Cleveland - EPA Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) Project

www.nleh.org

Neighborhood Leadership for Environmental Health
Environmental Health Watch and Neighborhood Leadership, Inc., along with the Cleveland Clean Air Century Campaign and Earth Day Coalition, have formed Neighborhood Leadership for Environmental Health. This partnership brings together community stakeholders (e.g., residents, businesses, churches, institutions, and government agencies) in a collaborative process of data gathering and education, followed by consensus priority-setting and action plan development, to address significant environmental concerns in Cleveland’s eastside, inner-city neighborhoods. Our goal is to develop a sustainable environmental justice partnership.

We have been awarded initial funding through the US EPA Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) Program (Level 1). Subsequently, CARE Level 2 funding will be sought for implementation of the action plan.

Neighborhood Leadership for Environmental Health will be carried out in the context of an effort by NLI and EHW toward “greening the ‘hood,” aimed at bridging the divide between Cleveland’s strong environmental organizations and people living in low-income, inner-city neighborhoods. In these communities there are numerous problems (e.g., substandard housing; lack of access to fresh, quality food; air pollution; and high lead poisoning and asthma prevalence) which can be improved by green approaches facilitated through collaboration between environmental organizations and neighborhood groups. This inclusive “green for all” strategy strengthens both.

Neighborhood leaders and the faith community are organizing to help join the green and neighborhood agendas. Faith-based organizations provide a key link to engage and educate inner-city residents, particularly those who are otherwise hard to reach. Faith leaders are trusted resources who know their families and significantly impact the way that families see their world and their own possibilities to affect their environment.

Neighborhood Leadership for Environmental Health (NLEH) is grounded in the extensive network of community residents who have been trained through the Neighborhood Leadership, Inc. programs. NLEH also builds upon numerous past and ongoing environmental projects that gather the data needed for community education, priority-setting and action plan development. This data, presented in accessible language and formats, includes air pollution levels, air toxics sources, mercury contamination of Lake Erie fish, housing-related health hazards, local carbon footprint, pesticide exposure, and other information of concern to community stakeholders.

More than just talk and planning, Neighborhood Leadership for Environmental Health will link with on-going action and advocacy activities, providing concrete benefits and vehicles for action by community participants. These on-going activities include programs for home energy conservation and efficiency (reducing local pollution, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, shrinking utility bills); community gardens, farmers markets; and reducing exposure to lead hazards, asthma triggers and pesticides.

NLI and EHW Team Awarded EPA’s Much Sought CARE Grant
by Mark McClain, Director of Health and Environmental Initiatives
from NLI's Neighborhood Leader newsletter

Neighborhood Leadership Institute, Environmental Health Watch (EHW) and partnering agencies have been awarded a Phase One $100,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to provide environmental justice education to four Cleveland communities.

The grant will allow the NLI team to assist the Mt. Pleasant, Buckeye-Woodland, Fairfax and Central communities to offer creative solutions to environmental problems that touch their lives.

The NLI team’s grant proposal was ranked by the federal agency as the best in the five-state Region 5 area, and third in the nation.

Mark McClain (Class 21) of NLI and Kim Foreman (Class 17) of Environmental Health Watch were recently invited to New York City to begin preparation for the implementation of the grant.

Through the USEPA CARE Grant Program, NLI will collaborate with Environmental Health Watch, Earth Day Coalition, Cleveland Clean Air Century Fund, Neighborhood Leadership Cleveland graduates, and other community stakeholders to educate community members about environmental justice issues and to implement solutions.

Organization of the effort has already begun, with the actual education process beginning in spring 2010. Call Mark McClain at NLI if you are interested in participating.

The Parable of the Deer
by Mark McClain, Director of Health and Environmental Initiatives
from NLI's Neighborhood Leader newsletter

A few months ago I entertained a few of my Facebook friends with an entry about a deer that ate my mustard green plants from my yard.

It was a tongue-in-cheek account of how I felt when resources that I claimed as my own were used by someone else.

The response was fairly significant for a Facebook thread, with no fewer than 50 comments about what should be done to the interloper that was doing simply what nature had designed it to do, feed itself and sustain itself.

The consensus was that I should have by now had a freezer full of venison.

The parable of the deer is important.

The deer was only doing what a deer does. Live off the land, with minimal impact.

And, the deer has done a much better job than we have in fitting into nature’s design.

I’ve never seen an obese deer. It eats only what it needs at the time and continues along its way. Sustainable consumption. It doesn’t leave empty cans, plastic bottles or candy wrappers in its wake. Its carbon footprint is negligible, probably limited to the effluvium residue that it deposits discreetly in the woods. Y’all know what I mean.

We, on the other hand, have been much less graceful. We have ravaged our ecosystem with minimum efforts to replenish the place over which God has given us stewardship. We have polluted our land. Our air is polluted, as is our water.

We were warned of the effects of our actions for many years but have failed to react, sweeping the effects of our ignorance under the proverbial rug. Well, unfortunately, there are some people who live under that rug.

And as NLC-trained leaders, the people under the rug are most likely your constituency.

It has come the time in the course of human history when the environmental justice axis intersects the day-to-day survival axis.

It is incumbent upon you to let your constituency know that the world has shrunk to a size that what people do far away from you, or down the street from you, can severely affect their survival on this planet.

And as in the parable of the deer, your constituency could be the first candidate for sacrifice.

Therefore, our concern for the day-to-day survival of grassroots people must necessarily include environmental considerations. What will they eat? What will they drink? Where and how will they live? How will they survive?

We must educate and mobilize our constituency on the issue of environmental justice.

Links

• EPA Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE)
• Neighborhood Leadership Institute
• Cleveland Clean Air Century Campaign
• Earth Day Coalition
• Nappy Green Negra Blog