Senior Stewards Acting for the Environment

Senior Stewards Acting for the Environment (SSAFE) is a 501c3 nonprofit supporting a steadily growing group of residents of senior living communities who currently reside in eight states on thirteen campuses, most of which are affiliated with the Kendal Corporation. Kendal’s Quaker-based values—especially “sustaining and improving the environment” and “building meaningful partnerships”—are also SSAFE values. SSAFE brings to the growing worldwide movement to halt global heating the unique resources of retirees: the time, life experiences, financial stability, and organizational skills needed to help stabilize the climate and create conditions that everyone’s children, grandchildren, and all other forms of life on our planet to flourish. While we are an independent organization, we work closely with staff and administrators at each campus and with the Kendal Corporation itself to pursue our goals.

OUR MISSION

We seek

• to unite residents in our member communities in addressing the greatest challenge facing our planet: climate change
• to mitigate the effects of global warming by drawing on our combined experience, knowledge, resources, and talents
• to share our methods with community staff and administrators, as well as other retirement communities.

GOALS

To set member communities and other elder communities on the pathway to a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 and net carbon neutrality by 2050, we will:

• ADVOCATE, by pressing key decision makers to pass laws and enforce rules consistent with these GHG reduction goals.
• EDUCATE, to inform and inspire actions by elder communities to work toward alleviation of climate change and instill hope for a sustainable future.
• IMPLEMENT strategies for creating environmentally friendly elder communities, using science-based and professionally guided best practice.
• STRENGTHEN SSAFE so it can act as a consistent and effective force in facilitating the accomplishment of the above goals.

SSAFE VALUES

The following list of values will be used as guidance as we formulate our communications. As a young organization, we expect to refine our definition of these and how we interpret them under varying situations.

• Respect
• Integrity
• Community
• Stewardship
• Diversity
• Science based
• Action