When do you feel the most empowered?

Is it when you’re excelling at what you do and achieving great accomplishments? Or is it when you’re learning from and sharing ideas with a strong peer whose accomplishments make you feel like you can strive towards absolutely anything? We bet it’s the latter.

This month we’re feeling particularly empowered, and we hope you will, too. 1% for the Planet is featuring the Women’s Earth Alliance, an international organization that provides women across the world with everything they need to make positive environmental changes possible in their communities and in the world. These leaders are innovative, inspiring, and, as a result of support from partnerships, more equipped than ever to make significant, far-reaching environmental change.

These women are part of the rising community of entrepreneurial women leaders, who recent scholarship has suggested have more than enough power to affect true change in areas like the environment and poverty.

PROUD TO BE WOMEN-LED

We at Stream2Sea are no strangers to the swift and immense positive change that can come about when those with Earth-changing ideas are given the tools to share them.

Our founder Autumn Blum—chemist, scuba diver, and entrepreneur—was inspired to create a new standard of body care products while she was out adventuring in Palau. Having already successfully sold a natural skin care company she started at the age of 23, Autumn decided to jump back into the entrepreneurial world when she noticed a disconnect between fellow water adventurers and their use of skin care products that harmed the very ecosystems they were there to explore.

So instead of standing by and waiting around for someone else to change the world, she jumped back into what she knew – the manufacturing and natural products business world – to develop and produce coral-safe sunscreen and body products.

Speaking about her experience establishing a company that she knew in her heart had the power to change the industry and the world, Autumn had this to say:  “We all have the power to effect change and we’re all responsible for what happens in our world. With a growing awareness about the chemicals used in sunscreens and bodycare products, we need to know how our choices can affect not only our health but also our oceans, lakes, rivers and streams.”

BE THE CHANGE

How can you affect positive environmental change and help your peers do the same? Empowerment, of course!

Be part of the solution! Support brands, like us, who partner with 1% for the Planet, and help their efforts to support the Women’s Earth Alliance this month. Or, donate to the Women’s Earth Alliance directly so you can empower—and be empowered by—the women who have come together to implement solutions to environmental issues facing their communities and the world.

Lift up your peers! Know someone with a great idea? Remind them of the power that one idea can have to affect positive change in the world. Tell them about all the inspiring women who have steadfastly pursued their goals to change the world, and have succeeded. Listen carefully and learn from those with passion and ideas.

Believe in yourself! Do you have a great idea that will make the world a better place? Share your idea, and never give up on your dreams to save the Earth and all those in it! We believe in you!

Want to learn more? Check out some of our previous posts!