Our Strategy & Values

A Thriving, Just, Healthy and Equitable Region

Our Strategic Vision

The Humboldt Area Foundation and the Wild Rivers Community Foundation together announced in June, 2021, our shared Strategic Vision that will guide our foundation efforts for the next ten years and beyond. The new strategic vision is an assertion of our values as well as a road map to guide how we invest and collaborate across our four-county region. We envision a generational outcome of: A Thriving, Just, Healthy and Equitable Region.

This vision will be animated by four specific, decade-long goals:

Racial Equity

Transforming our institutions and structures to address the outcome gaps across every indicator of success, from infant mortality to life expectancy, that have been created by hundreds of years of racial oppression.

Thriving Youth & Families

Investing in the future by creating a safe, healthy place where generations of families can grow and have the chance to succeed — where everyone has the chance to experience support and success in their community and reach their greatest potential.

Healthy Ecosystems & Environments

Using traditional knowledge and cutting-edge science to clean our water, purify our air, maintain our soil, adapt to a changing climate, and provide sustainable sources of food, energy, water, and transportation.

A Just Economy & Economic Development

Bolstering economic development to create opportunities for each person in our region to have a dignified, productive, and creative life unencumbered by poverty or exploitation.

We will be guided by five key perennial values to fulfill our goals and outcomes:

  1. We seek to reduce economic, social, health, and environmental vulnerabilities that disproportionately impact underserved communities;
  2. We are in active promotion of racial equity. We recognize that people of color possess unique knowledge, assets, and experiences that can elevate us all;
  3. We will be adaptable and responsive leaders, addressing both urgent and systematic issues that affect our region;
  4. We will partner and collaborate to increase impact, share resources and responsibility, build capacity, and diversify understanding;
  5. We bring our region’s cultures and communities together in a spirit of learning, empathy, and connection. We empower local knowledge and invest in our community’s solutions. 

Together, these four goals will inform the programmatic and strategic work of the organization. As we embark on this strategic direction, we created a new organizational structure to enable our vision. Our new organization will empower our staff to utilize their many skills in direct service across Trinity, Humboldt, and Del Norte counties in California and Curry County in Oregon.

Strategy Downloads

About Our Region

We love the remarkable region we live in and serve: Del Norte, Humboldt, and Trinity counties in Northern California and Curry County in Southern Oregon, as well as the 18 Native American tribal nations and lands, among the country’s most populous and culturally significant ancestral lands. The regional area represents remote rural areas bound together by land, water, history, and circumstances.

The 18 tribal nations, reservations, and rancherias are situated among the regional service area, including the Yurok Nation, Hoopa Valley, Karuk, Wiyot, and Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nations (among many others) are undergoing a strong revitalization of native cultures, languages, and traditions. The region is also home to flourishing Latinx and Hispanic, and Asian American populations, who provide integral cultural stimulation and strong interconnected communities. In addition, Humboldt County is an official Sanctuary county for immigrants, which means that cooperation with Federal immigration entities is limited, and safety, permanency, and the ability to thrive in Humboldt County are more easily attained for our neighbors, families, and community members with immigrant status.

The rural region is also bound by the unique shared environment, which is considered sacred, wild, scenic, and recreational by the people that live within it. The many miles of national forest, rivers, lakes, and beaches play an integral role in the circumstances of our communities. Rural regions face a unique set of strengths, challenges, and opportunities for the animals, environment, and people of those rural places, and it is through this lens that Humboldt Area Foundation and Wild Rivers Community Foundation can work closely together on these shared circumstances to serve the region as a whole.

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