Hello Angeles Sierra Club community!
My name is Erika Grohoski Valdivia - I am a hiker, a dog mom, a book lover and a volunteer with Sierra Club. I felt called to volunteer at the end of 2024 when I was feeling a little lost and needing a community to give my time to. I am a long time climate advocate, having worked with half a dozen organizations in the past and I when I was looking to volunteer my time, I knew I would call myself into the environmental movement again. So I think it was a beautiful piece of fate when the very next day I made the decision to find an opportunity, Sierra Club Angeles posted about their need for a Volunteer, Volunteer Coordinator.
See my day job is organizing. I have been a community and electoral organizer since 2015, working with pro-environment groups and candidates. And I knew that I would want to leverage the skills I have been building over the last decade for my local community. As Morgan and Megan described it, the Volunteer Volunteer Coordinator would act as a mini organizer - someone who could help all of the Angeles Sierra Club volunteers find a place within all the different committees, groups and ad hoc projects they manage. Enter: me, deeply excited about connecting folks to their organizing homes and willing to make it happen!
So as we examine everything that 2025 has brought to us in just a few short weeks, I know many of you are wondering: what can I do to meet this moment? Perhaps you’re worried about how your community will bounce back after the recent wildfires. Perhaps you’re looking at our current political climate and worried that environmental priorities will be sent to the back burner. Perhaps you just want to build community around making Southern California a healthy, accessible and beautiful place to live.
The Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club has numerous opportunities for you to get involved from our trail clean up and restoration program (in partnership with LA Hikes!), to our joining our committees that advocate on everything from expanding the metro system, advocating for clean air, ending oil and gas production and more. We have dozens of opportunities for you to get involved. Please fill out our volunteer form below so that I can follow up with you and make sure you find the place where you can make a difference. And as a PS - if you have an idea that you are excited about that maybe isn’t fully represented here, feel free to reach out about your skills, because we want to make sure that everyone is involved and part of our movement.
I look forward to connecting with all of our Sierra Club Angeles leaders! I know that together we are going to build a community that shapes Southern California for the better for years to come.
In Love and Solidarity,
Erika