All posts in Green Access

Last Friday March 27th, Tiffany, Stephen, and I took a trip to the city of Richmond to hear about the amazing work and prospects of one of our grantees, Solar Richmond.  If you haven’t heard, Solar Richmond promotes and inspires the use of solar power and energy efficiency in order to bring the economic benefits of the green economy to the city of Richmond.  This organization, with the leadership and vision of Michele McGeoy, is at the forefront of  the green workforce development movement .  By providing training and leadership opportunities to city residents, they are transforming the face of the green movement to include  faces from communities of color and low income communities.

After a very informative presentation on the potential of establishing a solar grid in Richmond and the feasibility of putting solar panels on nonprofits throughout the Bay, we took a tour through their neighborhood on an amazing yellow bio-diesel bus.  We met participants whose lives were changed by the training program and opportunities provided by Solar Richmond.  “You know some of these folks come in here and say, ‘this is my second chance at a first class life’.”  That is how Program and Training Manager Angela Greene described the impact of Solar Richmond’s work.  There was the Richmond job seeker seeking to expand her horizons, the single father from Seattle that got a late night call from his father in Detroit  and moved to Richmond to join the program, and the Floridian who came to Richmond to gain tools to take back to the sunshine state; all in all the program has been successful in drawing the attention of  job seekers, decision makers, and policy advocates across the country.  With a wait list of over 300, the program is in an amazing position to expand to a community, neighborhood, and city near you.

The economic crisis has reached a pivotal moment. Not only are major financial institutions and insurance companies having to face the consequences of predatory lending and fiscal mismanagement, everyday people are losing their jobs, homes, and community resources. As the federal government’s disbursement of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act begins to land into empty state government coffers, and cities across the nation are ramping up to access funds to pay for projects on hold, we would like to encourage folks in the nonprofit sector to prepare for this opportunity to influence the movement of resources into their communities.

This economic crisis has impacted low-income communities and communities of color and will continue to disproportionately burden these communities unless activists, advocates, and policy leaders are able to pressure state and federal leaders to invest in them. The numbers are staggering. In “The Preliminary Report of the Impact of the Economic Stimulus Plan on Communities of Color” by john powell from the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity at Ohio State University, it is noted that:

• African American homeownership gains were reversed after 2004; they have reverted to 2000 levels.
• The Economic Policy Institute asserts that black and Hispanic unemployment could reach as high as 18.2% and 13.1% respectively in 2010 if a recovery package is not implemented. Both of these figures are more than twice the unemployment rate the groups experienced in 2007 (8.6% for blacks, 5.8% for Hispanics).
• Between 2000 and 2007, median black family incomes dropped 1.0% for all families (down 1.9% for single female-headed families; dropped 9.1% for single male-headed families; married couples saw a modest increase of 1.9% median income). The overall decline is the first in a business cycle of this length since WWII.

As a Foundation committed to social justice work, we want to make sure our grantees and partners are aware of the consequences and opportunities presented by the crisis. Attached please find links to resources that might support your work and inform your understanding of how this crisis impacts the communities you are working with.

john powell: “Preliminary Report of the Impact of the Economic Stimulus Plan on Communities of Color”

Maya Wiley: “Talking Points Economic and Housing Recovery for Everyone: Racial Equity and Prosperity

Northern California Grantmakers: 2009 Relevant Articles on Philanthropy, Nonprofits, & the Economic Crisis

Hi everyone!  It’s been a busy and exciting couple of weeks here at the Mitchell Kapor Foundation.

One of the highlights of the month was our Defining a Green Jobs Movement convening, an all day meeting held on March 3rd at our offices with all of our grantee organizations working on green jobs issues.  As national attention shifts towards greening our economy and state-wide policymakers work to build emerald cities, we wanted to create a space for out grantees to meet each other, discuss opportunities for working together, and lay out key elements to defining a green jobs movement with social equity at its center.  There were over 20 organizations at the convening representing workforce development, labor, climate justice education, environmental justice advocacy, community building, cooperative green jobs, social enterprise, and reproductive justice to name a few. It was an amazing lineup of the Bay’s best and brightest!

An as you can imagine there were a whole lot of highlights, but here are my favorites:

•    Opening the morning with drumming and hearing where folks were from and how they felt about nature;
•    Malik Looper of Literacy from Environmental Justice talking about being a new Executive Director and having the other EDs in the room reach out to him;
•    Ian Kim of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights amazingly and excitedly layout the opportunities presented by the federal Stimulus in California; and
•    Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange telling participants that instead of protesting on Titanic as it sinks, we need to work together to build a solar powered-ship built with recycled material where workers aren’t exploited and invite those Titanic-bound folks onto our better alternative.

All in all, it was a great convening and we’re looking forward to having more of these in order to support the amazing work of our grantees.

Hi Everyone! I could not have made the transition to a full-time employee in a more exciting moment. My first two full weeks of work took place between We Act’s (West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc.) National Advancing Climate Justice conference and the Blue Green Alliance’s Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference. Both of these conferences offered an important look into the pressing climate justice issues, the opportunities of a new presidential administration, and the future of communities of color within a green economy. The following post offers a look into both of these events as well as highlights from these two conferences.

Advancing Climate Justice: Transforming the Economy, Public Health, & Our Environment:
We Act for Environmental Justice is a non-profit, community-based, environmental justice organization dedicated to building community power to fight environmental racism and improve environmental health, protection and policy in communities of color. We Act’s Advancing Climate Justice 20th Anniversary National Conference took place the 29th and 30th of January at New York’s Fordham University and brought together leading climate justice activists and key policy makers pushing an environmental justice agenda at the national level. There were a number of highlights including presentations by our grantees, which moved conference participants, but the closing plenary by Lisa Jackson, the new EPA administrator, was fantastic. In her first public appearance as administrator, she made her commitment to a climate justice policy, which positively impacts communities of color clear and encouraged advocates, organizers, and activists to continue pushing the administration so the needs of communities of color are met.

Blue Green Alliance Good Jobs, Green Jobs: Making a Down Payment on the Green Economy
Through workshops, plenary presentations and media events, the 2009 Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference focused participants on a combination of policy changes, public investments, and funding mechanisms that are necessary to accelerate the growth of the green economy; quantified and illustrated the job growth potential of global warming solutions and green chemistry; demonstrated the breadth of the coalition that supports the transition to a clean, renewable energy economy; and highlighted the potential of the green economy to forge a new social agenda that lifts Americans out of poverty, improves public health, and strengthens our middle class. With over 2,000 participants, this conference built alliances between environmental justice advocates, union members, policy makers, labor scholars, and environmentalists in order to identify a clear path towards achieving a justice green economy. Held in Washington D.C. from February 4th through the 6th, it built on the excitement of the new administration and created a number of opportunities to hear from incoming policy makers. With such a rich conference, there are a number of highlights, but for my own learning it was meeting with the Just Green funders and working with leaders in philanthropy to develop an agenda for funding and supporting the efforts of a green jobs movement.

At the begining of the new year, we wanted to give everyone a sense of our direction. 2009 is an odd-but-breathtaking combination of historic and unparalleled political possibilities and the worst financial crisis in most of our lifetimes. Needless to say, we’ll keep moving thoughtfully forward in the midst of uncertainty.

(Authors: Cedric – VoICE and BBCBI, Carmen – Green Access, Tiffany – Grantee Support)

Voting Integrity and Civic Engagement (VoICE): Formerly named Project 2008, our VoICE work will build on the tremendous energy of this past elections year. Because we have limited dollars to deal with a wide range of elections-related issues, we’re continuing to narrow our focus on several sub-areas. In 2009, we will:

• Look for opportunities to convene grantees and funders in meaningful ways in order to advance a sense of collaboration and movement.
• Concentrate on our particular interest in elections administration, enfranchisement (NVRA, automatic registration, etc.), and public campaign reform.
• Map out a strategy for possibly supporting journalism/media-related efforts.

Black Boys College Bound Initiative (BBCBI): We’ve had a low-key start of the initiative, which was launched nearly a year ago. In 2009 we will:

• Host a summer convening of organizations working with young black men on collegiate goals.
• Assess the possibilities of a second phase of BBCBI focusing on college-level recruitment and retention programs.
• Continue to work with a smaller cohort of grantees on basic college preparedness strategies.
  

Green Access: With a new administration entering office and a wide-range of actors engaging in Green debates, our Green Access granting area is looking forward to positioning ourselves, in partnership with our grantees, to be at the forefront of the exciting transformations ahead. In 2009, we will:

• Establish learning communities with our grantees in order to encourage collaboration, increased understanding, and movement building.
• Clearly define Green Jobs and push for a standard definition to make sure the labor and green components maintain integrity and benefit communities of color and low-income communities.
• Build alliances with our private-sector and investment partners in order to increase investment and explore the challenges of these relationships.
• Position our grantees to be leaders of national debates around climate change, green jobs, and healthy and sustainable lifestyles.

Photo from AFL-CIO blog 2008.

Grantee Support: The current financial crisis makes helping grantees with organizational development, problem solving, and crisis management a very important one. In 2009, we will:

• Develop a formal capacity building strategy to foster deeper communication with grantee organizations and to better help them meet critical needs.
• Work more closely with intermediaries, technical assistance providers, and other foundations that support capacity building work to make sure the Foundation best leverages its resources and provides information to grantees as efficiently as possible.
• Create more opportunities for grantee organizations to share experiences across all of our program areas.

Photo from Fieldstone Alliance.

This past week, we were pleasantly surprised to have one of our grantees featured in an article in The New Yorker Magazine. The work of Green for All and of Van Jones is at the cutting edge of the green movement of the 21st century and we are proud to support their endeavors. To read the article click on the link below.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/12/090112fa_fact_kolbert

This past weekend, we attended two excellent gatherings: Applied Research Center’s National Facing Race conference and the 7^th annual Green Festival.

CARMEN:

The Facing Race conference provided an important opportunity for national organizers, activists, elected officials, artists, academics, and everyday community members to sit together and develop strategies in order create a national movement whereof race could be the centerpiece. Sponsored by the Applied Research Center (ARC), which is the home for media and activism on racial justice, the conference introduced the Compact for Racial Justice as a plan for fairness in and across communities throughout the country. This conference proved to be an important learning experience for all of those involved, as the large plenaries engaged issues ranging from the current economic crisis to teaching participants skills on how to place race at the center of current social justice debates.

The conference also built in smaller sessions where specific issues, movements, and programs could discuss their work using the issue of race as the frame. For example, I attended a discussion on how to inject a racial justice perspective into the emerging debate on green jobs. The presenters included Maka Agbo from Ella Baker Center’s Green Collar Jobs Campaign, who described the ways the campaign moved between policy making to job training in order to provide a comprehensive pathway towards a green economy.

In the days following the event, ARC’s media team pulled together a great set of informational videos like this one from the plenary titled “Race & The Election: November 4^th and Beyond”, which highlights key presentations from the conference. This, along with the many other informational sessions allowed for great discussions and a whole lot of learning.

TIFFANY:

The Green Festival was co-sponsored by Co-op America and Global Exchange and hosted 125 speakers, 350 local and national green businesses, and a number of community and nonprofit groups. All exhibitors were screened for their commitment to sustainability, ecological balance, and social justice using Co-op America’s green business standards. As a person who struggles to find consistent ways to incorporate a ‘greener’ lifestyle, I learned a lot from attending this event.

One of the most interesting speakers I heard was Dr. Ellis Jones, a professor from U.C. Davis, who has done extensive research on “the social and environmental responsibility of every company on the planet AND making it available in practical forms that individuals can use in their everyday lives.” This research was incorporated into a website, http://www.betterworldshopper.org/, that gives ‘grades’ to commonly used companies based on their environmental practices. If you’re curious about how the companies you frequently support are doing in the environmental arena, please check out the website. Dr. Jones said that every dollar we spend is a vote for or against environmental sustainability. I will definitely be tweaking the companies that I support as a consumer.

The most pertinent message that I took from Dr. Jones’ presentation is that each person can create a unique contribution in this movement to create a more sustainable environment. He said that our personal plans to improve our own ecological footprints will help change the world we live in. To me, this means that every effort that I make or that you make to recycle a plastic bag, or to support a local farmer, or to try walking to the train station instead of driving, or other achievable personal goals will contribute to this green movement.

I’m encouraged to push myself a little more each day, and as I travel home to Georgia this Thanksgiving, I will be sharing this message with my family as well.

Hi Grantees, Community Organizers, Green Activists, and MKF Partners!

My name is Carmen Rojas and I am the new Grants Officer at the Mitchell Kapor Foundation. It’s been an exciting couple of days as Tiffany, Cedric, and I develop our work groove and I begin to think about the future of our Green Access work.

As many of you know, we are deeply committed to participating in and supporting the conversations and organizing efforts occurring in the areas of climate justice, green jobs, and building healthy and sustainable communities of color throughout the Bay Area. I am here to make sure that we are a stakeholder in all of these areas as well as to support organizations that are on the ground doing and thinking about this work. Specifically, I will be overseeing and managing the grantmaking process in the area of Green Access as well as working with partners to define the opportunities and challenges for the future of this work.

I’m currently wrapping up a dissertation in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley so  I’ll only be in the office part-time until January, but I am excited to meet you in the coming months and start laying the foundation for our future work together.

The notion of a green economy is one of the hottest topics today. There have long been crusaders for humans to live more sustainably with Mother Earth—from Native cultures to Al Gore’s recent book & film, An Inconvenient Truth. But, there has been a notable shift in the movement towards ‘mainstreaming green’ such that things like sustainable buildings and composting aren’t only heard in the conversations of the elite. Nothing is more evident of this than when, during the second town hall style Presidential debate, a female, African-American college student and department of children’s services employee asks Obama and McCain what they would do to address climate change during their administrations, if elected. She was the only person to bring up environmental issues during that debate. A green collar economy is another facet of how this environmental conversation has become mainstreamed—so that all people regardless of status, race, or zip code can benefit physically and economically from green principles.

Right now, one of the most prominent voices advocating for this green economy is Van Jones, co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and founding president of Green For All, both Mitchell Kapor Foundation grantees. I just started reading Van’s new book, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. I’ve only read up to page 10 , but so far, my favorite line is on page 6 in regards to using corn as a source of fuel: “In a world full of hungry people, burning food should be criminally punished—not financially subsidized—by the U.S. government.”

Doesn’t that politically charged, social justice-oriented quote make you want to go out and get your own copy of this book?!? I know that I can’t wait to finish reading it to find out more about what kind of solutions Van has to suggest regarding green jobs and alternatives to our dependency on fossil fuels. If you want to find out more about this book, you can go to Van Jones’ site, or you can go pick up a copy at a bookstore nearest you!