) is a BIPOC-led social enterprise that leverages deployed projects to increase community ownership in the emerging supply chains of clean energy and regenerative agriculture.
“RBI is a crucial next step in the Black Freedom movement - self-determination and dignity! Let us support this marvelous new project,” remarked Dr. Cornel West.
“RBI demonstrates an innovative way forward in the pursuit of environmental justice, climate justice and sustainable land ownership,” continued Dr. Yolanda Banks-Anderson. It is a model which needs to be widely replicated."
"The Rural Beacon Initiative stands at the crossroads where issues of economic justice, land stewardship, and climate change converge. It is also where a future much better than that in prospect begins, one powered by sunshine and grounded in fairness, neighborliness, ecological competence, and chastened by the knowledge that we are kin to all that ever was, is, or ever will be. RBI's methods are practical, grounded in a historic place but its vision is in that great prophetic tradition extending from Isaiah through Martin Luther King and beyond,” echoed Dr. David Orr.
RBI’s mission is to ensure that BIPOC communities—particularly BIPOC communities in the Southeast—are at the forefront of a just transition that deploys projects which not only lower emissions and electrify communities but create real economic opportunities for those that have too long been siloed from this conversation.
To learn more about this partnership, please visit our website, here.