Our Mission
Our mission is to enhance personal climate resilience skills for climate sensitive people in the Pacific Northwest to mindfully prepare themselves and their community to adapt and thrive while witnessing the effects of the changing climate.
Our Vision
We envision neighborhood-level support group gatherings, normalizing self-care, throughout the Cascadia bioregion. Through our training program, we can build relationships with CBO's to hold Circles, and train others: youth, elders, disabled, LGBTQ, BIPOC, and neurodiverse laypersons to hold Circles within their own communities.
Our purpose
We provide peer support gatherings and seek collaborations. Coming to terms with personal feelings about the true crisis of climate change may lead participants finding a path to take meaningful collective action.
Our values
Supporting a just transition to resilient and intentional communities.
Encouraging those that confess to still learning.
Accepting criticism, inviting conversation.
Envisioning a cooperative bioregion.
The Golden Rule.
Humility.
“Seeing” others.
Reducing stigma.
Reducing consumption.
Centering multicultural communities.
Acknowledging harms of colonial systems and injustices.
2025 Theory of Social Change
The complete document describes the systems thinking behind our two programs. It’s the process that will create an atmosphere to become personally resilient and inspire others.
Quick summary.
The Story of a Social Entrepreneur
Hi, my name is Drew Alcoser, Stack’s Founder. Before the Global Climate Strike in Portland, Cascadia Stack was just a spark in the heart of a Gen X social entrepreneur, I was finishing a degree in organizational leadership during the pandemic, graduating in 2021. I continued my education at Portland State University for a master’s certificate in social entrepreneurship. This whole time, I was learning while volunteering for a big climate advocacy organization. It is here where I encountered the concept of climate resilience.
With learning opportunities and grassroots actions, I felt empowered, but it is not without mindfulness.
Without taking personal steps to overcome the overwhelm, I will still get stuck in the negative space of anger, panic, and grief about the climate crisis. The negative feelings and visceral reactions can stagnate my ability to empathize with the movement. My motivation for advocating, marching, and holding space for climate conversations will take me to cynicism and apathy, eventually, I will find myself completely checked out.
Cascadia Stack is my contribution to challenge the existential crisis, it encourages me to acknowledge all those feelings and move to empowerment. Like me, you may know about some resources for self-care and well-being, but there is more to learn.
And learning is better in community.
Read more of my story here. Also, see the “about” page, and “the-people” to see professional bio.
Read our complete statement on Diversity and Inclusion.
Note: Cascadia Stack was founded in 2022 by a human. Our differences make society stronger.
In the effort to reduce stigmas associated with labels, Stack's founder chooses empowerment by self-identifying as queer, nonbinary, neurodivergent. and differently abled.
What is Cascadia?
A culture, anchored in place, a bioregion of watersheds in the Pacific Northwest: Alaska, British Columbia, and reaching into several states in the
US Northwest.
What’s up with the “Stack” part of our name?
Coping skills get stacked with personal resilience developed by a mindfulness practice, stacking those in our toolbox. Uncovering our perceptions– and how we process feelings about the climate crisis. is the basis of our programs.
Become a Sustaining Member of the Cascadia Resilience Movement! Your gift of $5, $10, or $20 monthly can support planning strategies.
Cascadia Stack
a community project of Cascadia Now!
United Nations Sustainable
Development
Goals
#3 GOOD HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
#11 SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES