Towards a People’s Endowment

Climate Justice UBC, SFU350 and DivestUVic are student-led climate justice groups on the University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Fraser University (SFU) and University of Victoria (UVic) campuses. Since our inception, we have succeeded in pushing our universities to divest from the fossil fuel industry and taken collective action on issues related to climate policy and Indigenous sovereignty in an effort to hold our universities accountable for inaction on climate change and other social injustices. 

CJUBC’s, SFU350’s, and DivestUVic’s successful divestment campaigns demonstrate the power of student organizers to create change in our universities. The goal of these divestment campaigns was to denounce and remove the social license of the fossil fuel industry. Now we are turning towards strategies to build the world we need with the financial resources that were formerly used to uphold the fossil fuel industry, with the aim of achieving transformative change within our economic systems. This has led us to initiate Towards a People’s Endowment (TaPE).

Now, we are calling on our universities to move 10% of their respective endowments and working capital funds — totaling more than $500 million — into community investments to support a vibrant and sustainable local economy.