Tomberg Family Philanthropies

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Funding Area: Environment

ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability is a global network of more than 2500 local and regional governments committed to sustainable urban development. Active in 125+ countries, we influence sustainability policy and drive local action for low emission, nature-based, equitable, resilient and circular development.

We bring sustainability to a rapidly developing urban world.

ICLEI makes sustainability an integral part of urban development and creates systemic change in urban areas through practical, integrated solutions. We help cities, towns and regions anticipate and respond to complex challenges, from rapid urbanization and climate change to ecosystem degradation and inequity.

The local and regional governments in our network confront these challenges by incorporating sustainability into day-to-day operations and policy. We invest in the capacity and knowledge needed to design solutions and make decisions informed by data, scientific evidence and local realities and pressures. Our five pathways towards low emission, nature-based, equitable, resilient and circular development are designed to create systemic change.

We work in cities, towns and regions of all sizes, with varying capacities and challenges. Many have set and reached ambitious targets and are at the forefront of sustainability, pioneering new solutions and challenging the status quo. Others are taking early steps towards transformation, strengthening their systems and capacities to achieve sustainability goals.

Across the world, ICLEI brings the latest global knowledge and solutions to the local context.

Our involvement: The Marty Tomberg Charitable Fund has financially supported this organization.

Projects We Support

Improving community well-being via local implementation of Sustainable Development Goals

ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability (formerly the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) will host an approximately 12-month “learn-do” VLR training cohort for a minimum 5 and maximum 8 local governments (city and county) to train government staff on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) data tracking, community engagement processes, and international collaboration. The SDG Cohort will demonstrate applicability across a range of community types and to develop materials to support replication, allowing any city or county to benefit from aligning with the framework—redefining traditional government definitions of sustainability in the process. Communities expressing initial support through letters submitted with this proposal include: New Haven, Connecticut; Orange County, Florida; and San Antonio, Texas. Additional interest has been supplied to ICLEI by Beacon, New York; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and San Jose, California.

This is a new project, and although it will be ICLEI’s first SDG Cohort, our organization has successfully guided more than 350 cities, towns and counties through successive levels of achievement in other peer-learning cohorts—for example, on climate, zero-net energy buildings, and forest carbon accounting—including direct technical assistance and tools development. For this SDG Cohort with support from Tomberg Family Philanthropies, ICLEI will develop a stepwise curriculum and live training series delivered via monthly, structured live online group-training sessions, reinforced by one-on-one technical assistance for each city, an SDG spreadsheet-based “mapping” tool and report template, and facilitated throughout using ICLEI’s online peer-learning platform.

Support Dates:  March, 2021 – March, 2022