OCEJ Summer Fundraiser 2024

Summer is upon us! We are excited to invite you to the Orange County Environmental Justice (OCEJ) Summer Fundraiser on Friday, July 26, 2024, 6-9 pm. Please join us for a night of community building and enjoy delicious cuisine, live music, and an art auction featuring local artists in a beautiful ecological reserve. 

Your attendance and support will directly help fund our $10,000 goal for the OCEJ Environmental Justice Organizing Academy. EJOA is a summer program over the span of eight weeks to equip youth of color with the resources, skills, and confidence to organize around environmental justice issues in their own communities, hold elected officials accountable, and implement Just Transition policy changes. Each week focuses on a different topic and guest speaker to share their expertise and knowledge. EJOA graduates have advanced to staff and leadership roles at OCEJ and in the community. Three out of five OCEJ staff members are EJOA graduates. 

Your support will also directly help fund OCEJ’s Defending the Sacred Youth Internship. In collaboration with Acjachemen and Tongva indigenous activists, youth interns develop social media campaigns, fundraising strategies, and programming with Friends of Puvungna, in service to the defense and restoration of sacred sites across Long Beach and Orange County. Since 2022, OCEJ Defending the Sacred interns have organized gatherings for Native youth, including poetry readings, workshops on traditional foodways, Acjachemen basket weaving, and discussions on identity and the importance of sacred sites. In 2023, we hosted a convening for the intertribal Indigenous community of Southern California, including an educational tour of Puvungna, a Native California plants workshop, and the launch of a coloring book centered on Puvungna’s plant and animal life. In 2024, Defending the Sacred Youth Interns will continue to support intergenerational gatherings for local Indigenous communities.

Together, we will fight for environmental justice by mobilizing and empowering our communities.  

PRICING OPTIONS are $15/$25/$50/$100 on a sliding scale depending on your ability to pay and contribute to helping us meet our fundraising goal

Why Sliding Scale? 

With mindfulness towards economic justice, the sliding scale represents the idea that financial resources, including income, are not and should not be the only determining factor in whether or not someone can access services, care, or our event experience. We offer tickets between $15 to $50 to provide an avenue of access to all those who would like to attend. We lean on your honest assessment of your ability to give and are so grateful for the opportunity to share this with you. For a sliding scale to work, it relies on the principles of truthfulness, respect for complexity, and accountability. You can read more about this here.

About OCEJ

Formed in 2016, Orange County Environmental Justice Educational Fund (OCEJ) is a 501(c)3 multi-cultural, multi-ethnic environmental justice organization. We are developing grassroots leadership and advancing an environmental justice agenda within the ancestral homelands of the Acjachemen and Tongva Nations, now known as Orange County, California. Our mission is to fight for environmental justice by mobilizing and empowering marginalized community members. 

About The Peter & Mary Muth Interpretive Center

The Muth Interpretive Center is a 10,000-square-foot educational facility built into the side of the bluffs on the north side of the Bay. Opened in October 2000, provides a focal point for the public’s enjoyment of the Bay where young and old alike can take a journey through a series of exhibits and interactive displays that make the Bay come alive. Visitors learn about life in and around an estuary and why Upper Newport Bay is such an important estuary.