Colcom Foundation is one of the most prominent and most recognized environmental and conservation organizations in the United States. It was founded in May 1996 by Cordelia S. May, who had a great understanding, love, and respect for the balance and beauty of nature.
According to her, human activity has put a lot of strain on Earth’s natural functions, such that the planet’s ecosystem’s ability to sustain future generations is not certain and can’t be taken for granted.
She also understood how delicate nature’s balance is, which gave her a passion to do the most to try and maintain it. That drove her to support family planning at 23 years old in 1952 because of her charitable concerns for people’s quality of life.
While population growth is essential, Cordelia May understood that the growth is subtle from day to day, and the cumulative growth over time could be overwhelming for the planet and its resources.
Many news today talk about the imbalances between the natural world and people, plus its effects. These include terrestrial and aquatic habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, pollution, and ecosystem collapse. However, the growth-driven current society hardly sees a connection between overpopulation and these issues.
She created the Colcom Foundation to help her push and actualize her efforts to maintain the balance, and the organization has remained substantially funded since she passed away in 2005. Cordelia May used her humanitarian perspective to emphasize the issue decades before it became a public concern.
Over the years, Colcom Foundation has diversified its focus to cover carrying capacity, the local community, and the local environment. The foundation can fund land purchase and conservation projects in addition to popular media initiatives like the Environmental Integrity Project, the National Aviary, and Tree Pittsburgh. With this help, the Allegheny Front radio show, which focuses on environmental concerns, can better reach its listeners.
They help with these issues by supporting organizations that deal with things like immigration, family planning, conservation, research, education and media, waste diversion, environmental stewardship, arts and culture, human and health services, leisure and recreation, economic and community development, and public safety.
Being based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, most of the foundation’s environmental work is centered in southwest Pennsylvania to help negate the effects of the long industrial history in the area. See this article for more information.
Learn more about Colcom on https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/colcom-foundation/