Core Values & Guiding Principles

We operate with core values that guide us in all our projects and decision-making processes. Our overarching guiding principles include collaboration, education, advocacy, public awareness, inclusiveness, empowerment, and integrity to work within the four pillars of our mission.

 

Environmental Justice

  • Does it protect and support biodiversity?

  • Does it educate and get people outdoors into our natural environment?

  • Does it promote ethical use and stewardship of the environment?

  • Does it protect the public health for future generations?

  • Does it respect and give voice to our diverse communities, histories and heritage?

 

Economic Justice

  • Does it ethically promote local businesses, jobs with livable wages and the economy in a way that honors the other three pillars?

  • Does it empower people, lifting them out of poverty, valuing the public’s health?

  • Does it promote economic development in a sustainable, healthy way?

  • Does it increase community skills that lead to self-sufficiency?

  • Does it respect the cultural heritage activities of the area?

 

Social Justice

  • Does it educate and empower the community stakeholders?

  • Does it empathize with and facilitate empowerment of underrepresented and underserved populations?

  • Does it respect and promote diversity and inclusiveness?

  • Does it help prepare future justice leaders?

  • Does it invite community participation and public processes?

  • Does it promote healing?

 

Food Justice

  • Does it promote equal access to healthy, local foods and seeds?

  • Is it from a sustainable source?

  • Does it honor local tradition, heritage and biodiversity?

  • Does it benefit local community health?

  • Does it educate our children and communities to make healthy choices in the future?

 

Our Commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Here at Conejos Clean Water, we are committed to involving community volunteers, serving projects, and appointing staff and board members on a nondiscriminatory basis. We are committed to ensuring our officers, directors, employees, volunteers, and clients are selected and treated entirely on a nondiscriminatory basis with respect to age, sex, race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, transgender status, gender identity, creed, color, ancestry, marital status, or ability.

Additionally, we share in the empowerment of our communities by organizing for social change. We are committed to moving toward environmental, social, economic, and food justice and striving for change as a community-based organization with the community driving this change. In 1994, President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12898 to address environmental justice in low-income communities and minority populations; this is a movement we are proud to be a part of. Designation as an agent for environmental justice further strengthens our ability to assist our predominantly Hispanic and low-income communities in work towards systemic change, confronting the root causes of injustices within our communities like racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, sexism, and health inequities. Overall, we are committed to building momentum in this larger movement for social change with other struggling communities across the nation and globe.