The end game for this curriculum: Folks have the power and resources to invent their own ways to create healthy neighborhood communities.
I started thinking about this curriculum as involving two types of folks: Those who live in the neighborhoods impacted by historical injustice and environmental inequities. And those who live outside the neighborhoods.
I’ve had several conversations over the past few weeks with folks involved in Evanston environmental justice (EJ) and Evanston’s sustainability/climate efforts. One conversation in particular – with EJ leaders Jerri Garl and Janet Alexander Davis – clarified the goal of focusing on leaders who live in the neighborhoods.
But each conversation also touched on the why behind setting that priority. White folks outside these more diverse Black/Brown neighborhoods may intentionally or unintentionally perpetuate the kind of racial mythology that led to the environmental equity problem in the first place. “They think Black folks don’t know how to solve their own problems” is how one elder Black leader bluntly put it.
Others noted the subtle reinforcement of racial divides by looking at specific neighborhoods as something to be “fixed.” Many of these neighborhoods in fact have stronger, deeper community assets than wealthier parts of the city. Neighbors know neighbors. Folks can trace their presence in Evanston 3, 4 and 5 generations. There are block clubs and informal networks of support. What needs to be “fixed” is the enthusiasm and focus of the entire city to remedy historical injustices that stand in the way of ensuring these neighborhoods benefit from climate-resilience and healthy community efforts that ultimately helps us all.
So now I am beginning to frame the desired goals of the “curriculum” to be more structural.
- Folks in neighborhoods have increasingly more control over resources to create their own healthy-community improvements. That includes the power to invite in expertise or working hands from outside the neighborhood.
- Folks who want to help can help by paying attention to and advocating for how folks in the neighborhoods gain increasingly more control of their own healthy-community improvements. And they can help by treating any hands-on, direct help as an invitation.
Curriculum is in quotes at the beginning of that last list. I think about curriculum very loosely: It is a coherent series of designed elements that lead to folks learning. And the best learning happens when you are working together with folks on something real and then reflecting on how well it is contributing to your desired outcome.
Let me make up an example of what this might look like in environmental equity work.
A program called Love Your Block exists in Evanston. It is managed by the city but funded by a not-for-profit foundation grant. Residents in select wards in the city are eligible to apply to receive up to $2000 to fund projects that benefit their neighborhood. In its first year the program funded cleanup efforts, gardening and flower planting, community get-togethers, home repair/upkeep and more.
The project ideas came from neighbors working together. They got funding and access to resources required to do the project. They had complete control.
It looks like a real success case. And you can argue that all of the projects fit under environmental equity work if you think about environmental equity as broadly folks in Evanston do: It’s about creating healthy and sustainable neighborhoods.
How might Love Your Block be part of a curriculum?
- We should all be advocates for continuing and growing this program. To do that, we need to learn how to be advocates for programs and policies that prioritize local control over designing solutions, and to understand why that is important.
- Folks with environmental or climate resilience expertise might learn how to share their expertise with Love Your Block grant seekers as neighbors develop their project ideas. These experts can learn how to be invited in and to co-create.
- Folks with other expertise – facilitating community listening or engagement or brainstorming – my also learn how to share their expertise, through invitation. It could be in the pre-project stage, or by filling needs or opportunities to build off of the successes after the grant projects end.
I can easily envision how you might create learning-by-doing projects for each of those bullet points. Let’s take the environmental and climate expert case as an example:
- You get folks with environmental and climate resilience expertise to apply to be part of a cohort to design ways for sharing expertise with Love Your Block grant seekers.
- They first convene to learn about the Love Your Block program, what’s worked in the past, and in what ways have neighborhood folks come together to propose an idea. They also learn about the built environment of those neighborhoods and the current state of elements that contribute to climate resilience and healthy communities.
- Then you have those expert folks work with each other, and with folks in the neighborhoods, to design ideas on how to share their expertise by being invited to do so.
- The group tests those ideas. Maybe they do prototypes to test assumptions. Maybe they run an live experiment: Here’s the idea, let’s see if anyone invites us in.
- Results come in. A “no result” – no invitations, or successful project grants – is actually a result. It says there is a faulty assumption at play or a weak element in the solution design.
- The experts then reconvene and reflect on the results, the experience and the process. What did we learn?
That structure – learn about a challenge, collaborate to design some solution, test the solution, then reflect on the effort – is a really well-established structure. It’s John Dewey’s practical inquiry. It’s design process. It’s problem-based learning. It’s a way toward what Donald Schon referred to as being a “reflective practitioner.”
But this example also gets at something else I am beginning to appreciate about the design of an EJ curriculum.
- It starts by building off of what already exists – like Love Your Block – rather than inventing new.
- It flips the script. Rather than figuring out which projects might fit into a community’s needs – and then executing the co-design of solutions – you start with projects envisioned by the community itself. Then find ways where the community invites you in.
What then, already exists as a potential project-generating engine? What other programs or organizations are supporting community-generated solution development? How might these existing assets be connected to an EJ curriculum which adds another element of expertise (climate-resilience, healthy communities) to the efforts? What are the areas of expertise that might be most beneficial, or which address known gaps?
A curriculum might then consist of two key elements:
- A set of easy-to-consume educational resources designed to spark ideas by tying together the many elements of environmental equity – i.e., open spaces, waste, energy, housing, tree canopy, etc. – to climate resilience and healthy communities. Work to design community-led solutions impacting any one of these works toward the larger outcome of climate resilience and healthy communities.
- A project-learning experience, where a cohort of experts are invited in by a community to co-design solutions. And to reflect on what works.
My thinking here about community-generated solutions is influenced by several threads that come from my career and my work this past year. Peter Block’s book Activating the Common Good, which I wrote about here. Also see Asset Based Community Development, design justice, and signals from the universe, where I connect lessons from design justice to Block’s work, which builds off of Asset Based Community Development. Finally, the lessons from my career work at Northwestern University, half-baked in A work-in-progress reflection: Designing for learning through community.
The photographs which accompany these posts are taken by me, and show different settings and views of Evanston (where I live). It is a visual reminder that this is the most important setting for belonging and contributing to community: our neighborhoods, our cities.
Jeff Merrell 